BUTLER, THE (Forest Whittaker)

In 2009, an elderly Cecil Gaines recounts his life story while waiting at the White House to meet the newly inaugurated president. Cecil was born and raised on a cotton plantation in Macon, Georgia to Black sharecroppers during the Jim Crow era. In 1926, when Cecil was seven, the white landowner, Thomas Westfall, rapes Cecil's mulatto mother, Hattie. Cecil's father, Earl, confronts Thomas and is killed. Cecil is taken in by Thomas' elderly mother, Annabeth, who is also the estate's matron. Annabeth trains Cecil to be a house servant.

In 1937, at age 18, Cecil leaves the plantation. Desperately hungry, he breaks into a hotel pastry shop. The elderly master-servant Maynard takes pity on him and gives him a job. Cecil learns advanced serving and interpersonal skills from Maynard, who later recommends Cecil for a position in a Washington, D.C., hotel. While working there, Cecil meets and marries Gloria, and the couple have two sons, Louis and Charlie.

In 1957, Cecil is hired by the White House during Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. White House maître d'hôtel Freddie Fallows introduces him to head butler Carter Wilson and co-worker James Holloway. Cecil witnesses Eisenhower's reluctance to use troops to enforce school desegregation, then his resolve to uphold the law by racially integrating Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas.

Louis, the Gaineses' elder son, becomes a university student at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, although Cecil feels that the South is too volatile. Louis joins the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), activist James Lawson's student program, which leads to a nonviolent sit-in at a segregated diner, where he is arrested. Gloria, who feels that Cecil puts his job ahead of her, descends into alcoholism.