E. Frederic Morrow

Black Man in the White House, first published in 1963, is the White House account of E. Frederic Morrow (1906-1994), the first African-American to serve on a Presidential staff in an executive position. During the 1950s, Morrow was a member of President Eisenhower’s inner circle of policy-makers, and the book, extracted from Morrow’s diaries, is a fascinating look at the Eisenhower administration and also of a country coming-to-grips with the about-to-explode problems of segregation and racial inequality.

E. Frederic Morrow is the first African-American in history to have served on a Presidential staff in an executive capacity. During the Eisenhower years he was in the White House as a member of President Eisenhower’s inner circle of policy makers. Because of the historical element in this unprecedented situation, Mr. Morrow kept a number of diaries. The book that emerges from them is fascinating, poignant, and sometimes shocking. You get to meet everyone from Richard Nixon to Sherman Adams to Nkrumah Kwame from a unique perspective. His concern for the direction of the Republican party is prescient and palpable. I could not put it down.