Lillian Rogers Parks was an housemaid and seamstress in the White House who, with the journalist Frances Spatz Leighton, co-authored three White House memoirs, My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House (1961), a children’s book: It Was Fun Working at the White House (1969), and The Roosevelts: A Family in Turmoil (1981).
In 1979 her first memoir, which detailed life in the White House from the William Howard Taft to the Dwight D. Eisenhower administrations, was made into an Emmy-nominated miniseries Backstairs at the Whitehouse. It starred Leslie Uggams, Olivia Coles, and Louis Gossett, Jr. in the roles of White House staff and Julie Harris as Helen Herron Taft, Claire Bloom as Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, Larry Gates as Herbert Hoover and Eileen Heckart as Eleanor Roosevelt.
The Homes
1846 Vernon Street, Washington, DC
Lillian Rogers Parks
1846 Vernon Street, Washington DC
Located in Sheridan/Kalorama neighborhood, Northwest - East of Rock Creek