May Craig (journalist)

Elisabeth May Adams Craig (December 19, 1889 in Coosaw Mines, South Carolina – July 15, 1975 in Silver Spring, Maryland) was an American journalist best known for her reports on the Second World War, Korean War and U.S. politics. She was a member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, and was also a campaigner for equality in children's education.

Although May Craig was a Southerner, she got her break in journalism working for the Maine-based Guy Gannett chain of newspapers (including the Portland Press Herald). She became the company's Washington correspondent, and wrote her Inside Washington column for almost fifty years. She took on leadership roles within both the Women's National Press Club and Eleanor Roosevelt's Press Conference Association, both organisations supporting women in journalism.

During the Second World War, Craig secured a succession of postings to Europe. From this vantage point, she gave eyewitness accounts of the V-bomb attacks on London, the Battle of Normandy and the liberation of Paris. During the war, she constantly battled with the male military commanders and male journalists to have access to the news. One of her best-known quotations is a reference to facilities, the lack of which was often given as reason for not allowing Craig to follow up on the news. She joked that, "Bloody Mary of England once said that when she died they would find Calais graven on her heart" (in reference to a key French outpost lost during Mary's reign); "When I die, there will be the word facilities, so often it has been used to prevent me from doing what men reporters could do." May Craig married Donald A. Craig.

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