Alice Allison Dunnigan

Alice Allison Dunnigan (April 27, 1906 – May 6, 1983) was an American journalist, civil rights activist and author. Dunnigan was the first African-American female correspondent to receive White House credentials, and the first Black female member of the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries. She wrote an autobiography entitled Alice A. Dunnigan: A Black Woman's Experience.

Alice chronicled the decline of Jim Crow during the 1940s and 1950s, which influenced her to become a civil rights activist.

During her time as a reporter, she became the first Black journalist to accompany a president while traveling, covering Harry S. Truman's 1948 campaign trip.

Early life Alice Dunnigan was born April 27, 1906, near Russellville, Kentucky, to Willie and Lena Pittman Allison. Though her father was a sharecropper and her mother took in laundry for a living, Dunnigan's family was unusually "well-off" compared to other Black families in the area; they owned their own land and had a larger home they expanded on over the years.

Alice graduated from Knob City High School and upon completing a teaching course at Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute, she taught Kentucky History in the Todd County School System, which was segregated at the time.

Dunnigan was named education consultant to the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity in 1961 and was an associate editor with the President's Commission on Youth Opportunity from 1967 to 1970. Dunnigan was the first Black female member of the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries (1947), and the first Black female White House correspondent in 1948. During her retirement she also penned The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians in 1982.

Despite her extensive work in government and politics, Dunnigan was most proud of her work in journalism, and received more than 50 journalism awards. She died of ischemic bowel disease on May 6, 1983, in Washington, D.C. The bronze monument was created by artist Amanda Matthews and cast at Prometheus Foundry, LLC. The statue was unveiled at the Newseum on September 21, 2018. After a period of time being honored there for much of the fall of 2018, it was relocated to Dunnigan's native Kentucky. It spent several months at the University of Kentucky, then was relocated again to be featured in the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri. In August 2019, the Dunnigan monument made its way home to her native Russelville where it resides in the Alice Dunnigan Memorial Park named for her. It was unveiled again during a celebration that included the descendants of Alice Allison Dunnigan.

In 2022, the White House Correspondents' Association created the Dunnigan-Payne Lifetime Achievement Award in memory of Dunnigan and fellow White House reporter Ethel Payne, the first two Black women in the White House press corps.

On November 30, 2023, the White House named its briefing lectern the Dunnigan-Payne lectern in honor of Alice Dunnigan and Ethel Payne, the first two Black women in the White House press corps.