Alonzo Fields (April 10, 1900 – March 22, 1994)Sam Stiegler, "When Speaking About Me, 'Don’t Talk too Long and Don’t Tell the Truth': A Biography of Mr. Alonzo Fields (1900–1994), West Medford Afro-American Remembrance Project, 2005
Available online.Archived by WebCite.
/ref> was an American

butler A butler is a person who works in a house serving and is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some al ...

who served at the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest, Washington, D.C., NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. preside ...

for twenty-one years under presidents Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman and

Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

. Of those twenty-one years, twenty were spent as the White House chief butler.Bales-Sherrod, Lesli. "Serving up a slice of history", ''The American Observer'', Vol. 9, No. 3, 24 Feb 2004.
Available online.
/ref>

Career

When Fields began his tenure at the White House in 1931, senators from the U.S. South frequently addressed him with the racially condescending term "boy", and a racial hierarchy existed between white and black White House house staff, with whites dominating. While the attitudes of most southern U.S. senators would not begin to change until the advent of the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, Racial discrimination ...

, Roosevelt took it upon himself to remove racial tensions among the house staff by making it all black. After his retirement in 1960, Fields published ''My 21 Years in the White House,'' in which he wove together his private papers and cryptic journals, written while serving, with his recollections. Although restrained, his memoir nonetheless provides a uniquely intimate

primary source In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an Artifact (archaeology), artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was cre ...

account of the U.S. presidents he served, several who came to trust Fields as a close personal friend. Fields reports, for example, that he was present when Roosevelt was first informed of the Japanese bombing of

Pearl Harbor Pearl Harbor is an American lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. It was often visited by the Naval fleet of the United States, before it was acquired from the Hawaiian Kingdom by the U.S. with the signing of the ...

and that Roosevelt "broke down completely" during that moment, and also emitted racial slurs against the Japanese before regaining his composure. Truman was especially close with Fields and even related with him as an emotional confidant at times, and the two at one point sat together for a portrait.

Legacy

More than a decade after Fields' death in 1994, his story was cast into a one-man theatrical performance, ''Looking Over the President's Shoulder.'' Historians, such as

David McCullough David Gaub McCullough (; July 7, 1933 – August 7, 2022) was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United Stat ...

in his 1992 biography '' Truman'', continue to consult Fields' memoirs when constructing accounts of the presidents he served. McCullough, David. '' Truman'', Simon & Schuster, pp 472, 473, 502, 623, 931. .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fields, Alonzo 1900 births 1994 deaths White House staff American butlers People from Gibson County, Indiana Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts Deaths from leukemia