Harry Sylvester McAlpin Jr. was born in
St. Louis, Missouri. He hoped to study
journalism at the
University of Missouri but could not because the
school was racially segregated. He instead studied journalism and advertising at the
University of Wisconsin. After graduating in 1926, he moved to
Washington, D.C., where he worked as a reporter, editor, and office manager for the
Washington Tribune, an African American weekly paper, from 1926 to 1929. He then handled publicity and advertising for the National Benefit Life Insurance Company from 1929 to 1933. When the
New Deal got underway in 1933, McAlpin joined the New Negro Alliance to "protect employment of Negroes under the
[National Recovery Administration] program." He served in the
Federal Security Agency and the
U.S. Employment Service while attending the
Robert H. Terrell Law School at night. He passed the D.C. bar examination in 1937. McAlpin became an assistant to
Mary McLeod Bethune, Director of Negro Affairs at the
National Youth Administration. On the side, he worked as a part-time Washington correspondent for the
Chicago Defender. In 1943 the
National Negro Publishers Association (NNPA) petitioned the
White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) for press credentials on the grounds that the
Atlanta Daily World was one of its member papers. All other
African American papers at the time were weeklies, and the press credentials were limited to reporters for daily papers. The WHCA agreed but it took several more months before the NNPA could afford to open its own Washington bureau and hire McAlpin as its full-time Washington correspondent. On February 8, 1944, he attended his first presidential press conference and was greeted by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, who shook his hand and said, "I'm glad to see you, McAlpin, and very happy to have you here." Although accredited at the White House, McAlpin was rejected when he applied for a congressional press pass. The Standing Committee of Correspondents that controlled accreditation for the newspaper press galleries at the
Capitol regarded him as a reporter for mostly weekly papers, while the Periodical Press gallery rejected him because he reported for newspapers rather than magazines. McAlpin believed that these actions were influenced "by my racial identity rather than the flimsy technicality publicly stated." Strong competition from a rival news service, the
Associated Negro Press (ANP), led the NNPA to replace McAlpin as its Washington Correspondent with
Louis Lautier. McAlpin moved to
Louisville, Kentucky, where he served as the only African American assistant commonwealth attorney until 1953, when he resigned after being dropped from a criminal prosecution of three white women. McAlpin later became head of the Louisville chapter of the
NAACP. McAlpin died on July 18, 1985, in
Washington, D.C.. == Legacy ==