History through a White House butler's eyes

[babylonsister]

History through a butler's eyes
For decades, Eugene Allen, a black man, toiled in the SHADOWS of the White House. Soon, he'll see another black man serve — but in the nation's SPOTLIGHT

By WIL HAYGOOD Washington Post
Nov. 6, 2008, 11:42PM


WASHINGTON — For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land.

He trekked home every night, his wife, Helene, keeping him out of her kitchen.

At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than the large desk in the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.

President Truman called him Gene. President Ford liked to talk golf with him.

He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. "I never missed a day of work," Allen says.

His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print. The man in the kitchen.

He was there while America's racial history was being remade: Brown v. Board of Education, the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington, the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations.

When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn't even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia. "We had never had anything," Allen, 89, recalls of black America at the time. "I was always hoping things would get better."

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/6099625.html

[LEW]

1. Wow, interesting and powerful

Really puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

[MissDeeds]

2. Beautiful and heartbreaking

Thanks for bringing this over, babylonsister.

K&R :kick:

[Cults4Bush]

3. I think that actually made tears squirt from my eyes.

The ending was so unexpected.... damn.