on revising + raising your hand
This week I did some very light, quick edits of the Washington, D.C., section of my book about Alice Allison Dunnigan and the efforts to commemorate her.
I’ve been slowly revising the opening chapters of the book, and I haven’t yet gotten to the careful revisions I want to make to the D.C. section (and beyond). But I needed a full, at least somewhat cohesive manuscript ready by a deadline, so I had to rush my process a bit.
I think it had been more than a year since I’d even reread those three chapters of the book. “Huh,” I thought, “these aren’t half-bad.” I like that I wove in the story of how Carol McCabe Booker came to abridge Alice’s autobiography, doing the work in the beautiful Library of Congress reading room. I laugh, remembering the scene I’ve depicted of handing Twizzlers to my friend Arden as we walked down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Alice’s persistence in trying to ask President Dwight Eisenhower questions was a good reminder and model. This practice of journalistic access to the presidency is always relevant and important, but it specifically came up in the news this week. The current administration barred an Associated Press reporter from covering events because the AP has advised its reporters to continue using the moniker “Gulf of Mexico.” Limiting reporters’ access to the president because of style choices has troubling First Amendment implications.
Alice was not barred from the White House (though she had to make a valiant effort to be there in the first place), but Eisenhower did refuse to entertain her questions—troubling not only for press freedom in general but also for the civil rights of Black Americans.
For a while, Eisenhower called on Alice during press conferences. But in April 1954, she asked the president about racial discrimination in the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Eisenhower, Alice wrote in her autobiography, was “infuriated.”
After demanding if she’d asked the “proper departments” before asking him, Eisenhower added that he liked to be prepared for press conferences but “couldn’t be expected to know details on how a particular thing could be handled.”
Following this interaction, the president’s special adviser on minority affairs approached Alice and asked her to submit her questions for prior approval. She agreed, but once she realized that no other reporters were being asked to do so and that this was a way to silence her, she went back to raising her hand in the president’s press conferences.
She raised her hand again and again. The president never called on her.
This went on for a number of years, according to multiple journalistic reports. It’s possible that Eisenhower never again called on Alice during his presidency.
In my manuscript, I explain this situation with Eisenhower, then I come to what is currently my favorite ending to a chapter. It feels like the ending to an episode of The West Wing, and more specifically like the ending of “Two Cathedrals,” which, in my opinion, is the best episode of television ever made. That episode ends with the president simply putting his hands in his pocket, looking away and smiling. For careful watchers, that’s all we needed to see or hear.
At least one reader of my book has already said they don’t like this beloved ending of mine, but these couple of paragraphs are darlings you’ll have to rip from my cold dead hands¹. We’ll see how it fares as the ending of a newsletter:
On January 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy stepped to the podium for his first press conference, in front of a packed room of reporters. People standing at the back of the room pointed cameras toward JFK; it would be the first ever presidential press conference televised live.
For most of the press conference, the cameras focused on a close-up of the president’s face; there were a few wide shots but not footage of each reporter asking their question. The president started with giving updates and answering a few questions about the United States’ relationship with the Soviet Union.
After finishing one answer, JFK fixed his gaze on a reporter with her hand raised.
“Yes, ma’am?” he asked.
Alice Dunnigan with President John F. Kennedy
¹I told myself I wasn’t going to write another newsletter about Loui. But I sent him a draft of this newsletter before publishing, and he made a recommendation that, though it only changed a few words, vastly improved my beloved chapter ending. The other day I saw an Ernest Hemingway quote: “The best writing is certainly when you are in love.” I shared it to my Instagram story and added: “I don’t think this is unilaterally true, but it has certainly felt true to me since Loui and I got together. Every writing success that I have—from sending out a newsletter to revising a book chapter to catching up on journaling—is impossible to separate from the support I get from Loui. I never expected “what’s mine is yours” would apply to my most personal work, but it really feels that way with a husband like Loui.”