Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies and brought you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. In depth is in next on book tv. Our our guest is the author of several books including his most recent, showdown on Thurgood Marshall. Author will haygood, this is a quote from you, i write about black men who heroically manifest themselves into mainstream america. Lentless purt i think my reading writing has been a relentless pursuit to explain all of america. What is that mean . Well, i think that it is just been exciting to find these figures like adam junior, sammy davis junior, super weight ray robinson Thurgood Marshall, who were not born into mainstream society, who by their enormous talent and gifts they put themselves into the fabric of this country, by entertainment,s politics, sports, and in Thurgood Marshalls case, the law and in the case of the white house, butler, extra nor layered Patriotic Service to his country so these figures when i look back at the people written about they spend these amazing tales about society, culture, race and i dont always know if they knew it when they were doing it but heroism as well. You have the new york. Congressman who passed legislation, antipoverty legislation in the case of new york congressman powell, Adam Clayton Powell junior you have sammy davis junior who integrated nightclubs in the 1940s all across this country. He was was one of the wave of entertainers who did that. Louis armstrong, lena horne, and the person that i chose to write about as i mentioned sammy davis junior. B Sugar Ray Robinson who foughthe the mob in new york who controlled the fight game he wanted to be and give fighters some independence himself especially and he became a sixtime World Champion while he was carving those rights for fighters in Thurgood Marshall subject of my latest book showdown, of course many epic cases that he thought before the United StatesSupreme Courts, his biggest victory in 1954 School Desegregation case, brown b board of education. When you look at all of these i think you look at the story of 20th Century America and how it matured, how is forced to mature host i the certain figures. I want to show some video of someone you mentioned and have you explain what were saying. I want to retire. At 34 years, you had been heree so long any serve so many people all over the world. You supervise and service so i think it went right to you. So the first one they had after i retired she invited me and my wife to a state dinner and i was so used, but my wife is not used to a lot of that. I was waiting on the table i told them be careful and make sure that he keep her eye honor and dont let her drink. Who was that . That was eugene allen. White house butler, great man who i wrote a story about him in 2008 that appeared on the cover of the Washington Post, really one of the most unique figures in my life as a writer who have met i met him and his wife in 2008 before the election. It was amazing how i met him. I was the National Writer with the National Post and i was on the campaign trail within senator obama. I was in North Carolina, theres is a rally after the rally i walked outside and there were three young ladies and they were crying. I told them who i was, will haygood haygood Washington Post and if theres anything i could do and they were crying because their fathers had kicked them out of their home because they supported an africanamerican candidate on stage. Ite. Now the young ladies were College Students and they were white. It was a powerful moment because i said wow, even though Hillary Clinton was still in the race in 2008 at that time obama had started this Epic Movement and some of it was manifested in the tears of those three young girls were crying. In the middle of the night in my hotel room i said hes gonna win. He is going to climb that big, hard mountain and he is going to take this country across that hard mountain where race in your imagination intersects. I ran back to the newsroom into my editor, i said this guy, the senator from illinois he is going to win. He is is going to break history. My editor steve thought that i was too tired that i was exhausted, and i said no steve please listen to me, hes going to win. Because hes going to win im going to go wherever i have to go in the country and find an africanamerican who worked in the service job before the 1960 before the rights bill was passed, this person was africanamerican, who i kind of figured was out there someplace who worked in the white houseo m before legal integration, it would mean so much to him or her to see an africanamerican who i predicted would take the white b house. Looking back it does almost sounds like a bit of a fable. Because steve had to have faith in me that i would find such a person. I was looking for somebody who did the laundry at the white house was a person who worked in the rose garden at the white house, or the person who shined shoes, or me, or a butler. I do not know why, i didnt know butlers in life and i just wrote out. So i started making phone calls and its funny, the first people i called of course was the white house and of course they said they do not divulge any personal information about who has served who has not worked here. There . I sent will my goodness did abe lincoln overlook their work there . And it just 20000 phone calls turned into 30 and then phone calls out of the blue from Tampa Florida as it were and says that there is a gentleman by the name of eugene allen who she knew worked at the white house for two president s and she said thar she heard that i was looking in georgetown and this is sometimes how these things work for journalists. You have to go knock on doors, let people people know that youre looking for somebody and sometimes things will come to you. So she told me that there is aoo gentleman by the name of eugene allen and that she thought he worked for two president s and i should try to find him. Its a very common name so 40 calls, on the 57th call a man was on the other end of the phone and i said mr. Allen im will haygood im a journalist working on the story. We are now five days from 2008 election. The africanamerican senator and three girls got the partysepict nomination and theres one epic step to take so i told him that i wanted to come over and talk to him about his life because i had heard that he worked for tw. President s and he said, you got that wrong, i work for a precedence. Harry truman, to harry truman, to ronald reagan. That is eight. Of course, i went over and spent this amazing time with him and his wife and wrote that story about this man who worked in the white house and saw history move in front of his eyes. This was a little in reverse because you wrote the article and then the movie came out, then your book came out. Correct. Correct . Yes. How did that work . Thats a great question. The story was written and then a movie producer produce spiderman movie and she reach me by phone to say that the story made her cry and that she wanted to buy the right to make the movie. So when someone from hollywood calls for the simple fact that who knows if something will ever get made. O washingt so she was insistent that she came to washington d. C. To visit me with pam williams her assistant at the time. Now pam williams has her own company. Who had but she was telling me about the movie directors who are interested in the story about this man who had worked at the white house and saw a lot of change in the country. Then i hear nothing. Everybody in Hollywood Whitehead and talking to win silent. S the tom williams and then johnson who is cofounder, they band together and they bring in lee daniels. Si the director. They start raising money and all of a sudden pam williams calls me and says we found that actor who is going to play the butler. Im at home sitting on my sofa, eating a a Peanut Butter and jelly sandwich, minding my own business. So i say who . And he said Forest Whitaker. I say come on, really. Really, Forest Whitaker and she calls me a day later says guess what, we found the butlers wife. And i said was that going to be . And she says, are you sitting down. And i said knob setting up but should i sit sit down and she said sit down. Oprah winfrey. And i said come on pam, i know youre pulling my leg now, Opral Winfrey has acted in like 17 years. And shes going to play the butlers wife . And she said said yes, opera loves the story that much. So the other cast members started falling into place, i went down to new orleans where we are filming, this is going to get back to your question aboute the book and im standing on a movie set one day and all of these actors are Walking Around in between the scene and there is jane fonda, there is clearance howard, theres cuba gooding junior, theres leash i just reber all of these great actors and i just said to nobody really, i just said its like im using almost. I said my goodness, somebody should should write a book about this spectacular moment. Of all this talent on this movie set making this movie about a butler and his wife. Clearance howard was walking by and he heard me and he said, youre the writer, you ought to write the book. And that really is how the butler book was born. That idea, Terrence Howard and the actor put the idea inside me. Then when i got back home washington d. C. To get in touch with a book editor and she wanted to do it. I started writing the book. So it went from article, movie, book, how true to what you learn from eugene allen was the movie . Well, i learned a lot about the moviemaking business being on the set and being an associate producer of the movie, that that was fine. There is a great street green writer who wrote a beautiful script and lee daniels had told me in a meeting he said what i want to do with your story is open it up. I want to cover the whole arc of the civil Rights Movement. It really had never been done on the big screen in this country. Hollywood had sort of been very reticent to tell epic stories of this nature. So lee daniels, the director wanted to do that. He had his family, the story the story was going to be anchored to his family. In all of these historic ups and downs of the civil Rights Movement, there were some changes from the actual story to movie but the theme of the whole movie i feel i stay true to the story. There was one big difference, charles, the son of the butler did go to vietnam but he survived, in the movie he died. In real life there is only one side and, in the movie there host . Did eugene allen show with you personal stories about each of the present he worked with . Yes, he was a bit, how can i put it . A bit shy in certain cases, but yes, he did. He of course saw his life being played out through the different bills and legislation that was being passed, and meant something to him when eisenhower passed the civil rights law. It meant something to him when president kennedy went on tv and talked about the historic clashes in ole ms. , it meant something to him when doctor king visited the white house, it meant something to him when news floated to the white house that it had been a bit clash over School Integration measure. So all of these president s did something at one time that stood out to him. Ut he said something that was very touching about president kennedy, he was overseas and i think in switzerland is whatevef maybe 1962 and he had about six hours off that day and he wanted to go into a little town and get a gift for his wife. The store clerk had a 100dollar bill. Or a large bill in their currency. So the store clerk told him that she did not have change and thal she wanted to go across the store fo street. He was healing person store, she, she wanted him to watch the store for him. He told me, he said 1962, in georgetown, store clerk most likely would not have asked me to watch their store while they went on the street. In that type of dignity bestowed upon him it almost brought tears to his eyes. Of course he said if anybody would have come in and tried to harm her store in any way he wouldve fought him to the death. That is just a lovely littleknoi moment about history, his mindset, what, what he took from his travels around the world with these president s. That really stands out. He seems to come according to your book have a somewhat special relationship with Dwight Eisenhower and with greg and. Guest yes he did. With eisenhower connection mr. Allen son, charles was going to school in 1954 when the epic of brown versus board of education decision came down from the Supreme Court. Deseg desegregating the American Public school system. So you have a father who is a butler walking into the white house looking at this president knowing that socially the nation now is about to shift. Of course that clash took three years of vacuum about in little rock arkansas at Central High School in the fall of 1957 when the black children walked into the school and they were peltedc with rachel at the text, it was a horrific day for the schoolchildren. Mr. Allen had to see that and of course he had to wonder if Something Like this happened to my son, and what are you going to do mr. President. Of course he he would not have dare asked president eisenhower that, but that had to be on his mind. Will my child be hurt . This is a unanimous decision by the u. S. Supreme court, the buck stops with you mr. President and im sure that mr. Allen was looking in an extrasensory way for the white house, for his country to put the weight behind the Supreme Court decision. Eiseh president eisenhower did. He sent the troops into little rock to protect the children. So to have been appearance, up close to the man who did that, it mustve been a very magical moment for him when president eisenhower painted in oil portrait shortly after that and gave it to mr. Allen as a gift. He also, when president eisenhower was out of the white house he would invite mr. Allen to go golfing with him, not as a butler, but as an equal. Mantoman. Would you like to play some golf, that mustve been a beautiful thing to him. Host did he live to see president obama inaugurated . Guest yes. After the story came out mr. Allen, the Transition Team of the president elect, bless their hearts for this, they saww they saw the story and they sent a vip invitation to mr. Allen into his son to go to the swearing in. Little old me got an invite to, who knows why but anyway we all went on that very cold morning. Mr. Allen, his son charles and me it was very cold, and you could take the subway so far but then you had to walk. We were walking and mr. Allenfr wasnt breathing very heavily, he was elderly, frail, i felt bad felt bad and i said mr. Allen, i think that we should stop. We should turn around because we have about a hundred more yards to go. I can tell that youre in pain. He had arthritis very bad and i knew he was sad because his wife had died the day before the election and there is a lot of heavy pain inside of him, aside from his ailments. But he looked at me when hes when i said that and he said you will my right arm and he looked us son and he said you hold my drop bec. And he said just dont let me drop because i am not turning around. Then it hit me why i had wanted to do such a story in the first place. A man who has seen what he had seen, who had been born and raised in the south now this moment. So we were taken and shown our vip seats in the living president who he had served under all walked out for their he was talking about them as if he they were his friend. There is president carter over there, hes looking okay. Theres things like that. Then he said to me, he said when the nations first africanamerican president tookr the oath of office, mr. Allen the butler who has started in the basement at the white house as a pantry man, he looked at me and he said, when i was in the white house you could not even dream that you could dream of a moment like this. Use the word dream twice. It was very touching. Livin he had saw so much in his life. Now, he was living to see with his own eyes and africanamerican take the highest oath for the highest office in the great United States of america. Host from your book, the butler and looking back over my own writing it seems now that te Eugene Island allen was a capstone to all the fascinating figures id interviewed in years past who had a link to turmoil. Guest yes. I can just look at the life oftd Thurgood Marshall who was this great, legendary naacp attorney who dreams of the naacp legal to fight legal cases. Mostly throughout the American South but also on the east and west coast on the midwest. On the day the president Lyndon Johnson nominated thurgooder marshall to the Supreme Court in 1967 there are three butlers in the white house, one of those bubblers was eugene allen. T the law had been used to stop mr. Allen from doing things in the 50s when he worked in the white house he could go back to his native virginia and not be allowed to try out a suit, or hat and a Mens Clothing store because of the color of his skin. Thurgood marshall was using the law to elevate the likes of mr. Allen. So that day in 1967 there is