This week in National Press Club history
April 20, 1948: The Club’s constitution is amended to admit broadcast journalists as active members. Just a few years before, the Club had voted against such a move, but when Ted Koop, a member of the Board of Governors, joins CBS News and has to resign, the Club changes its position, finally recognizing the broadcast age. In 1953, Koop became the first broadcast journalist to be elected Club president.
April 20, 1959: Fidel Castro, prime minister of Cuba, addresses a Club luncheon less than four months after he and his guerilla army oust dictator Fulgencio Batista. He says he has no intention of becoming a dictator like Batista, but that soon proves false, and for the next 35 years, no high-level Cuban official is allowed in the nation’s capital.
April 20, 1999: Meg Whitman, president and CEO of eBay, Inc., addresses a Club luncheon a year after she assumes control of the company. She praises the online auction service as a model of electronic commerce, and predicts unlimited growth in the coming years.
April 24, 1910: Andrew Carnegie, steel baron and philanthropist, promotes his vision of an international peacekeeping league. Shortly thereafter, he founds the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank instrumental in the establishment of the Hague Academy of International Law after World War l, influencing the creation of other such institutions after World War ll. Carnegie is the first of many business leaders to appear at the Club, including banker, industrialist and then Treasury Secretary Andrew W. Mellon in 1925, who later personally helps finance the construction of the National Press Club Building with a $50,000 investment.
This Week in National Press Club History is sponsored by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s history through lobby displays of prominent Club guests in many fields of expertise, panel discussions, events and oral history interviews. For information about the committee’s activities, or to join it, contact Chair Gil Klein at [email protected].