And youve got women posting shows. Doing his and hers things. And in all sports, you know . Basketball, football, baseball. You name it. So because something is new or something doesnt fit my mold, it doesnt make it bad. I think cam, his energy has actually been good for the game. I probably wouldnt do some of the things that he does but as i said earlier, i know mylane. Cam knows his lane. His lane is my lane, my lane isnt his. His lane isnt warren moons lane or Doug Williams lane but the fact is, his coaches are comfortable with him, his teammates arecomfortable with him and at the end of the day , thats all that matters. Host it looks like were out of time and this has been a great conversation. Dig deep, seven truths to finding the strength within. I enjoyed reading it and i enjoyed talking to you before i hope people will go by and gain some wisdom for my experiences. Host . Cspan, created by americas Cable Television companies is brought you as a Public Service by your cable or satellite provider. Indepth is next on tv. Our guest, biographer will haygood. He he is the author of several books including showdown on Thurgood Marshall. Host author will haygood, this is a quote from you. I write about black men who heroically manifested themselves into mainstream america. I think my writing has been a relentless pursuit to explain all of america. Does that make sense . Guest well, i think that its just been exciting to find these figures like Adam Clayton Powell junior, sammy davis junior, editor robinson, Thurgood Marshall who are not born into mainstream society. Who by didnt of their enormous talent, enormous gifts, stitched themselves into the fabric of this country by entertainment, politics, sports or in Thurgood Marshalls case the law. In the case of the white house, butler, extraordinarily Patriotic Service to hiscountry. And so these figures, when i look back over to people ive written about, they spend these amazing tales about society, culture , style, race and i dont always know if they knew it when they were doing it but heroism as well. You had the new york congressman who passed legislation, antipoverty legislation in the case of new york congressman powell, Adam Clayton Powell junior and you have sammy davis junior who integrated nightclubs in the 1940s all across this country. He was on a whole wave of entertainers who did that. Louis armstrong played the horn and another person why write about, and as i mentioned, sammy davis junior and robinson who brought the mob to new york, who control the fight game. He wanted to give fighters some independence. Himself, especially. And he became a sixtime World Champion while he was carving those rights for fighters and Thurgood Marshall, the subject of my latestbook showdown. Many epic cases that he fought before the United StatesSupreme Court, his biggest victory was 1954 in the School Segregation case, brown v board of education. When you look at these, you look at the story of 20th Century America and how it matured and how he was forced to mature because of certain figures. Host i want to show some video of somebody you mentioned. And have you explain what we are seeing. I want to retire. 34 years. Youve been here so long, you serve so many people all over the world. You supervised the service, made everybody happy so i think its only right that you attend one of these. So first on the behalf that i retired. I was invited to the state there and it didnt bother me. Im so used to serving. I was waiting on tables and i told her, you can just get in jail for that and make sure you keep an eye on them and dont let her drink out of the finger bowl. [laughter] host who was that, will haygood . Guest that was mister eugene allen, white house butler and a great man why wrote a story about him in 2008 that appeared on the cover of the Washington Post. Really, one of the most unique figures in my life as a writer who ive met. I met him and his wife in 2008 before the election and it was amazing how i met him. I was a National Writer at the Washington Post and i was on the campaign trail with then senator obama and i was in North Carolina, there was a rally. And after the rally, i walked outside and there were three young ladies and they were crying. I told him who i was, will haygood, Washington Post and if there was anything i could do and they said they were crying because their father had kicked them out of their homes because they supported the African American candidate on stage and the three young leaders, they were white. It was a powerful moment because i said wow. Even though Hillary Clinton was still in the race in 2008 at that time , obama had started this Epic Movement and some of it was manifested in the tears of those three young girls were crying andin the middle of the night in my hotel room , i said hes going to win. Hes going to win. Hes going to climb that big, hard mountain and hes going to take this country across that hard mountain where race , and your imagination intersect and i ran back to the newsroom and told lanier i said, hey, this guy, the senator from illinois, senator obama is going towin. Hes going to break history and my editor , steve, thought i was just tired and i was exhausted. And i said no, steve. Please listen to me. Hes going to win. And because hes going to win, i want to go where i have to go in the country and find an africanamerican who works in the service job before the 1964 civil rights bill was passed so this person, this africanamerican like i figured was out there someplace who had worked in the white house before legal integration, it would mean so much to him or her to see an africanamerican who i predicted would take the white house. Looking back, it does almost sound like a bit of a fable because steve had to have taken me that i would find such a person. And i just started looking. I was looking for somebody who did the laundry at the white house, somebody who was a person worked on the rose garden at the white house or the person who shined shoes or a maid or, in its last words of butler. And i dont know why. I knew no butlers in life and it just rode out so i started making some phonecalls. It was funny, the first calls of course was the white house and of course they dont divulge any personal information about who has or who havent worked here and i said well my goodness, did abe lincoln ever work there . You know, and that, it just made me keep looking on and putting in phone calls and then somebody calls out of the clear blue from tampa, florida as it were and says that there was a gentleman by the name of eugene allen who, she knew had worked at the white house for two president s and cc said she heard i was looking because i went to a party in georgetown. This is sometimes how these things work for a journalist. You have to just go knock on doors that people know thatyou are looking for somebody. Sometimes things will come to you and so she told me there was this gentleman by the name of eugene allen and that she thought he worked for two president s and i should try to find him and very common names so 40 calls, on the 57 call a man was on the other end of the phone and i said mister allen, my name is will hager and im a journalist working on a story. We are now five days on the 2008 election area the africanamerican senator who the three girls were crying for had gotten this partys nomination. There was one epic step to take and so i told mister allender i want to come over and talk to him about his life as i heard that he had worked for the two president s and he said youve got that wrong. I worked for eight president s. Harry truman, Ronald Reagan and of course, i went over and spent this amazing time with him and his wife and wrote that story about this man who worked in the white house and saw history move in front of his eyes. This was a little bit of a reverse because you wrote the article and then the movie came out and then the book , then your book came out correct . Yes. Host how did that work. Guest thats a great question. The story was written and then laura exist in, a movie producer, he produced the spiderman movies, she reached to me by phone and said the story made her cry and that she wanted to buy the rights to make a movie so its best not to hop up and down when someone from hollywood calls for the simple fact that who knows if something will ever get made . So she was insistent and she came to washington dc to visit me with pam williams, her assistant at the time. Now pam williams has her own company but. She was telling me about the movie directors who are interested in this story about this man who had worked at the white house and saw a whole lot of change in the country and then laura ziskin dies and i hear nothing. Everybody in hollywood who i had been talking to, they go silent area and pam williams and then Sheila Johnson who is the cofounder of bet, they band together and bring in lee daniels, the director. And they start raising money and all of a sudden, pam williams calls me and says hey, we found the actor whos going to play the butler. And im at home sitting on my sofa, eating a Peanut Butter and jelly sandwich, minding my own business and i said who . Is that going to be . And she said forest whitaker. Come on, really . Like, really . She said no really, forest whitaker. She calls me a day later and says that what . We found the butlers wife and i said whos that going to be . She says are you sitting down . And i said no im standing up. Should i sit down plus mark she said, sit down. Oprah winfrey. I said, come on pam. Youre really pulling my leg now. Oprah winfrey hasnt acted in like 17 or so years. Shes going to play the butlers wife . She said, yes. Oprah loves the story that much so then the other cast members are falling into place and i went down to new orleans where we were filming. This is going to get back to your question about the book so im standing on the movie set one day and all these actors are Walking Around in between the scene and theres jane fonda, theres Terrence Howard. Theres cuba gooding junior. Theres lee shriver. All these great actors and i just said nobody really. I just said it like, musing almost. I said my goodness. Somebody should write a book about this to capture this moment of all this talent on this movie set making this movie about a butler and his wife and Terrence Howard happened to have been walking by and he heard me and he said, youre the rider. You want to write the book and that really is how the butler book was born. That idea, Terrence Howard the actor put that idea inside of me and then when i got back home, washington dc , i was able to get in touch with a book editor, don davis, she wanted to do it and i started writing the book so it went from article, movie, book. How true to what you learned from eugene allen and mrs. Allen was the movie . Well, i learned a lot about the moviemaking business being on this set. Being associate producer of the movie, that was fun but there was a great screenwriter danny strong who wrote a beautiful script and lee daniels had the movie in a meeting, he said what i want to do with your story, will, is open it up. I want to cover the whole arc of Civil Rights Movement which had really never been done on the big screen in this country. Hollywood had sort of been very reticent to tell epic stories of this nature so lee daniels the director wanted to do that. He had this family and so the story was going to be anchored to this family. And you know, in all these historic ups and downs of the civilrights movement. There were some changes from the actual story to movie but the theme of the whole movie i feel if i stay true to the story, there was one big difference. Charles, the sum of the butler did go to vietnam but he survived. In the movie, he dies and in real life there was only one son in the movie, there was to. Did eugene allen share with you personal stories about each of the presidency worked with . Guest yes. He was a bit, how can i put it . Shy in certain cases but yes, he did. He of course saw his life being played out through the different deals and the legislation that was being passed. It meant something to him when eisenhower passed the civil rights bill. It meant something to him when president kennedy went on tv and talked about the historic clashes at old miss and james meredith, trying to integrate the school. It meant something to him when doctor king visited the white house. It meant something to him when news flowed into the white house that there had been a big clash in little rock over School Integration measure and so all of these president s did something at one time that stood out to him. He said something that was very touching about president kennedy. He was overseas, i think it was switzerland and it would have been maybe 1962 and mister allen had about six hours off that day and you wanted to go into this little town and get a gift for his wife and the store clerk, he had 100 bill or a large bill in bit currency and the store clerk told him that she didnt have change and that she wanted to go across the street and he was the only person in the store. He wanted him to watch the store for him. He me, he said, 1962 in georgetown, a store clerk most likely would not have asked me to watch their store while they went down the street. We said, and that type of dignity bestowed upon him almost brought tears to his eyes and of course he said if anybody would have come in and tried to harm her store in any way, he would have fought then he said to the death and thats just a lovely little moment about history, his mindset and what he took from his travels around the world with these president s that really stands out. Host will haygood, he said, according to your book seem to have a special relationship with dwight thousand power and with reagan before he did. With the eisenhower connection, mister allens son charles was going to school in 1954. In the epic brown the board of education decision came down from the Supreme Court. The segregating the American PublicSchool System so you have a father who was butler is walking into the white house, looking at this president knowing that socially, the nation now is about toshift. Of course, that clash took three years and that came about in little rock rock Arkansas Central High School in the fall of 19 657 when nine black children walked into the school and they were pelted with racial epithets, it was a horrific day for the schoolchildren. And mister allen had to see that and of course he had to wonder would Something Like this happened to my son and what are you going to do mister president . Of course he would never have dared ask president eisenhower but that had to be on his mind. Well, my child will be hurt . This is a unanimous decision by the us Supreme Court. The buck stops with you mister president and im sure that mister allen was looking in that extrasensory way for the white house, for this country to put the weight behind the Supreme Court decision and in president eisenhowers bid. He put the troops into little rock to protect the children and so, to have been apparent up close to the man who did that must have been a very magical moment for him and president eisenhower painted a foil portrait shortly after that and gave it to mister allen as a gift. He also when president eisenhower was out of the white house he would invite mister allen to go golfing with him, not as a butler but as an equal, man to man would you like to play some golf question mark mustve been a beautiful thing for him. Host did he live to see president obama inaugurated westmark x. Guest yes. After the story came out, mister allen, the Transition Team of the president elect, bless their hearts for this, they saw the story and they sent a vip invitation to mister allen and to his son. To go to the swearing in and little old me got an invite, who knows why but anyway we all went on that very cold morning, mister allen, his son charles and me and it was very cold. You could take the subway so far but then you had to walk and we were walking and mister allen was breathing very heavily, he was elderly, frail and i felt bad and i said mister allen, i think that we should stop. We should turn around because we have about 100 more yards to go. I can tell youre in pain. He had arthritis very bad. And i knew he was sad because his wife had died the day before. It was a lot of heavy pain inside of him aside from his ailments but he looked at me when i said that and he said, you hold my right arm and he looked at his son andsaid charles, you hold my left arm. He said, just dont let me drop because im not turning around. Then it hit me you know, why i had wanted to do such a story in the first place. A man who had seen what he had seen, who had been born and raised in the south and now this moment so we shone our vip seats and the living president who he had served under, they all walked out who were there and he was talking about them as if they were his friends. Theres president carter over there. Hes looking okay. You know . And this president bush, good man. Things like that. And then he said to me, he said when the nations first africanamerican president took the oath of office, mister allen, the butler who had started in the basement of the white house as a pantry man, he looked at me and he said, when i was in the white house you couldnt even dream that you could dream of a moment like this. Used the word dre