In the service of the presidency

American Visions, Feb-March, 1995 by Richard Kurin, Marjorie Hunt

Coming home late one night by taxi, Armstead Barnett told the Washington, D.C., cabbie to take him home to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Suspecting that his passenger was up to some sort of prank, the driver asked suspiciously, "The White House at this time of night?"

On another occasion, Barnett created a bigger stir when he was asked to list his home address on a marriage license. I" told them I lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," he recalled some years later. The license bureau clerks looked at each other in disbelief. After he left the office, someone must have called the press, because when Barnett got back to the White House, he was told that it was on the news that "Armstead Barnett was giving Franklin Delano Roosevelt's address--1600 Pennsylvania Avenue"--as his own. The commotion reached such proportions that Mrs. Roosevelt was obliged to hold a press briefing to advise the media, "That's the only address he's got; he had to give that address!"

Armstead Barnett was an African American who worked as a butler in the Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower White House, where he lived from 1938 to 1941. one could easily conclude from Barnett's experiences that a black presence at the White House was rare. Yet, in administrations dating back to the presidency of Thomas jefferson, African Americans probably represented the majority of the domestic staff.

Researching the lives of these workers is complicated by their silence. Once one enters the inner sanctum of the White House, no matter what your status, discretion is expected. Secrets are known, but never told--a code that has been in place for two centuries.

There is also today a certain uneasiness about discussing the history of African Americans as domestic workers, as if their labors were intrinsically demeaning. Consequently, the names of Barnett and those who worked alongside him frequently go unmentioned in official written accounts. But it is impossible to tell a complete history of the White House without referring to the people who made it function on a day-to-day basis, who helped to create and pass along from one administration to another many of the rituals and symbols that we understand to be White House culture.

Most Americans are familiar with the public symbols of White House culture: the televised image of the president speaking to the nation from the Oval Office; the view of the south portico; the Marine Band striking up "Hail to the chief"; the presidential seal on a podium; a crowd gathered in the Rose Garden and the first family arriving by helicopter on the lawn. The presentation and display of White House culture stirs public interest and makes people take notice.

Less public, but just as important to White House culture, are the rituals surrounding the announcing of guests, the state dinners, the tea parties, the presentation of diplomatic credentials, or the education of each new president and his family in the traditions of the White House. It is in this less public world that African-American domestic workers have made their most significant contributions.

Our first president, George Washington, was keenly aware of the importance not only of being president, but of performing as president. "Many things which appear of little importance," he wrote, may have great and durable consequences from their having been established at the commencement of a new general government." Washington thought that it was important that the "President in all matters and etiquette can have no object but to maintain the dignity of the office, without subjecting himself to the imputation of superciliousness or unnecessary reserve." Washington was convinced of the value and necessity of a ceremonious presidency, and he sought to achieve his goal by staffing his official residences in New York and later Philadelphia with some 20 slaves from his private estate at Mount Vernon.

After the White House became the official residence of the president in 1801, African-American workers were in the majority for the first 50 years, in part because prior to 1840 there was no government appropriation of funds for any staff. Presidents were responsible for their own expenses, most of their entertaining, and much of the considerable cost of maintaining and operating the White House. Their staff comprised family members, hired servants and, if they had them, slaves who lived and worked in the White House.

The 1840s saw the beginnings of a professional White House staff, with congressional appropriations for a doorman, two gardeners and a guard. However, slaves, servants and family members continued to carry the major responsibilities of making the President's House work.

After the Civil War, a profound change began to occur in the White House domestic staff that would enhance the African-American role in the creation and maintenance of White House culture. The everyday domestic affairs of the White House began to be carried out by a permanent, professional White House staff. Less frequently did the president bring his own people to manage the White House. Instead, the domestic employees (maids, cooks, butlers and doormen) continued on as a rule from one administration to another. A convention emerged in which presidents brought a few personal servants who worked alongside the permanent professional staff. The only exception to this trend was the second Cleveland administration, when practically all employees in the White House were replaced.