Irvin McDuffie

Irvin McDuffie

Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library

Quick Facts

Significance:

Valet to Franklin Roosevelt

Place of Birth:

Elberton, Georgia

Date of Birth:

March 14, 1882

Place of Death:

Atlanta, George

Date of Death:

January 30, 1956

Irvin Henry McDuffie was born in Elberton, Georgia on March 14, 1882. Little is known of his parents other than that his mother had been a slave. He had a little schooling as a child, but only later, as a young adult, attended Paine College in Augusta Georgia for one year and thereafter took night classes when he could. At age fifteen, he began shining shoes at a barber shop where he eventually learned his trade. In 1900 he moved to Atlanta and married his first wife about 1902. The couple had one son, Joseph A. McDuffie (b. 1904), later described as “an invalid in a New York hospital.”¹

From 1904 to 1906, McDuffie was valet to Erich Zoepffel-Quellenstein, Imperial Consul General for the Weimar Republic, then serving his diplomatic mission at Atlanta, Georgia.² He later became manager of the McDuffie Herndon barbershop, which was bankrolled by the African American barber-turned-businessman Alonzo Herndon of the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. Most of the shop customers were white.³

McDuffie’s wife died about 1909. Soon after he met Elizabeth Hall. They married in 1911 after a two-year courtship. Elizabeth would later find employment as a maid at the White House and developed her own personal relationship with FDR, even taking an active role in campaigning for Roosevelt among African American voters.

Following a leg injury at the barber shop, standing for long hours became difficult, as described by Elizabeth McDuffie in her unpublished manuscript:

The world knows the true story of the life of Frank D. R. in regard to his incapacitation to walk alone after having recovered from infantile paralysis. But very little is known of how Irvin McDuffie, the valet who served him twelve years, became incapacitated to the extent that he could no longer stand for hours on terrazzo floors, and follow the trade that he had hoped to make his life’s vocation. He was a tonsorial artist and a masseur. He was scalded at the barber shop, and following this accident, he had to slow down.⁴

At the suggestion of his physician, McDuffie began to consider a career change in 1926. He heard from one of his customers that Franklin Roosevelt was looking for a valet at his home in Warm Springs, Georgia. On May 1, 1927, McDuffie met FDR at Warm Springs for an interview and “After ten minutes of conversation,” McDuffie recalled, “we closed the deal.” FDR did not initially require McDuffie’s services when he returned to New York. Mac stayed at Warm Springs to manage the barber shop that had been established for the use of the patients.

When McDuffie later accompanied FDR back to New York, Elizabeth stayed in Atlanta. After living apart for four years while he worked for then-Governor Roosevelt in Albany, the presidency offered McDuffie a chance to reunite with his wife under the same roof—the third floor of the White House’s East Wing.

McDuffie was impressed with Roosevelt’s enormous energy. “He can work five men to death while he lies in bed,” McDuffie said of FDR.⁵ He traveled with the President on official government missions and vacation trips. “McDuffie accompanies the President on all of his trips over land or water but stated that he was not ready to fly yet, so when the President made his aerial flight to Chicago to accept his nomination, McDuffie was left behind.”⁶

In 1939, McDuffie left the White House before FDR announced he was running for a third term, saying, “I just figured that with things as uncertain as they are, I’d better get me a regular job while the getting was good.” But McDuffie had developed a serious drinking problem, and Eleanor Roosevelt, whose own father and brother had fallen to alcoholism, recognized the potential problems that might occur should McDuffie remain in a position so crucial to the president. “During the latter part of FDR’s second term,” Jill Watts writes, “McDuffie’s drinking had worsened, and on occasion he was too incapacitated to answer the president’s call.” Eleanor convinced her reluctant husband that it was time for a new valet. McDuffie himself said that he suffered a nervous breakdown, that the president “wore him out,” but emphasized that he remained friends with the president and supported him politically.⁷

McDuffie took a new job with the U.S. Treasury Department from 1939-1945 where he advanced to the position of Head Messenger. He died on January 30, 1956 on what would have been FDR’s 64th birthday. His obituary in the Jackson Advocate reported “It is generally known that he idolized the late president and that they were mutual friends.”⁸
 

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NOTES

¹ Jackson Advocate. February 02, 1946, p. 8. According to the 1950 US Census, Joseph was a patient at the Rockland State Hospital in Orangeburg, New York.

² The Atlanta Georgian, June 01, 1906.

³ Kevin M. Burke, Robert Heinrich, and Steven J. Niven, The Roosevelts and African American Civil Rights Leaders, Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University in association with the National Park Service, p. 76.

⁴ Unpublished manuscript. “Legs”

⁵ “Is Given Reward by Newspaper as Key Cog.” Amsterdam News, March 19, 1938.

⁶ The Northwest Enterprise, July 20, 1933.

⁷ Burke, et. al., The Roosevelts and African American Civil Rights Leaders, p. 82. See also Jill Watts, The Black Cabinet: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics during the Age of Roosevelt (New York: Grove Press, 2020), 397.

⁸ Jackson Advocate. February 02, 1946, p. 8.