7600: The Butler Did It.

From USA TODAY…

From Jim Crow to Barack Obama: Longtime White House butler dies

By Kathy Kiely

Eugene Allen began working at the White House when racial segregation laws banned him from using public facilities in his native state of Virginia and lived to celebrate the inauguration of the nation’s first African-American president. He died this week at age 90, The Washington Post reports.

Allen’s story became an emblem of the nation’s shift in racial attitudes when the Post profiled him after Barack Obama’s election in 2008. The result was a VIP invitation for Allen to attend Obama’s inauguration.

“I never would have believed it,” a damp-eyed Allen told the Post from his seat at the inauguration. “In the 1940s and 1950s, there were so many things in America you just couldn’t do. You wouldn’t even dream that you could dream of a moment like this.”

Beginning as a dishwasher in Harry Truman’s White House, Allen served eight presidents, rising to become White House maitre d’ under Ronald Reagan before retiring.

Born July 14, 1919, in Scottsville, Va., Allen shared the same birthday as President Gerald Ford and joined in Ford’s birthday parties at the White House.