By The Chicago Crusader

Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority members were on hand to welcome the statute of their late sorority sister Alice Allison Dunnigan home to her native Russellville, Kentucky on the grounds of the Seek Museum the first weekend in August for permanent installation.

The event was part of the city’s Emancipation celebration and homecoming. The statue was unveiled a year ago at the Newseum in Washington, DC, and has since traveled to the Truman Presidential Library, Kentucky State University and the University of Kentucky.

Alice Allison Dunnigan was a trailblazer born in 1906 to a Kentucky sharecropper. At age 13 she began writing for the Owensboro Enterprise. She was the first African American woman to receive press credentials to cover the White House and Congress. She received more than 50 journalism awards for her pursuit of the truth.

The bronze statue is based on a photograph of Dunnigan on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and was created by Kentucky artist Amanda Matthews (left) pictured with the president of the sorority, Deborah Catchings-Smith (right), who presented a $7,000 donation to the Alice Allison Dunnigan Scholarship Fund on behalf of the international African American sorority.

This article originally appeared in The Chicago Crusader.

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