Author and Washington Post reporter Wil Haygood stood on a stage facing an audience full of anticipation. Haygood was moments away from giving the keynote address for the St. Louis Public Library’s Black History Month celebration held Sunday at the Central Library Branch. Word of his appearance had created a lot of buzz across the metro area. People had traveled from near and far (in the snow) to hear him speak.
During his keynote address, overhead lighting hit his gold-plated tie clip. He told the audience it was a gift from Eugene Allen—the humble, relatively unknown White House Butler who had faithfully served eight presidents, from Harry S. Truman to Ronald Reagan.
“If a president thought highly of you,” Allen explained to Haygood, “he would give you a gift.”
The gold-plated tie clip Haygood proudly wore was a gift to Allen from President John F. Kennedy. Haygood politely refused the gift at first, he said. Allen insisted, explaining how much Haygood had meant to him and his deceased wife, Helene.
In its own way with all of its nuances, Haygood said Allen’s story is a “civil rights story.”
It’s a tale that epitomizes this year’s National Black History Month Theme, Civil Rights in America. The Association for the Study of African American Life and History chose the theme to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Haygood told the story of how fate had led him to Allen. In 2008, Haygood was assigned to cover the campaign trail of then-Sen. Barack Obama for the Washington Post. Haygood was convinced that within several days the nation would elect its first African-American president. Haygood pitched the idea to his editor of locating and interviewing someone who had worked at the White House before the passage of the Civil Rights Act. No reporter had ever told the story of “the butler.”
Haygood penned A Butler Well Served by This Election for the Washington Post. It was published on November 6, 2008, two days after the president’s election.
He said then-Sen. Obama, who had become the president-elect, wrote a letter to Allen after reading the story.
Allen, his only son, Charles, and Haygood were all invited to attend Obama’s inauguration. Allen told Haygood that this was the first time he had ever been invited to attend an inauguration.
The article was reprinted in newspapers across the world and evolved into the best-selling book The Butler: A Witness to History. The book offered a more in-depth portrait of Allen’s lifelong journey, from his birth in 1919 on a Southern plantation to his years of service at the White House.
Haygood’s book went on to become the inspiration for the critically and popularly acclaimed motion picture, Lee Daniels’ The Butler.
“When I was in the White House, you couldn’t even dream that you could dream of a moment like this,” Allen told Haygood as Obama took his oath of office.