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↑ (Courtesy of Western Historical Manuscript Collection) Sarah McClendon (1910 - 2003)Covering presidents including Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Bill Clinton, Sarah McClendon was a mainstay of the White House press corps. The Washington Post hailed her, in 1978, as the “Queen of the Question.” A handful of female journalists had tried to break the ranks of the male-dominated Washington press since the turn of the century. McClendon’s success paved the way for women such as Helen Thomas, who still covers the White House after beginning on that beat during the Kennedy administration. McClendon’s family scraped together money for her to attend junior college. After that, she chased her reporting dreams and graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism. After a few years in small newsrooms, she served in World War II with the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps as a public relations lieutenant. Connections she made during the war paid off. In 1944 she made her way to the White House as a correspondent for the Philadelphia Daily News. When male soldiers returned to journalism, she and other women were pushed out of the nation’s newsrooms. So McClendon started her own news service, churning out stories for syndication from the nation’s capital. Not only was she one of the few women reporting from the White House, but she was her own boss, known for shouting down presidents and asking brash, if not outright rude, questions. In 1984, Parade magazine claimed that the gender gap was becoming a myth in modern American society, especially with the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency. Angry, McClendon wrote an impassioned letter to the magazine, wondering why it would “produce such garbage.” “Let us spend our time and space and talents on the real reasons why women are second-, third- and fourth-class citizens,” McClendon wrote. Her fury carried through to the end, which she signed, “Sarah McClendon. A citizen. A woman.” |
