Dunnigan, Alice Allison (27 Apr. 1906–6 May 1983), journalist and civil rights activist, was born Alice Allison in Logan County, just outside Russellville, in western Kentucky. Her father, Willie Allison, was a tenant farmer, and her mother, Lena Pittman, was a “hand laundress.” Alice learned to work hard early in life. She gathered vegetables from the family garden, cooked, and cleaned house. She washed clothes for a white family and did housework for another while in high school. Early on she developed an interest in drama and writing stories. She admired her Sunday school teacher, Arleta Vaughn. Their relationship inspired Alice to want to become a teacher. Alice attended Knob City High School in Russellville which offered both elementary and high school classes. Her eighth-grade teacher encouraged her interest in writing. A cousin, who was schoolteacher in Owensboro, Kentucky, introduced her to the editor of the ...
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Dunnigan, Alice Allison (27 Apr. 1906–6 May 1983), journalist and civil rights activist
Gerald L. Smith
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McWilliams, Carey (1905-1980), activist attorney, writer, and editor
Lillian S. Robinson
McWilliams, Carey (13 December 1905–27 June 1980), activist attorney, writer, and editor, was born in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, the son of Jerry McWilliams, a cattle rancher, and Harriet Casley. He entered the University of Southern California in 1922 and pursued a liberal arts curriculum but apparently was permitted to enroll in the university’s law school without receiving a B.A. To say that McWilliams was educated in southern California means not merely that he received a J.D. from USC in 1927 but rather, and more importantly, that he learned about the particular injustices that characterized the region in which he lived and committed himself to seeking radical change in those aspects of society....
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Seigenthaler, John Lawrence (27 July 1927–11 July 2014), journalist, civil rights advocate, and federal government official
Philip A. Goduti Jr.
Seigenthaler, John Lawrence (27 July 1927–11 July 2014), journalist, civil rights advocate, and federal government official, was born in Nashville, Tennessee to John L. Seigenthaler, a building contractor, and Mary Brew, a state employee. The oldest of eight siblings, he was reared in a home that valued literature and was known to read Shakespeare under his covers until two o-clock in the morning when he was a young boy. In ...
