Award-winning reporter Wil Haygood delivered a compelling account to a near-capacity crowd on Jan. 20 at Ira Allen Chapel of how he came to find and eventually write the life story of an unheralded White House servant who would become the basis of his bestselling book The Butler: A Witness to History.
Haygood, keynote speaker at UVM’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Celebration, said he’d almost given up trying to find an African American who worked in the White House during segregation until receiving a tip about a man who worked there as a butler. On his 57th phone call, amidst pressure from his editor at the Washington Post to abandon his search and return to covering the 2008 Obama campaign, he "struck gold."
“I said, ‘Hello, my name is Wil Haygood. I’m a writer at the Washington Post looking for Mr. Eugene Allen who used to work at the White House for three presidents,’” recalled Haygood. “The man on the other end said, ‘You are speaking to him, but before you go on let me correct you about something: it wasn’t three presidents I worked for, it was eight. Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan – now you count 'em.’ I thought I was going to drop the phone.”
During his 45-minute talk, Haygood, who served as associate producer on the movie The Butler, starring Oprah Winfrey and Forrest Whitaker, mixed poignant moments with humorous accounts of his experiences with Allen.
The first time he went to Allen’s house to interview him, Allen’s wife, Helene, told him he would first have to join them in their daily routine of watching “The Price is Right.” Haygood said they sat there watching quietly before he found himself yelling, “Don't bet on that refrigerator! What in the world is wrong with you?" Shortly after, the conversation turned serious as Allen began recounting his life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, starting in 1952 with Harry S. Truman. During his time there, he endured the murder of Emmett Till for whistling at a white woman; the shooting of Medgar Evers for trying to register blacks to vote; the Korean and Vietnam Wars; the crafting of Civil Rights legislation by John F. Kennedy; and the assassinations of Kennedy, King and Malcolm X.
Perhaps Allen’s most powerful memory, however, was of a young minister from Atlanta visiting the White House. “When Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., walked out of his meeting with Vice President Nixon, he looked at one of the White House aides -- and Mr. Allen said this with such emotion in his voice because he heard it -- and said, ‘Now take me to my people.’ He meant the kitchen where the blacks worked.”
After filling eight notebooks with Allen’s experiences, Haygood said Helene turned to the Butler and said, “Honey, you can show him now.”
“I had no idea what she meant,” Haygood said. “He stood up and asked me to take him by his elbow. He led me through the kitchen to his basement door until we reached the middle of the basement and he flipped on the light. I’d never seen anything like it. It was like being dropped into the most glorious room at the Smithsonian.” The basement was filled photographs of Allen with presidents; a framed letter from First Lady Bess Truman; a Stetson hat from President Johnson; White House photos; a painting that President Dwight D. Eisenhower painted specifically for Allen; eight photo albums filled with photographs of state dinners and dignitaries at the White House; and other historic memorabilia.
“I got dizzy walking around the small basement with these treasures and I said to him, ‘Mr. Allen, do you mean to say that nobody has ever written about your life?' And he said to me, ‘Well, if you think I'm worthy, you'll be the first,’” recalls Haygood. “That hurt me to hear that about the butler, who worked 34 years without ever missing a day of work, once telling his wife, ‘It’s my duty to care for the first family of the United States of America.’ I don't think there’s a more powerful definition of a patriot than that. So I looked him in the eye and I said, ‘Mr. Allen, if it's the last thing I do, I'm going to write a story about your life.’”
Not long before Allen died in 2010, he called Haygood over to his modest home in Washington, D.C., to give him a gold-plated tie clip that John F. Kennedy had given him. “I’m wearing that tie clip right now,” Haygood told the audience. “I'd like to think that there's a movie theater up in heaven and that the butler, who used to clean up the White House movie theater and sweep up the popcorn, is walking around up there with all the other presidents and vice presidents who he knew. I’d like to think he's walking around, saying to them, ‘Hey, would you like to see a movie tonight? It's called The Butler.”
Haygood's talk was sponsored by President Tom Sullivan, the Department of Student Life and the Office of the Vice President for Human Resources, Diversity and Multicultural Affairs. See a schedule of UVM's remaining Martin Luther King, Jr., Celebration events.