Park View, D.C.

Wil Haygood’s book, “The Butler, a Witness to History,” is available today.

Today, Wil Haygood’s book, The Butler, a Witness to History, will be released in area bookstores. It chronicles the life of Eugene Allen, the butler who served 8 presidents while working at the White House. Haygood’s Washington Post 2008 article about Allen was also the basis for the movie schedule to be released on August 16th.

If you want a copy of the book and would like to meet the author, Haygood will be at Politics and Prose tonight at 7 p.m.

The following excerpt from the Barnes & Noble Web site sums up the book well:

…. While serving tea and supervising buffets, Allen was also a witness to history as decisions about America’s most momentous events were being made. Here he is at the White House while Kennedy contemplates the Cuban missile crisis; here he is again when Kennedy’s widow returns from that fateful day in Dallas. Here he is when Johnson and his cabinet debate Vietnam, and here he is again when Ronald Reagan is finally forced to get tough on apartheid. Perhaps hitting closest to home was the civil rights legislation that was developed, often with passions flaring, right in front of his eyes even as his own community of neighbors, friends, and family were contending with Jim Crow America. …

Gene Allen passed away in 2010. His Washington residence is located at 710 Otis Place, NW.