

WASHINGTON — The podium in the White House Press Briefing Room is the public face of the presidency, and when Joe Biden takes office on Jan. 20 it will look quite different. A few weeks after his election in November, Biden named the first all-female White House communications staff, which includes multiple women of color. It was a milestone for a nascent administration that has prided itself on diversity.
However, Biden’s briefings will not be the first time a Black woman served as the main voice of the presidency; that moment came in 1991, when Judy Smith stepped behind the podium as a deputy press secretary for President George H.W. Bush.
“I didn’t think about it at the time. … What I thought about at the time was that going to work in the White House was … just such an incredible opportunity. … It was a dream come true,” Smith said in an interview with Yahoo News last month. “I didn’t understand the significance of what that was, getting up briefing at that moment, seeing a Black woman behind the podium, speaking on behalf of the president to the American public.”
After her time in the White House, Smith became one of the country’s foremost crisis communications specialists, and her work inspired the hit television show “Scandal.” Despite this renown, Smith’s role as the first Black wo”###################################################3333333333rtfgggggggggggggggggare few available photos or videos of her time behind C Xhe podium.

Martha Joynt Kumar, who is director of the nonpartisan White House Transition Project and author of multiple books on the president’s press shop has studied its communications operation since 1975. She believes Smith’s history-making turn didn’t attract more notice because White House briefings were not televised until the Clinton presidency. They went on to become highly rated spectacles, particularly in the administration of President Trump.
“I think it’s because the press secretary and the deputies were not well known until they went on camera in January 1995 … when the briefing was televised,” Kumar said. “Bush was not somebody who spent a lot of time on publicity and I don’t think his staff did either. His Cabinet secretaries were very visible, but less so, was his White House staff.”
CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE ON YAHOO NEWS
Comments
more recommended stories
Xcaret postpones the 14th edition of the Sacred Maya Journey
The return of the traditional Sacred.
A woman is crushed to death when a tree falls on top of her car on the Mérida-Valladolid highway
A strange accident happened on Thursday,.
With these local flowers, you help prevent the loss of bees in Yucatan
Every May 20, World Bee Day.
US government officials talk about UFOs publicly for the first time in 50 years
Two senior U.S. defense intelligence officials.
The US Embassy to invest 30 million USD in the “South of Mexico Generating Employment and Sustainability” program
In alliance with seven governments from.
Face-to-face courses return to La Ibérica de Mérida; they will celebrate a big event on Sunday
On Sunday, May 22, the Centro.
Construction worker arrested for sexual abuse against a maid inside a hotel in Tulum, Quintana Roo
The municipal police of Tulum, in.
Yucatan is about to receive the first cloud of dust from the Sahara desert in 2022
A cloud of dust from the.
Yucatecans seek to sell one ton of Cochinita Pibil and 6 thousand panuchos in Mexico City
With the “Yucatán Expone” program, Yucatecan.
Mérida Municipal Police officer returns wallet to owner with more than 5 thousand pesos
The Mérida Municipal Police agent Roberto.
Leave a Comment