A Witness to History. 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: 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 ...