The White House residence staff in 1981.


Over the 20^th century hundreds of people have worked behind the scenes at the White House preparing family meals, serving elaborate State Dinners, tending the grounds and welcoming visitors. Today, a household staff of approximately 90 full-time domestic and maintenance employees–including butlers, maids, engineers, housemen, chefs, electricians, florists, ushers, doormen, carpenters and plumbers–work together under one roof to operate, maintain and preserve the 132-room residence. Many of these workers are African Americans who have spent decades employed at the White House. For example, Lillian Rogers Parks (seamstress/maid 1929-1961) first came to the White House as a young girl helping her mother, a White House maid, during the Taft administration. She and other longtime workers, such as Alonzo Fields (butler and maitre d’ 1931-1962), Preston Bruce (doorman 1953-1976), and Eugene Allen (chief butler and maitre d’ 1952-1987), have been an integral part of and helped define the culture of the White House. They served the White House and represented the nation through their labor as seamstress and maid, butlers or maitre’d with dignity, wisdom and pride. Alonzo Fields, a butler and maitre’d at the White House for 21 years, eloquently observed: " I didn’t feel like a servant to a man. I felt I was a servant to my government, to my country."

The year 2000 marks the 200th anniversary of both life and work at the White House. The integral role of African Americans at the White House at every level, both on the domestic and political staffs, will continue to shape the creation and cultivation of one of American democracy's greatest symbols.

Read More: Workers at the White House, Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies, Smithsonian Institution, 1992.