[7] During her time as a reporter, she became the first black journalist to accompany a president while traveling, covering Harry S. Truman's 1948 campaign trip.

[5] Noticing that her class was not aware of the African American contributions to the Commonwealth, she started to prepare Kentucky Fact Sheets as supplements to required text.

[5] They were collected and formed into a manuscript in 1939, and finally published in 1982 with the title The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians: Their Heritage and Tradition.

Dunnigan's career in journalism began at the age of 13, when she started writing one-sentence news items for the local Owensboro Enterprise newspaper.

She completed the ten years available to blacks in the segregated Russellville school system, but her parents saw no benefit in allowing their daughter to continue her education.

By the time she had reached college, Dunnigan had set her sights on becoming a teacher, and completed the teaching course at what is now Kentucky State University.

As a young teacher in the segregated Todd County School system, Dunnigan taught courses in Kentucky history.

The meager pay she earned teaching forced her to work numerous menial jobs during the summer months, when school was not in session.

In 1948 Dunnigan was one of three African Americans and one of two women in the press corps that followed President Harry S. Truman's Western campaign, paying her own way to do it.

Also that year, she became the first African-American female White House correspondent, and was the first black 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.

During her years covering the White House, Dunnigan suffered many of the racial indignities of the time, but also earned a reputation as a hard-hitting reporter.

John F. Kennedy won the nomination, but chose Johnson as his running mate and named Dunnigan education consultant of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity.

As its title indicates, the book is an exploration of Dunnigan's life from her childhood in rural Kentucky to her pioneering work both covering the White House and inside it.

She died of ischemic bowel disease on May 6, 1983, in Washington, D.C.[14] Dunnigan was inducted into the Black Journalist Hall of Fame in 1985 two years after her death.

[14] A life-size bronze portrait statue is part of the Alice Dunnigan Memorial Park in Russellville, Kentucky.

[18] The Alice Dunnigan Memorial Park is located in the Russellville Historic District and is part of the West Kentucky African American Heritage Center.