--- title: White House Correspondents to Honor Black Reporter Harry McAlpin description: The White House Correspondents' Association will honor the first African-American to cover a White House press conference canonical: https://time.com/85901/harry-mcalpin-whcd/ author: Maya Rhodan article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-05-02T20:58:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T07:37:37.708Z article:section: Politics og:title: White House Correspondents to Honor Black Reporter Harry McAlpin og:description: The White House Correspondents' Association will honor the first African-American to cover a White House press conference og:url: https://time.com/85901/harry-mcalpin-whcd/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6d0ea31e90c8edf/69868d9c3bc9993c9a1a3455/50490431.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1602 og:image:height: 901 og:image:alt: Harry Mcalpin og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: White House Correspondents to Honor Black Reporter Harry McAlpin twitter:description: The White House Correspondents' Association will honor the first African-American to cover a White House press conference twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta6d0ea31e90c8edf/69868d9c3bc9993c9a1a3455/50490431.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # White House Press Celebrates Black Journalist Once Shunned > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. by [Maya Rhodan](https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/) ## Maya Rhodan May 2, 2014 8:58 PM UTC  Reporter Harry McAlpin leaving the White House after a press conference in 1944. Reporter Harry McAlpin leaving the White House after a press conference in 1944. George Skadding—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image by [Maya Rhodan](https://time.com/author/maya-rhodan/) ## Maya Rhodan May 2, 2014 8:58 PM UTC Comedy, celebrity schmoozing and glamour have become synonymous with the [White House Correspondents’ Association](http://www.whca.net/)’s annual dinner, slated for Saturday. But attendees of this year’s dinner will also get a glimpse of yesteryear’s White House press corps, when racism and sexism helped journalists maintain an unequal status quo. The WHCA, now in its 100th year, will announce Saturday the creation of a scholarship to honor Harry McAlpin, the first black journalist to cover a White House press conference. McAlpin’s son Sherman will be in attendance to mark the occasion. George E. Condon, a former WHCA president, wrote in a National Journal [op-ed](http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/harry-mcalpin-vs-the-white-house-press-corps-20140501) Friday that it’s an opportunity for the Association to apologize for a past injustice. McAlpin, a reporter for the Atlanta Daily World, was denied entry into the WHCA, which at the time represented an all-white, all-male corps. “Harry, you have been accredited as a White House correspondent by President Roosevelt and there is nothing we can do about that,” former WHCA President Paul Wooten [reportedly](http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/harry-mcalpin-vs-the-white-house-press-corps-20140501) told him, before offering to share his notes and ask questions for McAplin rather than have him attend the conference. Wooten continued, according to an unpublished memoir Condon references: “There is always a large crowd at the conferences. They gang up to the corridor leading to the president’s office, and when the signal is given to enter, there is a grand rush. It’s possible that you might step on someone’s foot in the rush … and there would be a riot right in the White House.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary Stephen Early stepped in to admit McAlpin. “Reporter McAlpin went into the conference without having been accepted by the Congressional Galleries’ standing committee or by the White House Correspondents’ Association, which ordinarily pass upon an applicant before credentials are issued,” reads a Feb. 21, 1944 [TIME](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,774786,00.html) article. “At week’s end the bypassed Galleries’ committee and the Correspondents’ Association has said nothing, done nothing.” The encounter with the WHCA wasn’t Condon’s first experience with discrimination. His son Sherman told [McClatchy](http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/10/224025/white-house-news-group-honors.html) his father wanted to attend the University of Missouri to study journalism but was barred from doing so and attended the University of Wisconsin instead. And it also wasn’t his first experience with discrimination as a correspondent. As a White House reporter, McAlpin covered the 1944 Democratic National Convention, another first for a black reporter, and the death of Roosevelt in 1945\. In covering the White House, he questioned Presidents Roosevelt and Harry Truman on issues facing the black community, including employment. He stopped covering the White House in 1945 and later became a chapter president of the NAACP in Louisville. But McAlpin, who died in 1985, was never admitted to the White House Correspondents’ Association, and he never attended the group’s annual dinner. The first black reporter to be admitted to the association was [Louis Lautier](http://amhistory.si.edu/archives/scurlock/about%5Fthe%5Fscurlocks/notables/Lautier.htm) in 1951\. Lautier attending the dinner in 1953. The White House press corps remains largely white. The [Washington _Post_](http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/white-house-press-corps-of-largely-white-faces/2013/07/25/d8fdacec-f556-11e2-9434-60440856fadf%5Fstory.html) reported last year that only seven of the 53 regular correspondents at the time were either African-American or Asian-American. “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,” WHCA president and editor Steven Thomma said, according to McClatchy. “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. 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