In Washington, Negro newsmen have the right to sit in congressional press galleries, enjoy full press privileges at the White House and in Government offices, and have even been elected to Congress itself. But there is still one inner sanctum where Negro newsmen have never been admitted as members: the 911-member National Press Club, to which virtually all capital correspondents (and hundreds of pressagents and lobbyists) belong.* Three weeks ago Louis Lautier, 56. Washington correspondent for the National Negro Press Association and the Atlanta Daily World, decided to put the club's color bar to its first formal test. Lautier, the first Negro reporter on a daily newspaper to be admitted to the congressional press galleries (TIME. March 31, 1947), applied for club membership. The club, he reasoned, is not only a social institution but a place where newsmen come to exchange information, hear speakers at club luncheons, and meet sources. Many a newsman agreed with Lautier. and he had no trouble finding as sponsors Columnists Drew Pearson and Marquis Childs and U.P. Correspondent Lee (Breakthrough on the Color Front} Nichols.
A fortnight ago Lautier's application was tentatively approved by the club's board of governors, but the best it could do was a 6-4 vote. The board's action touched off a hot debate, and Lautier's supporters and opponents got ready for a stormy floor fight at the club's annual meeting. But four days before the meeting both factions agreed on a way to keep the fight from flaring into the open. The members agreed to "avoid discussion that might become acrimonious and unseemly" by putting Lautier's application to a secret yes or no ballot of the entire membership — the first time such a vote has ever been taken. At week's end, Lautier himself nutshelled the question: "How can I be denied membership on my color when they have people of the yellow race, and, I understand, Communists, as members from other countries? My color is against me as an American."
* Negroes are admitted to the club's big banquet hall when it is rented out to other organizations, but only two have ever ventured into the members' private dining room or Press Club bar. One, William Hastie. now a federal judge, was refused service; the other, C.I.O. Aide George Weaver, was served luncheon, but his newsman host got an anonymous letter warning him never to bring a Negro again.