Dunnigan, Alice A.
(born: 1906 - died: 1983)Alice A. Dunnigan was born near Russellville, KY. She is a graduate of Kentucky Normal and Industrial Institute [now Kentucky State University] and for a few years after her graduation, she filled her summers by taking classes at West Kentucky Industrial College [now West Kentucky Community and Technical College] in Paducah, KY. During the first half of her life, Dunnigan was a school teacher. Her first job was teaching at the colored school in Mount Pisgah, KY. She had been teaching since she was 18 years old. Dunnigan was also a writer and journalist, writing her first newspaper column at the age of 14. When the school term ended in 1935, she was hired as a reporter in Louisville. Dunnigan left Kentucky in 1942 when the Louisville school where she had been teaching was closed and then continued her career as a reporter in Washington, D. C. She was also a reporter for the Associated Negro Press, serving as chief of the Washington Bureau; she was the first African American female correspondent to receive White House credentials and the first African American member of the Women's National Press Club. In addition to being an educator and journalist, Dunnigan was also a civil rights activist. In her hometown of Russellville, she pushed for African American women to be hired by the WPA, and she used her position as a white house correspondent to forward the issues and concerns of African Americans, she also served as the educational consultant on President Johnson's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity. Dunnigan was the author of The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians and four other books. For more see A Black Woman's Experience, by A. A. Dunnigan; Kentucky Women, by E. K. Potter; Women Who Made a Difference, by C. Crowe-Carraco; and N. J. Dawson, "Alice Allison Dunnigan," The Crisis, July-August, 2007, pp.39-41 [available online at Google Book Search].
