'The Butler': The Basis Of The Film

The movie, The Butler, is a film about an African American man by the name of Cecil Gaines which is played by actor Forest Whitaker. The movie is loosely based on the life of man by the name of Eugene Allen, a distinguished butler during the abolishment of slavery and the birth of the Civil Rights Movement. The basis of the entire movie is centered on the main character, Cecil, and his life while being employed nearly his entire life as a butler. Cecil, at the beginning of the movie, is a young boy working as sharecropper along with his family during the Civil Rights Era. His father is shot and his mother becomes insane from the abuse she suffered from the white man. She is raped in the first minutes of the film. As the film goes on, Cecil

This is the time period in which JFK, the president, is assassinated and the controversy over civil rights is born. After a period of time working as a butler in the South, he decides to leave the South after being offered another job to work in a prestige hotel in Washington, D.C. He does so well working in the hotel, he is invited into the White House to serve as a butler for the President during the 1950’s. At this time, African Americans have just been freed as slaves and fighting toward their civil rights. Cecil isn’t your average African American man during this era because he is able to read and speak profoundly unlike many other African American men during this time period. After moving to Washington, he marries the well-known, Oprah Winfrey. The two have two sons together, one of which becomes an activist while the other becomes a soldier. President Eisenhower is the first president that Cecil serves under and forms a relationship with him and each President after over the next three decades. Throughout the movie, Cecil is battling between working as a butler under seven presidents and struggling to balance life during the Civil Rights