I arrived at the northwest gate of the White House at nine o’clock on a typically hot, muggy Washington morning in August 1947. Trying to appear composed and nonchalant, while anything but, I announced to the uniformed Secret Service officer that I was there for the president’s news conference. I had gone over this in my head for two hours since waking to music from a clock radio at seven o’clock and riding a street car the three miles from my apartment to Fourteenth and G Streets Northwest, then walking among office workers and tourists the two blocks to the...

Frederick Douglass once said, “Do not judge me by the heights to which I have risen, but by the depths from which I have come.”

My father, as the story goes, was the grandson of Jack Allison, a plantation owner. Grandpa Jack (as we called him) was never married but sired a son named Alex by one of his slaves. It is not known what happened to Alex’s mother, who most likely either died or was sold down the river. Grandpa Jack took Alex to live with him in the big house, rearing him as if he were a legitimate...

My journey began in the three-room, whitewashed cottage where I was born on April 27, 1906. The house stood all alone atop a low, red clay hill about two hundred yards from the highway (or “pike” as we called it). A railroad track stretched along at about the same distance, crossing the pike directly in front of our house. So in giving directions, we would describe our place as the big white house on the hill at the railroad crossing. A two-mile trip south on this highway would lead to the nearest town, Russellville, Kentucky, a village of some five...

Looking back now to that Sunday school incident of my very early childhood, I realize that out of it came some good. After my mother took me out of Sunday school at my brother’s insistence, she was asked by my teacher, Miss Arletta Vaughn, why I no longer attended her class. When Mama explained the embarrassment I had caused my brother, Miss Arletta suggested that Richard drop me at her house on the way to Sunday school, and she would take it from there. She would bring me to the church and see that all my needs were taken care...

Monday was a busy day in the Allison household as we tried to get a few things ready for school. We had learned from the catalogue that girls wore uniforms. This was to my advantage, as it was to any poor girl, and the reason why the policy was adopted.

The girls’ class uniforms for winter were navy blue serge middy suits, similar to the middies worn by sailors. In the fall and spring when the weather was warm, girls wore white cotton middies and the same blue skirts. The Sunday garb was a navy-blue suit (called a coat-suit) with...

Back in Russellville, I spent almost the entire summer of 1924 searching for a job, and it was the most difficult and disappointing period of my life. I was proud of my two-year elementary teacher’s certificate and clutched it tightly in a large manila envelope when I visited the Logan County school superintendent to apply for a position as a county schoolteacher. That certificate represented one hectic year marked with struggle, toil, and hardship at the only state institution of higher learning for Negroes in Kentucky.

My spirits were high when I entered the county office of education but were...

Reverend Bigbee picked me up at five o’clock on Labor Day morning, having offered to drive me to my new post and see that I got started on the right foot. Two hours later, we approached the school, stopping nearby at a three-room double log house occupied by two elderly ladies, the widow Frances Tutt and her crippled, spinster sister, whom everyone called Miss Molly. The sisters were reluctant to even consider Reverend Bigbee’s humble plea that they provide living accommodations for me because of convenience to the school and because we could be of some help to each other....

Life did not seem the same on the opening day of the second term at Mount Pisgah. My father and brother drove me down, dropping me at the same boardinghouse, where I was warmly welcomed by my landladies, Miss Frances and Miss Molly. My students of last year greeted me with affectionate hugs and friendly handshakes while the new ones stood back shyly, waiting for me to approach them, get acquainted, ease their fears, and make them feel welcome and comfortable.

I was encouraged by the large enrollment of students and pleased with the good turnout of parents who came...

I tried to persuade my husband to move to Russellville, where I thought each of us might have a better chance to find employment since I knew many important people there and was quite well known myself. I even made a deposit on the down payment of a cute little white bungalow with a deep, green lawn located on one of the principal streets (at least two miles from my parents’ home in the country). But Walter flatly stated that he would not live that near my folks—a stunning position since I was living in the same house with...

When I applied for campus work at West Kentucky Industrial College, I was immediately offered a job as second cook, for which I was to receive full board but no cash. This didn’t sound very glamorous on the surface, but it turned out to be a very satisfactory spot.

WKIC was founded by Dr. D. H. Anderson and his wife, Artelia, for the sole purpose of providing opportunity for underprivileged youth. This was a half-century before the government gave any thought to educational programs for less-privileged youngsters or paid any attention to the dropout problem. The school operated for nine...

Up until this time, I had been so busy with the challenges of my personal life that I had paid little attention to the problem of racial discrimination. But this issue hit me rather forcefully at the first countywide teachers meeting in Logan County, which I attended on Saturday prior to the opening day of schools.

Unlike in Todd County, where teachers never met the superintendent unless they took the initiative to visit his office, in Logan County it was the custom for all teachers of both races to attend a pre-opening meeting with school administrators, at which the teachers...

It was a relief to be back in a position of dignity, but I was faced with another immediate problem. I had no means of supporting myself until the first paycheck arrived, about six weeks after school began. I was fortunate to renew my previous arrangements for transportation to school, and the landlord was generous enough to wait until I received my paycheck before collecting rent. But there remained the problem of eating. There were no more free meals, or “thanky pans,” from white folks’ kitchens. (Cooks for white families were usually given all of the leftover scraps from meals...

One of my college professors often counseled her students to always find their way to the YWCA when in a strange city. “It’s the best, cheapest, and safest place to stay,” she’d advised. I learned she was right when I went to Louisville to work on a newspaper and again when I accompanied “Uncle Joe” Bowles on his New York adventure. So that’s where I headed when I arrived in Washington.

The Phyllis Wheatley YWCA was a busy, crowded place during those early war years, with an influx of young women, like myself, converging upon the capital city for war...

I began my job as chief of the Washington Bureau for the Associated Negro Press on the first day of January 1947. My first assignment was to cover the potential ouster of Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi from the U.S. Senate for misconduct.¹ I was fairly familiar with legislative procedure and with the Capitol building, having often lobbied with a delegation from the Southern Conference for Human Welfare² for passage of antipoll-tax legislation and an antilynching law, two bills of major concern to that organization. But I knew nothing of press operations on Capitol Hill.

On the opening day of Congress,...

I had only been an accredited White House reporter for a short time when I noticed an announcement on the bulletin board in the press room regarding President Truman’s forthcoming “nonpolitical” whistle-stop trip to the West Coast. Reporters were requested to sign up immediately if they were interested in accompanying him.

I didn’t know at the time how reporters were selected for such assignments. So once again I called on the president’s press secretary, Charlie Ross, to inquire why Negro reporters had never been selected to accompany any president on political tours. I had in mind some strong points in...

After the marathon tour on the Presidential Special, I set my sights on covering the political conventions. There would be three that year, all of them in Philadelphia, including the newly formed Progressive Party’s.

Once again my news agency denied my request, and once again I demonstrated a determination to go, even at my own expense if necessary. The train fare from Washington was minimal, and a friend in Philadelphia invited me to be her houseguest at no cost. So on July 12, 1948, I took off for the City of Brotherly Love to attend the Democratic National Convention. Without...

My first assignment in the criminal-justice arena was the case of Rosa Lee Ingram, a forty-year-old widow and mother of twelve children who was sentenced to death by a Georgia court for the alleged murder of a white farmer named John Ethron Stratford.

The trouble started in November 1947, three months after the death of Mrs. Ingram’s husband. According to testimony during the trial, when the widow was informed that her mule and some of her hogs had strayed onto the adjoining property farmed by Stratford, she and her two elder sons set out to retrieve the wandering stock. They...

From the Capitol Press Gallery, I listened enthusiastically to President Truman’s strong plea for civil rights legislation and followed the Congress through its entire eightieth session as it failed to adopt any of these proposals, leaving it to the executive branch to take the lead. In addition to creating a civil rights committee to study the problem of segregation, President Truman in July 1948 issued an executive order abolishing segregation in military establishments, and he later appointed a seven-man advisory committee known as the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment in the Armed Forces to see that his desegregation order...

Inadequate revenue was the perennial plight of most Negro publications. Since circulation was limited almost exclusively to the black community, advertising sales were very low. The big national companies and chain stores refused to buy space in these periodicals, which had to depend chiefly on subscriptions and operate on a shoestring.

Not able to place reporters on the scene in the nation’s capital or other major cities, local editors depended on news supplied by ANP, which they bought for a minimum fee. Very often, they were not able to meet these subscription payments on time, and the news service, having...

Monday, March 1, 1954, started out as a quiet—indeed dull—day on Capitol Hill. I was just one of the reporters and columnists roving the Capitol corridors in search of any tidbit of choice news around which to build some copy.

Then all of a sudden—“Boom! Boom!”—the fireworks started. Blazes burst forth from the southeast corner of the visitors’ gallery, where a woman stood waving a Puerto Rican flag in one hand and shooting a gun with the other as she shouted something that sounded like “Vive Puerto Rico!” She was flanked by two men who were...

During my regular news coverage, I seldom missed a press conference held by top government officials, and I never missed an opportunity to raise questions regarding problems within their respective agencies of concern to black people. Inevitably, I became sort of a “flea in the collar” of many of these officials.

My routine questions regarding segregation in swimming pools and on playgrounds in Washington, D.C., were welcomed by Truman’s interior secretary, Oscar Chapman, who favored the abolition of discrimination, but the problem continued many years before it was finally resolved.

There were marches on the D.C. Recreation Department, sidewalk polls,...