McAlpin, Harry Sylvester

Impact on the world

Reporting for the National Negro Publishers Association and the Atlanta Daily World, McAlpin was offered a bargain by the WHCA’s president — stay outside the press conference and other reporters would share their notes and admit him to the association — which he refused, walking into his first Roosevelt press conference despite the pressure; Roosevelt greeted him warmly, telling him, “I’m glad to see you, McAlpin.” His coverage, syndicated to 51 Black newspapers nationwide, continued through Roosevelt’s 1945 death and into the Truman administration, though the Standing Committee of Correspondents continued to deny him a congressional press pass. Despite his pioneering role, McAlpin was never admitted to the White House Correspondents’ Association itself during his lifetime; in 2014, seventy years after his historic first briefing, the WHCA formally honored him and created a scholarship in his name.

Life & background

Born July 21, 1906, in St. Louis, Missouri, McAlpin was barred by segregation from studying journalism at the University of Missouri and instead earned his degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1926, then worked as a reporter and editor at the Washington Tribune before pursuing a law degree at Robert Terrell Law School in Washington, D.C. He covered the White House for the National Negro Publishers Association from 1944 to 1946, later practiced law in Kentucky, served as a Navy war correspondent, and became the first Black hearing examiner for both the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture before his death on July 18, 1985, just short of his 79th birthday.

Sources

1. TIME; AFRO American Newspapers; Atlanta Daily World