This month in National Press Club history
Dip down anywhere in the National Press Club’s 117-year history, and we can find remarkable stories about how what happened at the Club contributed to American and world history and culture. The Club’s History and Heritage Team will be highlighting a few of these each month so our members can appreciate the role the Club has played in being the place where news happens, from Teddy Roosevelt to Donald Trump.
January 14, 1960: Just days after announcing his presidential campaign, Sen. John F. Kennedy gives a campaign speech at an NPC luncheon, insisting that “the times, and the people, demand [in the White House] a vigorous proponent of the national interest, not a passive broker for conflicting private interests.” A year later, after his inaugural as the country’s thirty-fifth president, Kennedy makes a surprise visit to John Cosgrove’s inaugural as the National Press Club’s fifty-fourth President and receives membership card number 2973. That afternoon, Pierre Salinger, his press secretary, had paid the $90 initiation fee for associate members. Cosgrove later said, “I went to Kennedy’s inaugural, it was only right that he returned the favor.”
January, 15, 1971: By a vote of 225-56, the Club finally votes to admit women as full members. On March 3, 24 women are inaugurated as the first female members.
January 29, 1971: Louis Armstrong, the world’s greatest jazz trumpeter, is the featured performer at the inauguration of National Press Club President Vernon Louviere, a fellow Louisianan. Five months later, Armstrong is dead at the age of sixty-nine, but a recording of his historic twenty-minute performance, believed to be his last, is not made available to the public for another forty-one years. At a press conference at the Club in April 2012, Smithsonian Institution’s Folkways recording label announces the new release, titled “Red Beans and Rice-ly Yours,” Armstrong’s often-used signature for letters and autographs. It is available on Amazon and eBay.
The National Press Club over the years has hosted many other American musical greats, including B. B. King, Benny Goodman, Mahalia Jackson, Billie Holiday and Nat King Cole.
January 19, 2007: Bindi Irwin, the eight-year-old daughter of world-famous naturalist “Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, killed accidentally by a sting ray barb a few months earlier, becomes the youngest person to address a Club luncheon. She says that she wants to become a wildlife warrior just like her father.
This Month in National Press Club History is brought to you by the History and Heritage Team, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s 117-year history.
To learn more about how to participate in the History and Heritage Team, and other teams, please reach out to [email protected].