She chronicled the decline of Jim Crow during the 1940s and 1950s,which influenced her to became a civil rights activist.She was inducted into the Kentucky Hall of fame in 1982.
During her time as reporter,she became the first African American journalist to accompany a president while traveling,covering Harry S.Truman's 1948 campaign trip.
She was born near Russeville,Kentucky to Willie and Lena Pittman Allison.Her daddy was a sharecropper and her mama took in laundry for a living.
At age 13,she began writing for the Owensboro Enterprise.Her dream was to experience the world through the life of a newspaper reporter.
After completing a teaching course at Kentucky Normal Industrial Institute.She taught Kentucky History in the Todd County School System,which was segregated at the time.
She noticed that her class was not aware of the African Americans contributions to the Commonwealth,she started to prepare Kentucky Fact Sheets as supplements to required text.They were collected and formed into a manuscript in 1939,but finally published in 1982,with the title The fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians:Their Heritage Tradition.
From 1947-1961,she served as chief of the Washington Bureau of the Associated Negro Press.In 1947 she was a member of the Senate and House of Representatives press galleries,and in 1948,she was made a White House correspondent.In 1961 she was named education consultant to the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.
Alice was named education consultant to the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity in 1961 and was associate editor with the President's Commission on Youth Opportunity from 1967-1970.Alice was the first African American woman member of the Senate & House of Representatives press galleries(1947),and the first African American female White House correspondent in 1948.
Alice reported on Congressional hearings where African American were referred to as "niggers," was barred from covering a speech by President Dwight D.Eisenhower in a whites-only theater,and was not allowed to sit with the press to cover Robert A.Taft's funeral-she covered the event from a seat in the servant's section.She was known for her straight-shooting reporting style.Politicians routinely avoided answering her difficult questions,which often involved race issues.The meager pay she earned teaching forced her to work numerous menial jobs
during the summer months,when school was not in session.Alice washed the tombstones in the white cemetery while working four hours a day in a dairy,cleaning house for a family,
and doing washing at night for another family,earning a total of about seven dollars a week.
In 1948 Alice was one of three African American women and one of two women in the press corps followed President Harry S.Truman's Western campaign,paying her own way to do it.Also that year,she became the first African American woman White House correspondent,and the first African American woman elected to the Women's National Press Club.Her
association with this and other organizations allowed her to travel extensively in the United States and to Canada,Israel,South America,Africa,Mexico,and the Caribbean.She was honored by Haitian President Francois Duvalier on Haiti.In 1960 Alice left her seat in the press galleries to take a position on Lyondon B.Johnson's campaign nomination.John F.Kennedy won the nomination,he
chose Lyndon as his running mate and named Alice education consultant of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.She remained with the committee until 1965.Between 1966 & 1967 she worked as information specialist for the Department of Labor and then as an editorial assistant for the President's Council of Youth Opportunity.When Richard Nixion took over the presidency in 1968,Alice as well as the rest of the Democratic administration,found themselves on their way of the White House to make way for Richard's republican team.
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