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Alone atop the hill : the autobiography of Alice Dunnigan, pioneer of the national Black press / edited by Carol McCabe Booker with a foreword by Simeon Booker.

By: Contributor(s): Material type: TextTextPublisher: Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2015]Description: xvi, 223 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0820347981 (hbk. : acidfree paper)
  • 9780820347981 (hbk. : acid-free paper)
Other title:
  • Alone on top of the hill : the autobiography of Alice Dunnigan pioneer of the national Black press
Uniform titles:
  • Black woman's experience
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Those early years. No greater thrill -- The family tree and its bittersweet fruit -- Alone atop a hill -- School days -- Where there's a will -- The job hunt -- The ups and downs of my first job -- A plunge into the sea of matrimony -- A rugged voyage ends -- Moving on -- Wading through the depression -- Seeking identity, experience, and recognition -- A great new world. Converging on Washington -- Breaking down race and gender barriers -- A trip with the president -- The civil rights fights of the forties -- Profiles of injustice -- The president proposes; the congress debates -- Almost pushing the panic button -- Freedom fights of the fifties -- Eisenhower's pique.
Summary: "Alice Dunnigan (1906-1983) was the first African American woman to break the color and gender barriers of national journalism. During her time as a journalist, she reported for the Louisville Defender and Chicago Defender, and was a member of the Negro Associated Press. Dunnigan has been inducted into the Kentucky Hall of Fame for Journalism (1982) and for Human Rights (2010), and in 2013 was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. [Her] original autobiography was self-published and quite long, thus failing to gain the wide readership it might have; Booker aims to make Dunnigan's story available once more and ... readable for a general audience"-- Provided by publisher.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Biography Dunnigan A. D924 Available 33111007985415
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

In 1942 Alice Allison Dunnigan, a sharecropper's daughter from Kentucky, made her way to the nation's capital and a career in journalism that eventually led her to the White House. With Alone atop the Hill , Carol McCabe Booker has condensed Dunnigan's 1974 self-published autobiography to appeal to a general audience and has added scholarly annotations that provide historical context. Dunnigan's dynamic story reveals her importance to the fields of journalism, women's history, and the civil rights movement and creates a compelling portrait of a groundbreaking American.

Dunnigan recounts her formative years in rural Kentucky as she struggled for a living, telling bluntly and simply what life was like in a Border State in the first half of the twentieth century. Later she takes readers to Washington, D.C., where we see her rise from a typist during World War II to a reporter. Ultimately she would become the first black female reporter accredited to the White House; authorized to travel with a U.S. president; credentialed by the House and Senate Press Galleries; accredited to the Department of State and the Supreme Court; voted into the White House Newswomen's Association and the Women's National Press Club; and recognized as a Washington sports reporter.

A contemporary of Helen Thomas and a forerunner of Ethel Payne, Dunnigan traveled with President Truman on his coast-to-coast, whistle-stop tour; was the first reporter to query President Eisenhower about civil rights; and provided front-page coverage for more than one hundred black newspapers of virtually every race issue before the Congress, the federal courts, and the presidential administration. Here she provides an uninhibited, unembellished, and unvarnished look at the terrain, the players, and the politics in a roughand- tumble national capital struggling to make its way through a nascent, postwar racial revolution.

Revision of the author's A Black woman's experience : from school house to White House (1974).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Those early years. No greater thrill -- The family tree and its bittersweet fruit -- Alone atop a hill -- School days -- Where there's a will -- The job hunt -- The ups and downs of my first job -- A plunge into the sea of matrimony -- A rugged voyage ends -- Moving on -- Wading through the depression -- Seeking identity, experience, and recognition -- A great new world. Converging on Washington -- Breaking down race and gender barriers -- A trip with the president -- The civil rights fights of the forties -- Profiles of injustice -- The president proposes; the congress debates -- Almost pushing the panic button -- Freedom fights of the fifties -- Eisenhower's pique.

"Alice Dunnigan (1906-1983) was the first African American woman to break the color and gender barriers of national journalism. During her time as a journalist, she reported for the Louisville Defender and Chicago Defender, and was a member of the Negro Associated Press. Dunnigan has been inducted into the Kentucky Hall of Fame for Journalism (1982) and for Human Rights (2010), and in 2013 was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. [Her] original autobiography was self-published and quite long, thus failing to gain the wide readership it might have; Booker aims to make Dunnigan's story available once more and ... readable for a general audience"-- Provided by publisher.

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