Family Stories: Working at the Willard

First, a note about my heritage.

President Obama once called himself a "mutt." Honestly, he's simply biracial. His mom was European (mostly English), and his dad was Kenyan. Pretty simple. He's the equivalent of a labradoodle.

My family tree includes a VERY diverse mix of people including black slaves, willing immigrants, and people who were listed on various censuses as indian, mulatto, negro, or white (and some people changed classifications from decade to decade). I'll try to tell some of the more remarkable stories, but it's important to know that any corner of my family tree could hold something you wouldn't really expect. I am a mutt.

When she was in her late 90's, Frances Braxton Thomas told me this story from her youth. Her mind was incredibly sharp, and the story has no inconsistencies with versions she told decades earlier.

Frances Braxton Thomas

Family legend has it that Frances' father Frank was descended from Carter Braxton, but we have no solid evidence to back that up (not that we've really looked). Aside from the Braxton name, Frank once said that "... the only thing his father ever gave him was a broken down nag." Despite his role model, Frank was a good man who did what he had to to support his family. One of his jobs was as a waiter at the famous Willard Hotel in DC. 

The Willard Hotel in the 1920's; photo from https://crackerpilgrim.com

After Frank had worked at the Willard for a while, one of Frank's brothers went there to try to get a job as a busboy or dishwasher, but was told that they don't hire Negros. Frank's brother responded "but you've got Frank working for you!" 

Here is the conversation that followed:

Boss: Frank, you’re our best waiter, but we don’t employ Negroes here. Why didn’t you tell me you were a Negro?

Frank: You never asked.

Boss: I have to let you go.

From that day forward, Frank never told anyone in his family where he worked.  

A couple personal notes:

• Some people might judge Frank poorly because he passed as white (this is a thing in Black culture). But consider his challenge: He wasn't black enough to fit in with the Black folks, and wasn't white enough to fit in with the White folks. Like many of my ancestors, Frank forged his own path using hard work and whatever skills and resources he could muster.
• If I told anyone who has seen my parents that one of them had a grandfather who passed for white to work at the Willard, while the other had a father who was a trained engineer, but became a teacher because nobody would hire a black engineer, they would assume the former is my mother and the latter my father. That would be backwards. The Black American experience has always been difficult and messy.