Making amends

Association honors first black reporter to cover a presidential news conference

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Harry S. McAlpin made history in February 1944 when he became the first black reporter to cover a presidential news conference at the White House.

Time magazine and The New York Times noted the milestone. And Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who’d opened the White House doors after entreaties from African-American publishers, greeted the reporter as he made his way over to the president’s desk, telling him, “Glad to see you, McAlpin.”

It was not a sentiment shared by the White House Correspondents’ Association, who for a decade had refused to allow black reporters to attend the twiceweekly news conferences in the Oval Office.

Roosevelt’s invite did nothing to deter them. A member of the association told McAlpin he’d share notes from the news conference with him if he didn’t attend, suggesting that in the crush of reporters moving into the room someone could get hurt.

McAlpin “ever so politely declined the offer,” and broke the color barrier, said George Condon, a White House correspondent for the National Journal and a former White House Correspondents’ Association president who’s researching the group’s sometimescheckered history in celebration of its centennial this year.

Now, some 70 years after doing all it could to block black reporters, the White House Correspondents’ Association is looking to make amends, dedicating a scholarship for journalism students in McAlpin’s name. McAlpin, who died in 1985, will be honored at the association’s annual scholarship dinner on May 3.

“Harry McAlpin was a remarkable man. We honor his role as the first black reporter to cover a presidential press conference. And we acknowledge that he did that in spite of opposition from the White House Correspondents’ Association of the time,” said Steven Thomma, the current association president and McClatchy’s government and politics editor. “Thanks to the work of Harry McAlpin, and men and women in the decades that followed, the White House press corps and the White House Correspondents’ Association is a diverse chorus of faces and voices. The country is better for it.”

McAlpin’s son, Sherman, calls his father’s historymaking stint at the White House just one facet of a life well-lived, including serving as the president of the NAACP chapter in Louisville, Ky.

“He has been and continues to be my hero,” Sherman McAlpin said of his father.

J.M. EDDINS JR./MCT Sherman McAlpin with a photograph of himself as a boy with his father, Harry McAlpin, the first black reporter to cover a presidential news conference at the White House.