Butler A Witness To History

Download or read book Butler: A Witness to History written by Wil Haygood and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellow Wil Haygood comes a mesmerizing inquiry into the life of Eugene Allen, the butler who ignited a nation's imagination and inspired a major motion picture: The Butler: A Witness to History, the highly anticipated film that stars six Oscar winners, including Forest Whitaker, Oprah Winfrey (honorary and nominee), Jane Fonda, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Redgrave, and Robin Williams; as well as Oscar nominee Terrence Howard, Mariah Carey, John Cusack, Lenny Kravitz, James Marsden, David Oyelowo, Alex Pettyfer, Alan Rickman, and Liev Schreiber. With a foreword by the Academy Award nominated director Lee Daniels, The Butler not only explores Allen's life and service to eight American Presidents, from Truman to Reagan, but also includes an essay, in the vein of James Baldwin’s jewel The Devil Finds Work, that explores the history of black images on celluloid and in Hollywood, and fifty-seven pictures of Eugene Allen, his family, the presidents he served, and the remarkable cast of the movie.

Download or read book The Butler written by Wil Haygood and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-07-30 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This mesmerizing companion book to the award-winning film, The Butler traces the Civil Rights Movement and explores crucial moments of twentieth century American history through the eyes of Eugene Allen—a White House butler who served eight presidents over the course of thirty-four years. During the presidencies of Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, Eugene Allen was a butler in the most famous of residences: the White House. An African American who came of age during the era of Jim Crow, Allen served tea and supervised buffets while also witnessing some of the most momentous decisions made during the second half of the twentieth century, including Lyndon B. Johnson’s work during the Civil Rights Movement and Ronald Reagan getting tough on apartheid. But even as Allen witnessed the Civil Rights legislation develop, his family, friends, and neighbors were still contending with Jim Crow America. Timely, “poignant and powerful” (Kirkus Reviews) The Butler also explores Eugene Allen and his family’s background along with the history of African Americans in Hollywood and also features a foreword by the film’s director Lee Daniels.

Download or read book Kindred written by Octavia E. Butler and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2004-02-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author of Parable of the Sower and MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Nebula, and Hugo award winner The visionary time-travel classic whose Black female hero is pulled through time to face the horrors of American slavery and explores the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now. “I lost an arm on my last trip home. My left arm.” Dana’s torment begins when she suddenly vanishes on her 26th birthday from California, 1976, and is dragged through time to antebellum Maryland to rescue a boy named Rufus, heir to a slaveowner’s plantation. She soon realizes the purpose of her summons to the past: protect Rufus to ensure his assault of her Black ancestor so that she may one day be born. As she endures the traumas of slavery and the soul-crushing normalization of savagery, Dana fights to keep her autonomy and return to the present. Blazing the trail for neo-slavery narratives like Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer, Butler takes one of speculative fiction’s oldest tropes and infuses it with lasting depth and power. Dana not only experiences the cruelties of slavery on her skin but also grimly learns to accept it as a condition of her own existence in the present. “Where stories about American slavery are often gratuitous, reducing its horror to explicit violence and brutality, Kindred is controlled and precise” (New York Times). “Reading Octavia Butler taught me to dream big, and I think it’s absolutely necessary that everybody have that freedom and that willingness to dream.” —N. K. Jemisin Developed for television by writer/executive producer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Watchmen), executive producers also include Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields (The Americans, The Patient), and Darren Aronofsky (The Whale). Janicza Bravo (Zola) is director and an executive producer of the pilot. Kindred stars Mallori Johnson, Micah Stock, Ryan Kwanten, and Gayle Rankin.

Download or read book Colorization written by Wil Haygood and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES CRITICS' TOP BOOK OF THE YEAR • BOOKLISTS' EDITOR'S CHOICE • ONE OF NPR'S BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “At once a film book, a history book, and a civil rights book.… Without a doubt, not only the very best film book [but] also one of the best books of the year in any genre. An absolutely essential read.” —Shondaland This unprecedented history of Black cinema examines 100 years of Black movies—from Gone with the Wind to Blaxploitation films to Black Panther—using the struggles and triumphs of the artists, and the films themselves, as a prism to explore Black culture, civil rights, and racism in America. From the acclaimed author of The Butler and Showdown. Beginning in 1915 with D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation—which glorified the Ku Klux Klan and became Hollywood's first blockbuster—Wil Haygood gives us an incisive, fascinating, little-known history, spanning more than a century, of Black artists in the film business, on-screen and behind the scenes. He makes clear the effects of changing social realities and events on the business of making movies and on what was represented on the screen: from Jim Crow and segregation to white flight and interracial relationships, from the assassination of Malcolm X, to the O. J. Simpson trial, to the Black Lives Matter movement. He considers the films themselves—including Imitation of Life, Gone with the Wind, Porgy and Bess, the Blaxploitation films of the seventies, Do The Right Thing, 12 Years a Slave, and Black Panther. And he brings to new light the careers and significance of a wide range of historic and contemporary figures: Hattie McDaniel, Sidney Poitier, Berry Gordy, Alex Haley, Spike Lee, Billy Dee Willliams, Richard Pryor, Halle Berry, Ava DuVernay, and Jordan Peele, among many others. An important, timely book, Colorization gives us both an unprecedented history of Black cinema and a groundbreaking perspective on racism in modern America.

Download or read book Witness to Revolution written by Joshua Butler Wright and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2002-02-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: J. Butler Wright brought his young bride and son to Russia in the fall of 1916 to take up duties as counselor to the American Embassy in Petrograd. He had no idea that he would soon witness one of the most amazing events in history—the collapse of Imperial Russia and the advent of the Soviet Union. Recording daily events and observations in his diary, Wright left a vivid description of the day-to-day uncertainty in revolutionary Russia and American activities during this chaotic time. This account demonstrates how confused and dangerous diplomatic representation can be during times of crisis. While often missing the mark in what was happening in Russia, Wright and his fellow diplomats fulfilled their duty diligently. From an official audience with the Tsar in early 1917 to a fantastic journey across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1918, Wright recorded his observations on events, people, culture, intrigue, danger, and the normal occurrences of daily life. Throughout it all, Wright remained dedicated to his duty as an American representative and constantly searched for an effective American reaction to what was happening in Russia. On a personal level, however, Wright's concern for the safety of his wife and son during this chaotic time reveals that it was not always about duty to country.

Download or read book The Gestapo written by Rupert Butler and published by Amber Books Ltd. This book was released on 2012-07-16 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its creation in 1933 until Hitler's death in May 1945, anyone living in Nazi-controlled territory lived in fear of a visit from the Gestapo, the secret state police. This is a lively and expert account of this notorious but little-understood secret police that terrorized hundreds of thousands of people across Europe.

Download or read book My 21 Years in the White House written by Alonzo Fields and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2019-11-22 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My 21 Years in the White House, first published in 1960, is the fascinating account by Alonzo Fields of his service as head butler under 4 presidents: Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower. Fields (1900-1994) began his employment at the White House in 1931, and kept a journal of his meetings with the presidents and their families; he would also meet important people like Winston Churchill, Princess Elizabeth of England, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, presidential cabinet members, senators, representatives, and Supreme Court Justices. He would also witness presidential decision-making at critical times in American history -- the attack on Pearl Harbor, the death of Franklin Roosevelt, the desegregation of the military, and the outbreak of hostilities in Korea. As Fields often told his staff, “...remember that we are helping to make history. We have a small part ... but they can't do much here without us. They've got to eat, you know.” Included are sample menus prepared for visiting heads-of-state and foreign dignitaries.