A double dose of good news at the end of the week is always welcome; two Black women will be honored tomorrow by the White House Correspondents’ Association for shattering a glass ceiling for women journalists of color.
The first ever “Dunnigan-Payne Prize” will be accepted by the families of Alice Dunnigan and Ethel Payne, who were the first two Black women to reach the White House press corps.
Dunnigan was the first Black woman to enter the White House press corps. She began writing at 13 and worked as a teacher in Kentucky shortly after high school when schools were still segregated. She received her first writing job at the black-owned Chicago Defender in 1946 after working for the federal government in Washington D.C. It was there she began covering Washington as a correspondent. She later joined the Associated Negro Press (ANP) and was granted credentials to cover congress after being denied clearance several months prior on the grounds the ANP was not a daily publication. In 1948, joined the press corps after also being named bureau chief of the ANP the year before. Dunnigan endured many indignations during her career as a journalist, including being denied entry to Washington events and areas that the White press had access to, but she was undeterred by discrimination. She also became the first Black woman elected to the Women’s National Press Club.
Payne’s career as a journalist didn’t begin until 1951 though she long desired to be a writer. She was a library assistant at the Chicago Public Library for several years until 1947. She left for Tokyo, Japan the following year to take a job as a hostess at the Army Special Service Club, and became director of the U.S. Army service club there. During a visit from a reporter with the Chicago Defender, she shared experiences of Black soldiers that she had journaled during her time in Japan. The information she shared would end up published by the Chicago Defender. Her experience led her back to the U.S. where she took a job with Sengstacke Newspapers, publisher of the Chicago Defender, which was also a national publication at the time. Payne started out as an associate editor before becoming a reporter and took over the publication’s Washington bureau in 1953 as White House correspondent, a post she held for 20 years. She was the second Black woman to join the White House press corps.
