White House Reporters to Honor Black Journalist

The White House Correspondents' Association is honoring a black reporter it once spurned.

The association is naming a scholarship for the first black reporter to cover a White House press conference, Harry McAlpin.

In 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt granted McAlpin clearance to attend press conferences in the Oval Office, despite complaints from the correspondents association. McAlpin went on to become a fixture for the black press at the White House during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. The correspondents association never granted him membership.

The WHCA will present a journalism student with a scholarship bearing McAlpin's name at its dinner with President Barack Obama on Saturday night. McAlpin's son Sherman, who lives in Maryland, will also attend the dinner and meet with the president.