How
Servitude Fed, Housed, Clothed
and
Introduced Us to the Realities of Power
By Daphne Muse
Although people aspire
to serve their countries, communities and callings, they don’t necessarily
aspire to engage in servitude. While
servitude is not unique to African American culture and continues to be
practiced in societies around the world, it is brutally and systemically
situated in black life and culture, as a result of the European slave trade
that began in the 15th century. As black men who came “Up South” to
Washington, DC in 1944 and to be warmed by other suns, they housed, fed and
clothed us through servitude. As someone
who learned how some of the ways in which privilege and power drove the
Beltway, and turned the world, for me “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” is deeply
personal. But I entered the theater with
historical fatigue and tremendous trepidation.
Opening with a sweeping
arc of history that takes us from a contemporary scene inside the White House,
the film segues two centuries back to the murderous brutality of slavery. In a riveting scene played out in a
plantation cotton field, we see a young boy witness the point blank murder of
his father at the hands of a plantation owner who has just raped his
mother. In this moment, I’m transfixed
by the remarkable performance of Mariah Carey (Hattie Pearl). Her eyes and body language powerfully convey
the pain of that history.
That boy Cecil Gaines would go from the field
to the house serving the mistress (Vanessa Redgrave) to becoming a waiter at a
fancy country club and eventually Cecil Gaines a White House butler who serves
seven presidents across the twentieth century in what was then arguably one of
the most powerful ten powerful square miles in the world.
As butlers at the White House and at cocktail
parties for the "Emperors of K Street,” dinners and soirees in private
homes, elite clubs, embassies and cultural venues along the Eastern Seaboard,
my uncle George Y. Muse (Unc) and father Fletcher H. Muse, Sr., themselves two
generations out of slavery, were two of the “invisible” men who heard and saw
how the architects of 20th century power and opulence bridged the
Beltway and branded the Empire. Unc
served as a contract butler at the White House from the late 1950s through the
first Clinton administration and worked under Eugene Allen, the head butler. Contract butlers were brought on board to
augment staff for state dinners, inaugurations and other grand scale events at
the White House. Though not a biopic, the film is based around Allen’s life.
Their work took them both into the bowels of
politics and power, as they heard, overheard and often did not want to hear
decisions sealing the fate of their families, friends and the future of the
country, including the planning of coups, sabotaging of civil rights
legislation and the aborting of people’s personal dreams. Often dad and Unc knew what was going to be
in the Washington Post, Evening Star or
New York Times even before the president. But the job came with a protocol and
requirement of discretion that mostly sealed their tongues and prevented them
from speaking about what they heard, saw or were asked to do.
My dreams of what I
thought my parents should have been materialized for my mother as the textile
artist she is and late in life for my father.
Despite the working class jobs they held, they brought the world home to
us through books and periodicals we otherwise would not have known about,
access to an array of very interesting resources and at the dinner table where
a bottle of Rothschild’s Champagne was paired with a pot of amazing curry or a
1957 Dom Perignon was offered up with collard greens cooked in smoked pig
knuckles, accompanied by candied sweet potatoes, fried corn with okra and my
dad’s infamous and silky light biscuits.
Daddy really knew how to put on the “dawg” and make it bark.
During the day my
father worked as an administrative assistant at the Department of Defense and
Unc worked in the print shop at the Library of Congress. Both had toiled on the railroad and relished
getting off the rails. At night and on
weekends they were transformed into butlers by a black tuxedo, hand-tied bow
tie and practice of protocol. Whatever we think of these men from our remove, the
Beltway Butlers were not “yessa boss, shoe shufflin’ servants”; they carried
themselves with a professional poise and dignity often teaching members of the
ruling class a thing or two, while schooling them on the idiosyncrasies and
social proclivities of world leaders.
In the film, Cecil
Gaines (Forest Whitaker), James Holloway (Lenny Kravitz) and Carter Wilson (Cuba
Gooding, Jr.) make the demanding work of servitude look effortless, as was
required by the demands of the job. And the brother man bond is so evident from
the kitchen to the card table where they find rare respite from the demands of
the day. I felt as though director Lee Daniels’,
the crew and actors came right up in one of those Monday night poker games in
our basement, as Diana Washington’s soul poured from the Hi-fi. They sat with dad, Unc, Mr. Lynch, and the
other butlers around the table, right there in the cut of the cards, hanging on
to their every word as they jive talked and brought on the same kind of poker
faces that were required to navigate their invisibility as butlers. Almost to a
person, these are bone marrow deep performances, where Daniels extracts every
ounce of detail to the craft possible. The
wives of the butlers are also authentically portrayed across the periods
reflected in the film, including the era just as they are poised on the cusp of
the whirlwind of the Women’s Movement.
In the butler’s world,
some of the most hilarious moments came when they would joke about what it
would be like to have a “spook” in the White House. Along with jazz, hard bop and soul piping
into the sound system, collard greens would replace asparagus, barbecue sauce Hollandaise,
a cure for racism would be found and Africa would be front and center in ways
it never had been. Along with the normal
hazards that come with carving meat with the precision of a surgeon, carrying
heavy trays and synchronizing the removal of plates from the table, these men
also had to damn up their bodies against the advances of white women whose eyes
and hands wandered across borders and boundaries not theirs to claim. According to stories passed along very late
in life by some of the butlers, there were dinner parties held in socially safe
houses where men who legislated against debauchery by day deeply engaged in it
at night. At intersections like this, butlers
really had to render themselves invisible, excusing themselves to cleanup duty
or time served for the evening. We harvested many back stories of history, from
my father and uncle’s experiences.
But servitude was an
economic decision borne out of necessity; options and access for jobs as
teachers, doctors and politicians were limited by the strict codes and policies
of race. Some of them had sixth grade
educations, while others like former White House Chief Butler Alonzo Fields (1933-1953)
studied at the New England Conservatory of Music to become a concert
singer. In a fashion uncharacteristic to
most, Fields kept a journal which can be found in the archives of President
Harry S. Truman. That journal served as
a field research for his 1961 book My 21 Years at the White House.
Like Lucille Gaines (Oprah Winfrey), arguments ensued around how their
lives were being taken over and away from them.
My mother went real deep on the matter, when dad informed her that a
Mrs. Marshall, one of the women for whom he worked, asked him to Miss Daisy her
to her summer home in Alabama. I was
also quite perplexed as to why Cold War Hawks and men like Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles and nuclear scientist Glenn Seaborg called to book parties
with dad. My brother Vincent and I wondered
if these men did not want their wives talking on the phone with black men and
that’s why they instead their wives called.
Some also maintained tony pied-à-terres specifically designated for
entertaining, unbeknownst to their wives, at places like the Woodner and
Watergate Towers.
My cousin Lydia Muse
Clemons, a retired Student Accounts Assistant at the National Labor College,
AFL-CIO, carries forward a tender set of memories about her father. “During my during my lunch break one day, I
took a walk through Lafayette Park (across from White House). My dad was there with his co-workers, waiting
to report to work. They had on their
white shirts, tuxedo pants and tie (untied around their necks).” Tuxedos were expensive and Georgetown thrift
stores were the primary source for their elegant uniforms. “These men, especially my dad, looked so
handsome and stately,” notes Lydia.
Unc served at the weddings
for Lyndon B. Johnson’s daughter’s Luci Baines and Lynda Bird Johnson, and Richard
Nixon’s daughter Tricia. And it must have been mind blowing in 1963, when he
navigated a sea of black people who had been invited by President John F.
Kennedy to celebrate the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation. While Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. strategically
declined the controversial invitation, in the mix were politicians, members of
the black leadership and cultural icons including Urban League Director Whitney
Young, Dean of the Black Press corps Simeon Booker, poet Langston Hughes and
writer James Baldwin. There also were some powerful black women in attendance
including publisher Eunice Johnson, and civil rights lawyer Constance Baker
Motley who would go on to be appointed a Federal Judge by President Johnson in
1966.
One of the highlights
in Unc’s life occurred while serving a luncheon in the early 90s. Over the rims of the crystal wine glasses arose
the distinct voice of a black man calling out “Unc.” As he looked up, one of our childhood friends
Clement Price was in attendance at the luncheon. Price, Board of Governors
Distinguished Service Professor of History and Director of the Institute on
Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers gave him the ubiquitous
“gimme some skin bro’” as they embraced. As more blacks began to attend state
dinners and other events at the White House, cocktail parties and embassy
soirees, the pride quotient lifted as they witnessed blacks sourcing and
ascending to their own power.
I remember dad coming home so excited about
the fact that the Modern Jazz Quartet had played at a cocktail party; being in
the moment when Joe Zawinul brought the house down at the Newport Jazz Festival
where dad served a series of parties held at the summer home of heiress Oatsie
Leiter; or an opening for Lyrical Abstractionist Sam Gilliam. My father was beside himself, when he learned
what white folk were paying for a black man’s art. During one of the parties he served at Mrs.
Lieter’s Georgetown home, Leontyne Price was in attendance. Price presented my father with a copy of the
program from the opening of the Met at Lincoln Center in 1966. Printed on silk, the program notes Price’s performance
as Cleopatra and the choreographic debut for Alvin Ailey. My father gave it to me in 1966 and it now
hangs in my home among the more than twelve thousand rare black books, posters,
ephemera and art works I’ve collected since being given that piece.
My cousin Sadie Muse
Hall, a retiree from DC Parks and Recreation, maintains a collection of memorabilia
including place setting cards from state dinners and Christmas cards. Staff and contract butlers often received
Christmas cards from presidents. Unc
gave me a menu card from a luncheon commemorating First Lady and women’s rights
pioneer Eleanor Roosevelt 100th birth and a 1967 Lyndon B. Johnson
and Lady Bird Johnson’s Christmas card painted by Robert Laessig.
Both Unc and daddy were
members of the Private Butlers Association (PBA), an organization cofounded by
Leon Thompson in the early 30’s.
Thompson served as President Herbert Hoover’s steward in charge of
personal affairs. The PBA set the pay
scale for the contract butlers and in 1967, they were paid $10.00 an hour for
the first three hours and $20.00 an hour thereafter. According to San Francisco
City College professor of economics Dr. Marc Kitchel “In today’s economy that
$10.00 would equate to an hourly wage of $65.81.” While not the norm, one-hundred dollar tips
were not uncommon. While I don’t know
what his salary was for his job as an administrative assistant for the Department
of Defense, it required him to take on a second job to support our family. In two scenes that simply infuriated me,
Gaines takes his unwavering politeness to Chief Usher and overseer RD Warner
(Jim Gleason). Gaines goes to him with a
request for an increase in wages based on the fact that the butlers, who were
all black, made 40% less than any of the white staff overseeing duties related
to the preparation and serving of meals. The Chief Usher’s indignant smirk of a
“no” to both requests seethes with the hostility catapulted upon black men. But according to William Hamilton who served
as the storeroom manager for 55 years, the butlers refusal to serve a state
dinner if they did not get a raise, resulted in President Johnson giving the
raise.
One reason dad may not have worked at the WH may
well have had to do with the pay scale and the fact that white staff were paid
more than blacks and there were no tips.
At other venues, along with twenty-five to one hundred dollar tips,
bottles of premium spirits also were offered up to butlers like my father and
uncle for they knew how to rescue a potential culinary disaster or recover a breech
in protocol. Rich white folk were not
serving soul food at these parties. On
more than one occasion dad had to rescue a turtle soup, prepare a Beef
Wellington or reconstruct a Lobster Newburg because the cook was drunk or
simply did not show. Many of the butlers
also were master carvers who could turn a watermelon into a basket of fruit or
peel the skin back on a turkey, carve the meat into thin slices and replace the
skin, making it appear as though the meat wasn’t even carved. My
father also had the kind of palate where he could taste something once and
replicate it. I’ll never forget my first
ever experience with curry; he made it for my eleventh birthday. He served it with every condiment imaginable
including kumquats and Major Grey Chutney.
The bliss of that dish still lingers on my palate.
My father leveraged his
work quite strategically, but also raised the five of us to question the
American dream and the role of black people in it. In 1967, my father called in a favor from
California Republican Congressman William Mailliard, a friend of Supreme Court
Justice Earl Warren. Within six months
of making the request, my brother Lowell Vincent Muse (now a sound engineer
with NPR) was appointed as a page at the Supreme Court. Warren would go on to be appointed Chief
Justice in 1969. There Vincent was
mentored by Lyndon Johnson appointee Thurgood Marshall, the first known black appointed to the court. My brother Fletcher was fulfilling his
passion for aviation by serving in the Air Force as an Electric Power
Production Technician. The youngest, David Russell, was still in school.
Both my parents made it
clear that racism was the pathology of white people and becoming them was not a
goal. The narrative on race was super
charged in our home, because dad was as staunch an integrationist, as mom was a
segregationist. My mother still washes
the colored clothes before the whites. During
the summer of 64, I was the help working for Congressman Millard. My mother was livid; but I just wanted to
earn enough money to return to college and graduate. At the end of summer, I
got a job running data sorting machines and computers at the Chesapeake and
Potomac Telephone Company and was able to save enough money to finish my last
two years at Fisk.
Just as Gaines was
caught off guard by his son’s turn towards activism, my father was not prepared
for the reality of the results of us challenging the American dream. In 1965, I became deeply entrenched in
movement politics, like Gaines son Louis (David Oyelowo). As a student at Fisk University in Nashville,
epicenter for sit-ins, I combined my scholarship with activism and attended
meetings and workshops led by Diane Nash, Reverend Jim Lawson and foot soldiers
from SNCC. While others were freedom
riding, I was building my courage to step in the bolder arena running
mimeograph machines to reproduce flyers announcing SNCC-related events on
campus and in Nashville. Lawson and Nash
also conducted riveting workshops which introduced me to the incendiary
policies fueling the War on Vietnam.
While the butler is not
a civil rights film, the arc of the movement comes front and center through the
son who is portrayed as a freedom rider, confidant of Dr. King, black panther,
candidate for congress in Tennessee and then as an anti-apartheid
activist. Here we get to see how the
anti-apartheid policies of Ronald Regan whose wife Nancy (Jane Fonda) invites
Cecil and Lucille to a state dinner. At
one point, Reagan says to Gaines, “You’re just like family,” one of those
patronizing remarks that sends me into a tailspin and to which I always want to
holla, “Does that translate into an inheritance?” Cecil and his son reunite shortly after he
bears witness to Reagan’s horrific policies against South Africa.
What I needed the film
to do was make it resounding clear that these holders of power simply did not
have a change of heart, when it came to the legislative shifts in racial policies. The leadership and foot soldiers of SNCC,
bold strategists including Bayard Rustin, relentless women like Fannie Lou
Hamer and Ella Baker, the Black Panthers and countless unnamed community
organizers across the country inherently made that possible. But those relationships with presidents and
other policy makers in some instances had influence as well.
A couple of years after graduating from Fisk
University in 1967, I became deeply involved with Drum and Spear Bookstore
founded by SNCC legends including Ralph Featherstone, Charlie Cobb, Courtland
Cox and Judy Richardson. There my
commitment to struggle deepened as I studied and digested the canon of black
life and culture. As a result of my work
at Drum and Spear, I was assigned my own FBI agent, Jim South. South used to
follow me from Drum and Spear to my apartment in Adams Morgan in his unmarked car. What I came to appreciate about being
escorted to and from work was that I was often carrying thousands of dollars in
receipts from the store through a neighborhood rife with drug dealing,
robberies and assaults.
Things were growing
increasing frightening and heady for my parents and their job security, when my
brother Leonard’s name showed up in a 1969 report from the House on Un-American
Activities. My parents’ fright and fury
continued to ricochet off the walls, when I was summoned in 1970 to testify
before the Grand Jury. Jail and the idea
of raising my bail were pounding against their skulls like chain gang hammers. Two
agents showed up to question dad about my activities. After moving to Arizona
in late 1970, a white hippie mail man, not in uniform, delivered my diploma and
Scrabble set to my parents’ home. The
FBI failed to return my books on Marcus Garvey and WEB Dubois, but not my
letters from Shirley Graham Dubois, Mrs. Amy Jacques Garvey or Helga Rodgers, the
wife of J.A. Rogers.
Like Eugene Allen, Unc
and daddy stood in some of history’s most compelling and gut wrenching moments
observing it being made, distorted and destroyed by the “stench” of the tides
rising from the Potomac, the Pentagon and corridors of K Street. In 1980, when
Grover Norquist’s hand was all up in the mix in Nicaragua and Angola, and
without going into specifics, my father told me that a young upstart would come
to wreak havoc on the political landscape. While protocol and discretion were practiced,
it came at a high cost: Dickel, Jack
Daniel’s and when he could get it Georgia Moonshine tortured and consumed him. But
not before he got to strike his own thunder.
Whether you want to
call it a twist of historical irony or long range strategy, in 1981 dad fled DC.
After Ronald Reagan was elected the
stench of the Potomac increased exponentially and the growing visibility of
Henry Kissinger, for whom he adamantly refused to serve parties, was
overpowering. He returned to Cuthbert, Georgia where he was born and in the
early 90s was elected to his own seat of power, as a commissioner for Randolph
County and a board member for the Georgia Preservation Society. There he removed
the mask and was able to place his unbridled tongue, with a magnitude of
forthrightness, on the direct descendants of the white folks who had enslaved
our family.
Unc, others who served at
the White House, my father, other members of the Private Butlers Association
and Jack Valenti may well have thought highly of this riveting and superbly
acted film that pays tribute to black men who toiled to make servitude appear
effortless and casts the arc of the Civil
Rights Movements, through the lens of a tumultuous father-son
relationship. For several years, Valenti, confidant of Lyndon Johnson, arch enemy of J. Edgar Hoover and former president of
the Motion Picture Association of America, hosted an annual film screening and
dinner party for the members of the Private Butlers Association and their wives
at the Motion Picture Association of America headquarters in DC.
It is clear to me that there are people within
this team who have the vision and capacity for bringing us films that present
the passion, brilliance and range of dimensions with which black people live
life. I so hope that Wil Haygood’s book
on Thurgood Marshall makes its way onto the screen, just as his Washington Post article on Eugene Allen
did. We also have to see more from Ava
DuVernay (The Middle of Nowhere), Euzhan Palcy (A Dry White Season) and Julie
Dash (Daughters of the Dust). This fall,
Dave Talbert’s “Baggage Claim,” Neil Drumming’s “Big Words” and “12 Years a
Slave” by Steven McQueen will hit the big screen. I’m also eager to see what filmmakers who are
now establishing themselves like Ryan Cooger, Kahlil Joseph and L. Onye Anyanwu
are going to bring to the table. Since
the seventies I’ve wanted to buy a ticket to see a feature
film on the incredible life of poet Langston Hughes; compelling historical and
contemporary love stories (especially one set during the movement that then
progresses into the generations born of those parents); and a quirky comedy
about a black woman who started out as a dancer and literally takes a quantum
leap into becoming a Theoretical Physicist, where she makes even bolder
discoveries about the universe in which we live.
Daphne Muse is a
writer, social commentator and poet. Her
commentaries have aired on NPR, appeared at Portside, in the Washington Post and Black Scholar. She spent
six years writing for Breaking Barriers,
a collaborative project between Scholastic and the Office of Education at Major
League Baseball. For several decades she
served on the faculty at UC Berkeley and Mills College. During her service at Mills, a daughter of
the family where she was the help was a student. She blogs at www.daphnemuse.blogspot.com.
©Daphne Muse 2013
