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The Butler's Child: An Autobiography
The Butler's Child is the personal story of a Warner Brothers family grandson who spent more than fifty years as a fighting, no holds barred civil rights lawyer. Lewis M. Steel explores why he, a privileged white man, devoted his life to seeking racial progress in often uncomprehending or hostile courts. In fact, after writing a feature for The New York Times Magazine entitled "Nine Men in Black Who Think White," Lewis was fired from the NAACP and the entire legal staff resigned in support of him. Lewis speaks about his family butler, an African American man named William Rutherford, who helped raise Lewis, and their deep but ultimately troubled relationship, as well as how Robert L. Carter, the NAACP's extraordinary general counsel, became Lewis' mentor, father figure and lifelong close friend.Lewis exposes the conflicts which arose from living and working in two very different worlds - that of the Warner Brothers family and that of a civil rights lawyer. He also explores his more than fifty year marriage that joined two very different Jewish and Irish American families.Lewis' work with the NAACP and in private practice created legal precedents still relevant today. The Butler's Child is also an insider's look into some of the most important civil rights cases from the turbulent 1960's to the present day by a man still working to advance the civil rights which should be available to all.
321 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 14, 2016
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 20, 2017
This book was mostly very engrossing and enjoyable to read. A number of the cases he worked on were page-turners, and the racism faced was infuriating. What kept this from being more stars, despite that it was good overall, were some chronological/organization choices that were confusing, sloppy typos, and most importantly, the title. He calls his memoir the Butler's Child, yet he writes about how although he viewed his family's butler as a father figure, it was a one-way relationship. The butler did not view him as his son, in fact, the butler had two step children with whom he was not able to live due to the paltry living accommodations the employers afforded him. I fully expected the author to look for the two children and make amends to them for his family's appropriation of their parents. Perhaps by paying college tuition for their children or something. But the author did not mention looking for them, nonetheless doing anything for them, despite soul-searching his white guilt. I also thought he might look into what happened to the black youths who waited on white military academy students, but he didn't follow through on that either. While it is admirable that Steel used his family wealth to fund his work as a civil rights lawyer, there were some loose ends in this memoir that detracted from the reading experience.
July 18, 2016
The Butler’s Child, by Lewis Steel
Tim Tyson
We can judge autobiography strictly for its ability to penetrate and portray the stuff of life. We can also assess its capture of a single human story, especially if the author’s life fascinates us. The best succeed at both, but also illuminate the historical moment in which the author lived. That rare autobiography becomes the most compelling kind of history and reveals an era while it absorbs us with a human voice. Lewis Steel’s The Butler’s Child is such a book.
Steel, an heir to the Warner Brothers fortune, grew up “in the cool green shade of [family] wealth” on Central Park. Two black servants, Bill and Lorraina Rutherford, became “like a second set of parents” to him. Vast inequality kenneled their love behind a high fence; Steel’s nostalgia for that love is cut with an unusual clarity and candor. “Bill and Lorraina were central figures in my childhood. But there it was. They were black and I was white, and I liked being white. It didn’t lessen my feelings for them, but I knew my color was better, and theirs marked them as lesser people.”
As the boy grew up, however, the shadows cast by race and class descended more deeply. His beloved Bill became “a friendly servant rather than a father figure,” to Steel’s enduring discomfort. “Years later,” Steel writes, “I began to understand that the complicated love that existed between between me and Bill and Lorraina—all three of us wired not to engage in it entirely, or not in an open, uncomplicated way—has a lot to do with my lifelong attempts to change the pervasive racial dysfunction in our society.”
In 1963, Steel became an unlikely civil rights lawyer. Working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he fought to make real the victories of the civil rights movement. Alongside his NAACP mentor, the legendary attorney Robert Carter, Steel also sued to desegregate public schools in the intractable North, in places like Cincinnati, Springfield and South Bend where whites fiercely resisted the Brown v. Board of Education decision. He battled housing segregation. He fought for labor rights for black workers shut out of labor unions “up South,” as Malcolm X called the North. And as his hero and friend Bob Carter taught him, he sought not merely to win cases but to expand civil rights law.
Steel’s career careened through the tumult of the late 1960s and the tensions as the Vietnam War took center stage in American politics. The play became a tragedy scarred by assassinations and other violence. The dissolution of the national coalition that had won the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 complicated the legal struggle. Politics inside the NAACP grew contentious, marred by the same clashes that wracked the culture, and also stymied by the conservative turn of the nation’s courts. In 1968, Steel wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine slamming the Supreme Court and the timorous NAACP fired him.
Steel became a criminal defense lawyer, taking indigent clients and cases around systemic injustice or prison reform. He was an observer during the negotiations of the 1971 Attica prison takeover. He worked on the notorious case of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who spent nineteen years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murder. After the 1970s, Steel grew disheartened. So much of the injustice he had battled seemed to persist and even deepen. Police brutality, housing discrimination, school resegregation, mass incarceration and the erosion of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause left him disillusioned, though not bitter.
School integration remains a thorny problem that the law could not resolve for long. As long as parents demand “neighborhood schools,” integrated schools must wait on integrated housing, which rests upon “systematic divides at all levels of society,” Steel points out. “Market forces predicated that ‘a good neighborhood’ was a place that would remain forever closed to all but a handful of blacks.” For African Americans mired in substandard housing, this means separate and unequal education in high-poverty schools.
Looking backward from these predicaments, The Butler’s Child traces the racial politics of the last six and a half decades. Steel’s personal voice makes that an absorbing journey. His framing the story with his relationship to an African American family servant made me wince at times; the title sets a high bar for insights about white supremacy that the book doesn’t quite clear. Only Steel’s commendable candor and self-knowledge keep the narrative from dealing in racial clichés.
Nor does he ever resolve the tensions between his career as a radical lawyer and his posh life with homes on Central Park and in the Hamptons. Again, his candor saves him. He notes the old radical anthem that asks, “Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?” His honest response: “To this day I don’t know the answer to that question.”
Any biography or autobiography walks the line between “life” and “times.” This book does a better job with the latter than the former. Given the racial injustice that currently tears the country apart, which Steel describes, why not call readers to join the struggle to which he has given his life? Instead, Steel makes an awkward truce with himself. Was all his earnest striving really about expiating the sins of privilege, and finally deciding it’s okay to enjoy your beach house as long as you have black friends who come visit? The Butler’s Child, a mostly artful episode of the central struggle in American history, suggests that the narrator has been a far better soldier in the struggle than he seems to think.
Tim Tyson
We can judge autobiography strictly for its ability to penetrate and portray the stuff of life. We can also assess its capture of a single human story, especially if the author’s life fascinates us. The best succeed at both, but also illuminate the historical moment in which the author lived. That rare autobiography becomes the most compelling kind of history and reveals an era while it absorbs us with a human voice. Lewis Steel’s The Butler’s Child is such a book.
Steel, an heir to the Warner Brothers fortune, grew up “in the cool green shade of [family] wealth” on Central Park. Two black servants, Bill and Lorraina Rutherford, became “like a second set of parents” to him. Vast inequality kenneled their love behind a high fence; Steel’s nostalgia for that love is cut with an unusual clarity and candor. “Bill and Lorraina were central figures in my childhood. But there it was. They were black and I was white, and I liked being white. It didn’t lessen my feelings for them, but I knew my color was better, and theirs marked them as lesser people.”
As the boy grew up, however, the shadows cast by race and class descended more deeply. His beloved Bill became “a friendly servant rather than a father figure,” to Steel’s enduring discomfort. “Years later,” Steel writes, “I began to understand that the complicated love that existed between between me and Bill and Lorraina—all three of us wired not to engage in it entirely, or not in an open, uncomplicated way—has a lot to do with my lifelong attempts to change the pervasive racial dysfunction in our society.”
In 1963, Steel became an unlikely civil rights lawyer. Working for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he fought to make real the victories of the civil rights movement. Alongside his NAACP mentor, the legendary attorney Robert Carter, Steel also sued to desegregate public schools in the intractable North, in places like Cincinnati, Springfield and South Bend where whites fiercely resisted the Brown v. Board of Education decision. He battled housing segregation. He fought for labor rights for black workers shut out of labor unions “up South,” as Malcolm X called the North. And as his hero and friend Bob Carter taught him, he sought not merely to win cases but to expand civil rights law.
Steel’s career careened through the tumult of the late 1960s and the tensions as the Vietnam War took center stage in American politics. The play became a tragedy scarred by assassinations and other violence. The dissolution of the national coalition that had won the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 complicated the legal struggle. Politics inside the NAACP grew contentious, marred by the same clashes that wracked the culture, and also stymied by the conservative turn of the nation’s courts. In 1968, Steel wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine slamming the Supreme Court and the timorous NAACP fired him.
Steel became a criminal defense lawyer, taking indigent clients and cases around systemic injustice or prison reform. He was an observer during the negotiations of the 1971 Attica prison takeover. He worked on the notorious case of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, who spent nineteen years in prison after being wrongly convicted of murder. After the 1970s, Steel grew disheartened. So much of the injustice he had battled seemed to persist and even deepen. Police brutality, housing discrimination, school resegregation, mass incarceration and the erosion of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause left him disillusioned, though not bitter.
School integration remains a thorny problem that the law could not resolve for long. As long as parents demand “neighborhood schools,” integrated schools must wait on integrated housing, which rests upon “systematic divides at all levels of society,” Steel points out. “Market forces predicated that ‘a good neighborhood’ was a place that would remain forever closed to all but a handful of blacks.” For African Americans mired in substandard housing, this means separate and unequal education in high-poverty schools.
Looking backward from these predicaments, The Butler’s Child traces the racial politics of the last six and a half decades. Steel’s personal voice makes that an absorbing journey. His framing the story with his relationship to an African American family servant made me wince at times; the title sets a high bar for insights about white supremacy that the book doesn’t quite clear. Only Steel’s commendable candor and self-knowledge keep the narrative from dealing in racial clichés.
Nor does he ever resolve the tensions between his career as a radical lawyer and his posh life with homes on Central Park and in the Hamptons. Again, his candor saves him. He notes the old radical anthem that asks, “Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?” His honest response: “To this day I don’t know the answer to that question.”
Any biography or autobiography walks the line between “life” and “times.” This book does a better job with the latter than the former. Given the racial injustice that currently tears the country apart, which Steel describes, why not call readers to join the struggle to which he has given his life? Instead, Steel makes an awkward truce with himself. Was all his earnest striving really about expiating the sins of privilege, and finally deciding it’s okay to enjoy your beach house as long as you have black friends who come visit? The Butler’s Child, a mostly artful episode of the central struggle in American history, suggests that the narrator has been a far better soldier in the struggle than he seems to think.
June 20, 2016
Lewis M. Steel has a long, noteworthy career as a civil rights attorney. He was an observer during the Attica Prison riots; worked for the NAACP during the Civil Rights movement, and later defended boxer Hurricane Carter against a frame-up charge of murder. And I was permitted to read this story free and in advance, thanks to Net Galley and St. Martin’s Press in exchange for this honest review. I rate it 3.5 stars and round upwards; it is now available to the public.
When I first approached this title I expected to see what the life of a butler’s son was like. In fact, Steel’s social class is at the other end of the spectrum. An heir to the Warner Brothers fortune, he spent much of his time in the company of the family butler, and he was deeply affected by the emotional distance that this family servant, whom he had innocently regarded as a father figure, began to demonstrate as Steel grew older. Later, as an adult, he realized that this faithful retainer, an African-American man, surely had a family and life of his own that he went to visit on his two half-days off work, and he began to wonder what he might do to tear down the wall between the worlds of Caucasian families and Black folk. Ultimately he decided to become a civil rights attorney, and he credits the man that helped raise him as a key reason.
The NAACP of the Civil Rights era—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-- was deeply immersed in litigation as a means to end segregation. Again and again, racist judges sat in court, north and south alike, and they told the NAACP to go to hell even when their evidence and research was baldly, plainly in the plaintiff’s favor. The NAACP continued to push litigation over mass action because of a strong conviction that if they could get a case heard by the Supreme Court, relatively liberal in many regards and headed by Chief Justice Warren, then surely justice would be done.
It didn’t shake out that way. Outraged over the way the nation’s highest court failed to provide equal protection to its Black citizens, Steel wrote an article for Time Magazine titled “Nine Men in Black Who Think White”, and was summarily fired from the NAACP, who still wanted to curry favor with that court. Many of his colleagues walked out of the NAACP offices in protest.
A common question among Caucasians that want to fight for the rights of people of color in the USA is what can we do? How can one use this white privilege that exists whether it should or not, to change US laws and society for the better? And this question is raised exponentially when one is an heir, a ruling class scion that can do a tremendous amount for the cause in which he believes.
This reviewer has a friend that found himself in this situation. The distant but only heir of a corset magnate’s fortune, he decided that the best way to seek justice was to walk his talk. Reserving a small percentage of the fortune for himself—which is still a tasty enough chunk to own a middle class home in Seattle, take a vacation abroad annually, and eat in restaurants instead of his own kitchen—he donated the vast majority of his personal wealth to the organization he thought best. He doesn’t live in an all white neighborhood; doesn’t have a household staff; and he does blue collar work on the railroad so that he can talk politics with other working people. Because to help people the most, one needs to be among them and facing similar circumstances to those they face. So he gets up at crazy o’clock in the morning, goes out and gets greasy and banged up with everybody else, and then he goes home and cleans his own house and mows his own grass. He gets that more people listen when you put your life where your mouth is, and he believes the future of the world lies with the working class.
So when Steel commences his hand wringing over how wealthy, how privileged he is and how bad he feels about it, I want to say, Cry me a river. Steel freely admits that he enjoys his lovely home that looks down on Central Park and allows him a lovely view of the Macy’s Parade every Thanksgiving. He enjoys the servants, and his neighborhood is all white. He sent his children to all white private schools even as he fought to integrate the public schools that he wouldn’t let his own children attend in any case.
At one point, Steel mentions that his therapist told him to stop whining, and I wanted that doctor here in the room so I could offer him a high five.
Now that I have addressed the elephant in the room, I have to say that Steel’s memoir, despite the wealthy liberal whining, is worth a read for those interested in Civil Rights history and in particular the part of it that has played out in the courtrooms. You don’t have to like the author to benefit from the treasure trove of information in the pages of this memoir. Steel has been involved in some landmark cases, and he is at his best when he talks about the cases he has taken and how they shook out.
Black lives DO matter, and those of us that think so need all the information available to fight that fight, and there are many worthwhile lessons that still apply right here, this book is worth your time and money regardless of whose memoir it is.
This book was released earlier this month, and is available for sale now.
When I first approached this title I expected to see what the life of a butler’s son was like. In fact, Steel’s social class is at the other end of the spectrum. An heir to the Warner Brothers fortune, he spent much of his time in the company of the family butler, and he was deeply affected by the emotional distance that this family servant, whom he had innocently regarded as a father figure, began to demonstrate as Steel grew older. Later, as an adult, he realized that this faithful retainer, an African-American man, surely had a family and life of his own that he went to visit on his two half-days off work, and he began to wonder what he might do to tear down the wall between the worlds of Caucasian families and Black folk. Ultimately he decided to become a civil rights attorney, and he credits the man that helped raise him as a key reason.
The NAACP of the Civil Rights era—the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People-- was deeply immersed in litigation as a means to end segregation. Again and again, racist judges sat in court, north and south alike, and they told the NAACP to go to hell even when their evidence and research was baldly, plainly in the plaintiff’s favor. The NAACP continued to push litigation over mass action because of a strong conviction that if they could get a case heard by the Supreme Court, relatively liberal in many regards and headed by Chief Justice Warren, then surely justice would be done.
It didn’t shake out that way. Outraged over the way the nation’s highest court failed to provide equal protection to its Black citizens, Steel wrote an article for Time Magazine titled “Nine Men in Black Who Think White”, and was summarily fired from the NAACP, who still wanted to curry favor with that court. Many of his colleagues walked out of the NAACP offices in protest.
A common question among Caucasians that want to fight for the rights of people of color in the USA is what can we do? How can one use this white privilege that exists whether it should or not, to change US laws and society for the better? And this question is raised exponentially when one is an heir, a ruling class scion that can do a tremendous amount for the cause in which he believes.
This reviewer has a friend that found himself in this situation. The distant but only heir of a corset magnate’s fortune, he decided that the best way to seek justice was to walk his talk. Reserving a small percentage of the fortune for himself—which is still a tasty enough chunk to own a middle class home in Seattle, take a vacation abroad annually, and eat in restaurants instead of his own kitchen—he donated the vast majority of his personal wealth to the organization he thought best. He doesn’t live in an all white neighborhood; doesn’t have a household staff; and he does blue collar work on the railroad so that he can talk politics with other working people. Because to help people the most, one needs to be among them and facing similar circumstances to those they face. So he gets up at crazy o’clock in the morning, goes out and gets greasy and banged up with everybody else, and then he goes home and cleans his own house and mows his own grass. He gets that more people listen when you put your life where your mouth is, and he believes the future of the world lies with the working class.
So when Steel commences his hand wringing over how wealthy, how privileged he is and how bad he feels about it, I want to say, Cry me a river. Steel freely admits that he enjoys his lovely home that looks down on Central Park and allows him a lovely view of the Macy’s Parade every Thanksgiving. He enjoys the servants, and his neighborhood is all white. He sent his children to all white private schools even as he fought to integrate the public schools that he wouldn’t let his own children attend in any case.
At one point, Steel mentions that his therapist told him to stop whining, and I wanted that doctor here in the room so I could offer him a high five.
Now that I have addressed the elephant in the room, I have to say that Steel’s memoir, despite the wealthy liberal whining, is worth a read for those interested in Civil Rights history and in particular the part of it that has played out in the courtrooms. You don’t have to like the author to benefit from the treasure trove of information in the pages of this memoir. Steel has been involved in some landmark cases, and he is at his best when he talks about the cases he has taken and how they shook out.
Black lives DO matter, and those of us that think so need all the information available to fight that fight, and there are many worthwhile lessons that still apply right here, this book is worth your time and money regardless of whose memoir it is.
This book was released earlier this month, and is available for sale now.
March 2, 2021
I really appreciate the honesty with which Steel writes. Instead of hiding from his race or his upbringing, he openly acknowledges and grapples with the influence they had on the path that he takes. The reality of Steel’s race, and its impact on him, his actions and his relationships, is always front and center. Steel shows that it’s impossible for he, or any white person, to separate their life from their privileges.
There are a handful of moments and experiences that stuck with me during and after my read. This includes Steel’s time at the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, which came to an end when Steel was fired for writing an Op-Ed critical of the justices on the Supreme Court. After he was fired, the rest of the legal staff resigned. As was the case for much of the book, reading this story brought hard questions to the front of my mind. What is required of a person coming from privilege to work towards justice, and can they cause more harm than good? Does that person have to “prove” that they’re on the path to justice, or can they just expect to help?
As an aspiring lawyer, it was both refreshing and constructive to get an intimate understanding of Steel’s life path. After reading the book, I can say without a doubt that it’s easier to imagine jumping into the public interest/civil rights world. Actually, it’s in no small part because of this book that I feel confident in my decision to leave big law and commit to plaintiff side law. Steel doesn’t make the work or the path seem easy, but it seems necessary. As a white kid, I think there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty associated with trying to help where you’re not wanted. But, fear is crippling, and justice requires hard work.
There are a handful of moments and experiences that stuck with me during and after my read. This includes Steel’s time at the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, which came to an end when Steel was fired for writing an Op-Ed critical of the justices on the Supreme Court. After he was fired, the rest of the legal staff resigned. As was the case for much of the book, reading this story brought hard questions to the front of my mind. What is required of a person coming from privilege to work towards justice, and can they cause more harm than good? Does that person have to “prove” that they’re on the path to justice, or can they just expect to help?
As an aspiring lawyer, it was both refreshing and constructive to get an intimate understanding of Steel’s life path. After reading the book, I can say without a doubt that it’s easier to imagine jumping into the public interest/civil rights world. Actually, it’s in no small part because of this book that I feel confident in my decision to leave big law and commit to plaintiff side law. Steel doesn’t make the work or the path seem easy, but it seems necessary. As a white kid, I think there’s a lot of fear and uncertainty associated with trying to help where you’re not wanted. But, fear is crippling, and justice requires hard work.
December 26, 2016
Interesting autobiography about a man who grew up in great wealth, didn't need to depend on income so chose to become a lawyer for the underserved. Would he have been so idealistic if he needed to depend on a paycheck?
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