A White House Butler Remembers

Today’s Washington Post has a front-page feature by Wil Haygood, the biographer of Sammy Davis Jr. and Adam Clayton Powell, which tells the story of Eugene Allen, an octogenarian resident of Northwest DC who, from 1952 to his retirement in 1986, was a butler at the White House, where he served eight Presidents from Truman to Reagan. (He was hired by head butler Alonzo Fields, whose autobiography is worth looking for in Amazon’s secondhand listings.) The article also takes the reader through the story of African-American participation on the White House staff from the Eisenhower administration to the present. It concludes with Mr. Allen voting for Obama – a very bittersweet moment that may well bring tears to your eyes, and not just for the expected reasons. Well worth the reading.