Lee Daniels’ “The Butler” is a polarizing film and after seeing it, I can understand why.
Inspired by true events, “The Butler” is the story of White House butler Cecil Gaines, played by Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker, who served eight U.S. presidents over the course of 30 years, and witnessed sweeping social change during that time.
Underneath the surface is the story of the broken relationship between a father who adopts the “go along to get along” attitude and his son who’s feelings mirror those who took a more aggressive approach to fighting for equal rights.
A subject that stuck out was the film’s view of a hero. Domestics who worked for those in positions of power oftentimes were low-key companions of those in authority and was able to sway opinion, and in this instance, federal legislation. They also defied white’s view of Blacks proving that the race could be educated, sophisticated and hardworking.
However you can’t deny figures such as those who stood firm at white-only lunch counters, faced vicious dogs and fire hoses, were hung from trees and those who willingly died for the cause in order for victories such as Barack Obama’s presidency to be possible.
Despite “The Butler’s” poignant themes, many lament issues that continue today. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was considered an achievement, yet in 2013 alone, more than 80 measures to restrict voting rights were introduced in 31 states.
On this subject, one Bloomberg writer said, “You can know something intellectually but not emotionally and, therefore, not know it at all.
“That’s what I realized after viewing Lee Daniels’ ‘The Butler.’ I’ve read Taylor Branch’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the civil rights era and watched old news clips of the burning of the church in Birmingham, Ala. But seeing on film how brutally Blacks were treated as second, if not third-class, citizens is to feel the humiliation and pain. That’s why I wish Chief Justice John Roberts and four of his Supreme Court colleagues would see it, too. Maybe it will help them understand how wrong they got it when they recently decided that we are so far past Jim Crow that we can dispense with a central provision of the 1965 Voting Right’s Act. I’ll buy the popcorn.”
Some choose not to see the movie and view “The Butler” as “another” film where Blacks are in subservient roles. Actor Harry Lennix wrote in a blog, “I take no part with, nor give any corner to, those who keep us in bondage as a function of these images. I reject the reduction of the traumatized but decent people I know as marginalized slaves and menials. Equally bankrupt are the media offerings that show us as sanitized and shallow beyond recognition – devoid of serious concerns outside of those that are worthy of soap-opera treatment.”
In response to some people’s views on films that rehash negative instances in Black history, many feel that not only was working as a domestic an important part of history but an honest profession.
“The Butler” is inspired by the true story of Eugene Allen, who served eight presidents during his tenure as a White House domestic, however Indiana had it’s own “Butler” prior to Allen. His name was Alonzo Fields.
According to Alonzo’s nephew, Roscoe Fields, who lives in Indianapolis, Alonzo’s position at the White House wasn’t viewed back then as it was today because in the past being a domestic was a job lots of Blacks had.
“This was only about 65 years from the end of slavery. The thinking was ‘you got a job.’ This is what you did,” said Roscoe. “I’m sure my family didn’t think anything about it like ‘oh, he’s a house negro.’ They were happy he was living in Washington D.C. and had a job.”
In the early 1900s, Alonzo grew up in Lyles Station, Ind. but moved to Indianapolis when he was a teenager. He attended church at St. John AME Church.
Alonzo left Indiana and headed to Boston to attend music school in the 1920s. In order to support his family, he took a job at the White House.
“He was tall, articulate and good looking. I remember him being a gentle person. But when he came (to Indiana) he was just Uncle Alonzo,” said Juanita Hudson, Alonzo’s niece. Her brother Roscoe added that those characteristics as well as the family’s interest in politics and an ear to the community probably helped him get and maintain his position at the White House.
“The family taught them. Period. They taught them and that’s how (family members) became who they were,” added Hudson. “He couldn’t have gone to the White House and moved up the lines with attitudes that showed. The way he handled himself made him stand out.”
When Alonzo would return to Indianapolis to visit, Roscoe remembers him discussing issues such as segregation in the White House and during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, and a predominantly Black domestic staff.
Much of Alonzo’s pre-civil right’s movement experiences is penned in his book titled My 21 Years in the White House, and later was the subject of a play titled “Looking Over the President’s Shoulder.”
