The Butler: A Witness to History (10 page)

President John F. Kennedy

I
T WAS A
parent’s worst nightmare, and worst phone call. Your child is missing. So began the manhunt. There were three of them, brave as hell, out to change the world—the world of Mississippi as it was in that summer of 1964. Andrew Goodman was twenty; James Chaney, twenty-one; and Michael Schwerner, twenty-four. They had gone to Mississippi with many others to register blacks to vote. But first they had gathered, with about seven hundred others, in Oxford, Ohio, on the campus of Western College (now merged with across-the-road Miami of Ohio) to be prepped about conduct in Mississippi: be obedient to authorities, always let the field office know where you are, avoid the local town after dark.

They were called all kinds of names—“Jewboy,” “Communist,” “nigger”—which is exactly the kind of abuse they were trained for, along with how to keep their cool. They went missing in Neshoba County, a particularly hostile area, on June 21. The local authorities said it was nothing but a hoax, that the “kids” likely just got lazy and left the area, gone to have fun someplace. President Johnson sent more than ninety FBI agents into Mississippi.

Many veterans of civil rights in the state knew, from the start, it was unlikely they’d be found alive. A line from
The Butler
script uttered by the butler’s wife: “You know those three kids were killed in Mississippi registering black folks.”

President Johnson, heroic in the cause of civil rights, got his big Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed that summer. A year later came the Voting Rights Act. None of this completely stopped White House butler Eugene Allen from fretting about his relatives who lived in small southern towns.

There’s a lovely monument to the three young martyrs in Oxford, Ohio, the town from which they departed with their dreams that hopeful summer.

President Lyndon B. Johnson

I
N 1969
P
RESIDENT
Richard Nixon nominated South Carolina judge Clement Haynsworth to the United States Supreme Court. Of course a lot of digging and scurrying goes on by reporters and busybodies upon announcement of these important nominations. It was discovered that Haynsworth’s past judicial decisions favored segregationists. The howls were loud; the nomination was defeated. Nixon—who attended the Duke University School of Law in North Carolina—seemed to have an affinity for southern judges. Undeterred by the Haynsworth debacle, he next nominated Georgia judge G. Harrold Carswell. Again, the digging and probes. Spookily, the Carswell paperwork was just like Haynsworth’s: he too had an affinity for ruling in favor of segregationists and bigots. Such nominations would have easily sailed through the Senate in the 1950s. But now the 1960s—and every new black vote throughout the South—had changed a nation, was still changing a nation. Carswell’s nomination was defeated as well.

The moniker Tricky Dick gained wider currency in black America after the nominee fiascos. Negro publications had a spirited appetite for
such stories, and they had a field day. Did the president not realize that a good many of the butlers and maids at the White House—who were black—had come up from the deeper South during the Great Migration? That the rulings issued by judges like Haynsworth and Carswell could hardly be forgotten?

It is among the first things a domestic hire at the White House is told: do not talk politics. So they clean and serve with practiced diligence. The first president Eugene and Helene Allen voted for was Franklin D. Roosevelt. They loved voting, that sweetly quiet and powerful form of private expression.

President Richard Nixon

W
HEN
R
ONALD
R
EAGAN
was making movies in Hollywood in the 1940s, a young Nelson Mandela was working in a law firm in Johannesburg, South Africa. At night, in undisclosed locations, he was helping the African National Congress figure ways to bring an end to white rule in the black nation. In time, Mandela took on a larger activist role, which pained the authorities. There were warrants issued for his arrest. Mandela went underground; he became known as the Black Pimpernel, assuming disguises (acting, as it were, for his very
life
) and scooting about the country. His capture in 1962 was worldwide news. He was charged with treason, escaped a hanging, and was eventually sentenced to life in prison.

A decade later, US congressman Ronald Dellums began taking up the Mandela cause, bringing attention to Mandela’s plight and the apartheid regime of South Africa, which continued to sell goods to foreign lands while brutalizing and imprisoning its black citizens. Dellums sponsored the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which called for Mandela’s freedom and an end to South Africa’s business practices. The
anti-apartheid movement spread from college campuses to the streets. The years passed, however, and Mandela remained locked away.

In the White House, President Reagan vowed he would not pass the Dellums-sponsored bill. But the movement now was fiery, joined by famous actors and actresses, everyday men and women alike. In 1986, the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act finally passed. It was also Eugene Allen’s final year in the White House.

When Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990, he embarked on a tour of America to thank his supporters. The nation appeared transfixed. Eugene and Helene watched the televised proceedings. They beamed.

President Ronald Reagan

Dawn Davis, editor of this book, contacted me shortly after filming had completed on
The Butler.
She wanted to know if I had any desire to write a book about Eugene Allen. It was the phone call I had been waiting for. I am indebted to her for her clear-eyed determination in bringing this book into existence. Also at Simon & Schuster, I’d like to thank Isolde Sauer, Kyoko Watanabe, Steven Mears, Yona Deshommes, Kimberly Goldstein, Dana Sloan, Jim Thiel, Michael Kwan, and everyone in production who worked so diligently on this book.

My agent, Esther Newberg—our fifth book together—came through in style as I always knew she would.

The director, producers, and actors and actresses abided my presence on the New Orleans set of
The Butler,
for which I will always be grateful. It all really began with a phone call from Laura Ziskin, the legendary producer whose name appears on the dedication page of this chronicle. She forged ahead with a ferocious determination to have a
story I wrote adapted, then filmed. She did not live to see the beginning of filming, but her spirit guided everyone. Pam Williams, Laura Ziskin’s producing partner and producer of
The Butler
—and whom I shall never forget for her endless kindnesses—proved to me there are saints in Hollywood. Lee Daniels, the director of
The Butler,
has my enduring gratitude for allowing me to watch a genius at work. For taking the time to talk to me about the making of this film, I also thank: Sheila Johnson, Julia Barry, David Oyelowo, Forest Whitaker, Evan Arnold, Oprah Winfrey, Scott Varnado, Ruth Carter, Andrew Dunn, Cuba Gooding Jr., Terrence Howard, Wellington Love, Adam Merims, David Jacobson, Anne Marie Fox, Jay Meagher, Tim Galvin, and Kevin Ladson. And Buddy Patrick, Michael Finley, Bobby Patrick, Earl Stafford, Harry Martin, Charles Bonan, Film Partners, Magnolia-IMC, and Icon Entertainment International, certainly deserve a big round of applause.

Charles Allen, Eugene and Helene Allen’s only child, helped in countless and generous ways. Lynn Peterson, Marty Anderson, Steve Reiss, Warren Tyler, Lisa Frazier Page, Mary Jo Green, Michael Coleman, Larry James, Greg Moore, Nina Henderson Moore, Katharine Weymouth, Kevin Merida, Eric Lieberman, Shirley Carswell, Harvey Weinstein and the Weinstein Company, and Tony Stigger also have my gratitude.