See this movie. You'll be glad you did.

This afternoon I had the inspiring experience of seeing the movie: Lee Daniels' The Butler.



President Kennedy meets the Negro staff of the White House
Scene from the movie Lee Daniels' The Butler

I generally refrain from recommending movies, for I feel my taste in films is personal, but Lee Daniels has put a history lesson for us all into a few short hours of entertainment.  It is difficult to watch the pain Cecil Gaines's family suffers, beginning with his father's murder and his mother's rape in the cotton fields of Georgia.

Gaines served as a White House butler through three decades and six administrations at the same time that laws and attitudes were changing toward integration of the races in our country.

The audience sees the pomp and formality of White House dinners juxtaposed with sit-ins and Freedom Riders working to break down the barriers between white and colored citizens in the South.

You must see this film to remind yourself (or if you are too young to remember, to inform yourself) of where we were fifty years ago when Martin Luther King. Jr. gave his "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.