In the filled auditorium at the Akron-Summit County Main Library on Sunday afternoon, Wil Haygood mentioned only briefly the political divide in the country today.
Instead of focusing on the negative, the best-selling author and former Washington Post reporter instead told a web of stories connected by the theme of a dream during the library’s annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture.
“For those who’ve been weakened by the political process, let me share a few stories with you,” Haygood said.
He first told the story of Eugene Allen, a man who dreamed of working in a nice hotel in Virginia.
When he couldn’t find a job in Virginia, Allen went to D.C., where he was offered a job as a pantryman at the White House in the early 1950s.
Fast-forward to 2008, when Haygood covered then-Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Haygood told the story of seeing three young white girls cry at an Obama rally. They were kicked out of their homes because of their support for a black presidential candidate.
“That was so powerful to me,” Haygood said during his speech. “I said, ‘Senator Obama’s gonna win.’ It felt like a movement.”
The image compelled Haygood to find a subject who worked in the White House when racial segregation was a societal norm.
Haygood found Allen, who told him of the eight presidents he served, the career ladder he climbed to become a butler and the various influential figures he met — including Martin Luther King Jr.
He also told the story of Allen’s wife, Helene, who died the day before she could cast her vote for the first black president, but lived just days long enough to see her husband finally receive media attention the way she’d always wanted.
“It is amazing what you can do when you dream,” Haygood said.
Eugene Allen followed his wife in death two years later in 2010, after “having seen one of the most unimaginable dreams in his lifetime” of the first black president, Haygood said.
Haygood’s recounting of the Allens eventually expanded into a book, The Butler: A Witness to History, as well as a movie Haygood helped produce, Lee Daniels’ The Butler, which were both released in 2013.
Haygood has written several other books, including one called Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination that Changed America.
In the final story of his speech, Haygood spoke about a letter he came across while researching the book. The letter was written to a senator who opposed the nomination of Thurgood Marshall, a black man, to the Supreme Court.
In the letter, written in 1967, a young woman told the senator he couldn’t oppose the hundreds of other black people who would work toward becoming justices. She ended her letter by saying an African-American would eventually become president.
“What a dream! She predicted Obama!” Haygood said. “It nearly made me cry.”
In Haygood’s speech, he wove together the stories of African-Americans who saw their dreams come to fruition, and ultimately became part of a larger narrative in ending segregation.
Haygood received a standing applause from the crowd of about 250 people, including several community officials.
“I think it went extremely well. I’ve been to most of these programs since the start and I found him to be the most compelling speaker,” said Bill Rich, the president of the library’s board of trustees.
“He should be a doctor even if he isn’t,” said Flora N. Dees of Akron. “How he weaved that story and brought all those characters together, it was powerful.”
At the end, Haygood participated in a Q&A session. People asked his opinions on the current political climate, about being captured by Somali rebels, and what he did in his free time.
The last question asked was: What is your dream?
After a pause, Haygood responded: “It is that I wake up in the morning and there are no more headlines about racial unrest. We’ve had too much of it. And I think if you put the energy elsewhere into your dreams, that it would keep, in a very beautiful way, stitching the American flag together.”
Theresa Cottom can be reached at 330-996-3216 or tcottom@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter @Theresa_Cottom .