From slavery to the White House, the Ficklin family served presidents for nearly 8 decades

WASHINGTON (AP) — John Wrory Ficklin was 7 when he learned that his father, the son of a slave, was important.

It was 1963, and the nation was mourning President John F. Kennedy. Wrory Ficklin was sitting with his mother and brother, watching funeral coverage on TV in the family's Washington apartment, when she gasped.

His father, John Woodson Ficklin, was wearing a morning suit and standing beside Kennedy's casket with other White House ushers. He was a White House butler at the time, but Kennedy's widow, Jacqueline, asked that he join the ushers that day.

Woodson Ficklin worked a remarkable 44 years on the White House residence staff. His son, Wrory Ficklin, had a lengthy White House career, too — 40 years on the staff of the National Security Council.

Presidents come and go from the White House every four years or eight years, but the Ficklin family — Woodson Ficklin, his wife, some of his brothers and sisters, and son Wrory Ficklin — was a constant presence there for nearly eight decades, serving 13 presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Barack Obama.

One family by the president’s side for one-third of America’s 250-year existence.

With his 2015 retirement, Wrory became the last Ficklin employed there full time, capping a record of family service documented in his book, “An Unusual Path: Three Generations from Slavery to the White House.”

“The book is my family’s history, it's African American history and it's our country’s history," he told The Associated Press in an interview. “My dad and I both stand on my grandfather's shoulders, and I like to think that we both contributed a lot to our country."

The first chapter in what Wrory Ficklin described as a “truly American story” opens with his grandfather, James Strother Ficklin, who was born a slave around 1854 in Rappahannock County, Virginia.

Strother was a water boy for the Confederate army during the Civil War. After emancipation, he did odd jobs for the family that used to own him.

He remarried in 1894 after his first wife died during childbirth, and moved to Youngstown, Ohio, to escape racism in Virginia and earn a living in the booming coal and steel industries. Records showed they returned to Rappahannock some years later, though it was unclear why.

Strother and his second wife, Helen, had saved enough money to buy 37 acres (0.15 square kilometers) of land in Amissville, Virginia, in 1901. He built a house and farmed the land to help feed the family. After Helen died while giving birth, Strother married his third wife, Vallie Lee Davenport, in 1907. They had 10 children — five girls and five boys.

One of those boys was John Woodson Ficklin.

Woodson Ficklin was 15 when he moved to Washington in 1934 to live with an older sister and her husband. He worked odd jobs and went to high school at night, graduating in 1939 — the year an older brother, Charles, began work as a White House butler. Charles Ficklin helped him land a part-time position washing dishes and doing whatever the butlers did not have time to do themselves.

Military service during World War II briefly interrupted their White House careers, but they received promotions after they came home, with Charles Ficklin and Woodson Ficklin becoming head butler and butler, respectively. Woodson Ficklin met President Harry Truman and first lady Bess Truman on his second day as a butler when he served the couple breakfast.

New promotions followed under Dwight Eisenhower, with Charles Ficklin becoming maître d’ — the most senior butler — and Woodson Ficklin taking over as head butler, putting him in charge of six full-time butlers.

Woodson Ficklin succeeded his brother again in March 1967, when Charles Ficklin retired.

Woodson Ficklin was now responsible for the planning and execution of White House social events, ranging from luncheons and state dinners to birthday parties and South Lawn barbecues.

There were visits by British royals and the annual round of Christmas parties, the White House wedding of Richard Nixon's daughter Tricia in 1971, and Gerald Ford's daughter Susan's decision to host her senior class prom at the White House.

Along the way, Woodson Ficklin earned the trust and confidence of the presidents and first ladies who relied on his expertise. Some sent thank-you notes after flawlessly executed events.

First lady Patricia Nixon wrote in October 1969 about “the great number of complimentary remarks we receive following each White House social event,” according to a copy of the letter reprinted in the book. “Our family is most grateful to you for the time and interest you devote to make each occasion so enjoyable and memorable for our guests and for us.”

President Jimmy Carter expressed appreciation in a March 1979 letter for the work Woodson Ficklin and his team did surrounding the signing of an Egypt-Israel peace treaty.

“Everything was perfect and we are grateful,” Carter wrote.

Woodson Ficklin retired in May 1983. In perhaps the biggest show of appreciation for his 44-year career, the Reagans invited him and his wife, Nancy, to a state dinner that year for the emir of Bahrain.

He is believed to be the first member of the White House residence staff to be a guest at a state dinner, and he became the subject of a media blitz as a result. Woodson Ficklin sat at the first lady's table and told an interviewer that she "put me at ease and made me feel like a guest.” Asked about the service, he replied, “Those are my boys. I trained them.”

Woodson Ficklin died in December 1984 at 65.

“Seeing my Dad on television was a big deal, and to see him participating in our president’s funeral service was beyond my youthful comprehension,” Wrory Ficklin wrote. He said years passed before he understood "the severity and the importance” of his father’s work.

Yet Wrory Ficklin ended up doing important work at the White House, too, after a summer job during high school delivering sealed envelopes between the White House and the special prosecutor on the Watergate investigation. He also worked for his father in the pantry during state dinners and other big events.

Wrory Ficklin joined the NSC staff in 1975, beginning a 40-year tenure that overlapped with his father and other family members. He started by working evenings as a clerk while attending college during the day and by 1987 was training new staff.

Under Obama, Wrory Ficklin was promoted to special assistant to the president for national security affairs. He retired in 2015 with a special request for his boss, national security adviser Susan Rice: Could he attend a state dinner, like his dad?

Wrory Ficklin and his wife, Patrice, were invited to the 2015 state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping. With some minor alterations, he wore the tuxedo jacket and cummerbund his father wore in 1983.

The dinner was the highlight of his career, he said.

“Just to experience firsthand the quality of the service, the precision of the butlers, the type of service that they provided, was a legacy to my dad, actually,” Wrory Ficklin said in the interview.

In this 1983 photo provided by The White House, John Woodson Ficklin talks with first lady Nancy Reagan at the White House in Washington. (The White House via AP)

In this 1975 photo provided by The White House, President Gerald Ford speaks with John Woodson Ficklin in the residence of the White House in Washington. (White House Historical Association/The White House via AP)

John Wrory Ficklin speaks during an interview with the Associated Press inside the Decatur House at the White House Historical Society, Feb. 18, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)

In this photo provided by The White House, John Woodson Ficklin and his wife Nancy talk with President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan as they attend as guests at a State Dinner at the White House on July 19, 1983, in Washington. (The White House via AP)

John Wrory Ficklin poses for a photo inside the Decatur House at the White House Historical Society, Feb. 18, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)

In this undated photo provided by The White House, John Woodson Ficklin poses for a photos with President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter at the White House in Washington. (The White House via AP)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV called Monday for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to war.

“Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), Leo’s first encyclical, has been eagerly awaited ever since history’s first U.S.-born pope announced days after his election that he considered AI to be the biggest challenge facing humanity today.

In the text, Leo denounced the “culture of power” driving the AI race, especially in developing ever more sophisticated methods of remote warfare. He declared that it was “not permissible” to entrust irreversible, lethal decisions to AI systems, setting up another flash point between the American pope and the Trump administration, which has worked aggressively to deregulate AI development.

“Artificial Intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death,″ the pope told a special Vatican presentation of the encyclical, one of the most authoritative types of teaching documents a pope can issue.

Experts in the tech industry, academia and Catholic morality said the document will likely become a benchmark in the debate over AI, a point of reference for policymakers, researchers and ordinary folk alike. It comes as the near-daily developments in the technology trigger concerns over AI replacing human jobs and even human intelligence.

Taylor Black, a Microsoft AI executive and director of Catholic University of America’s AI institute, said the document would prompt people “at the forefront of these tools” to ask questions such as “What does it mean to be human?”

The Vatican launch also included remarks by the co-founder of Anthropic, which is currently locked in a legal battle with the Trump administration over access to its AI technology. The Vatican decided to involve Anthropic as part of its decade-long effort to engage Silicon Valley in dialogue over the human cost of AI.

And yet in his text, Leo repeatedly blasted the concentration of power and data in the hands of so few people in the private sector as a danger, especially to children and the most vulnerable, and called for external regulation of their work.

“It is not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract; robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required,” he wrote. “A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few.”

Leo appealed to AI developers and political leaders responsible for regulating them to slow down and reflect on what they are doing. He urged them to use ethical and spiritual guidelines to make the choice to work not for their own profit or power, but the betterment of humanity.

AI competitors OpenAI and Anthropic are the second- and third-most valuable U.S. private companies, each valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, more than the GDP of many nations. Both companies are heading toward near-trillion dollar IPOs.

Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah welcomed Leo's criticism and concern. He said such external checks were fundamental to the technology “going well” for humankind since there is so much at stake — “a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at a very large scale.”

“We need more of the world — religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments — to do what His Holiness has done here: to take this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better direction,” Olah said. “We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.”

In a methodical text, the math major pope traced the history of the Catholic Church’s social teaching and applied its core concepts — justice, solidarity, the dignity of work and the universal destination of resources — to the digital revolution.

“I am convinced that this will prove to be a defining document for our era, a profound and prophetic document,” said Paolo Carozza, law professor at Notre Dame Law School and chair of the Meta Oversight Board.

“Pope Leo is offering a clear, comprehensive, and coherent voice urging us to take responsibility for constructing a world in which technology will serve humans rather than degrade them,” he said.

In its strongest chapters, Leo denounced how AI had helped accelerate the “normalization of war” by desensitizing people to its cost. He didn’t name specific conflicts, but cited “opposing imperialisms, between powers that wish to preserve their supremacy, and those that aspire to seize that supremacy.”

He demanded transparency and accountability by AI developers so that the chain of decision-making command in ordering strikes with AI weaponry is always known. He declared that the Catholic Church’s “just war” theory, which provides specific criteria for when force can be justified, was now “outdated” given the technological advances of warfare.

Leo signed the text May 15, the 135th anniversary of the publication of “Rerum Novarum” (Of New Things), the most important teaching document of Leo’s hero and namesake, Pope Leo XIII. That document addressed workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers owed workers as the Industrial Revolution was underway.

It became the foundation of modern Catholic social thought, and the current pope cited it at the start of his pontificate in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes poses the same existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed over a century ago. “Magnifica Humanitas” thus becomes the latest chapter in a century-long history of popes adapting “Rerum Novarum” to the social questions of their times, often dwelling on the dignity of work for human flourishing.

AI is evoking both existential fears and utopian vision amid an intensifying debate on whether it will become a catalyst that enriches humanity or a technological toxin that dulls human intelligence while wiping out millions of high-paying jobs.

“The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good,” Leo wrote.

Leo extended his concern for upholding human dignity in labor to issue the first-ever papal apology for the Holy See’s own role in legitimizing slavery by giving European sovereigns explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels.”

Vatican officials declined to say who contributed to Leo’s encyclical. But Vatican and church officials have been engaged in a dialogue with Silicon Valley tech firms for a decade.

The decision to include Anthropic at the Vatican launch was criticized by some who considered it a papal stamp of approval of the AI firm, which is currently suing the Trump administration after it ordered all U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology for its refusal to allow the U.S. military unrestricted use of it.

Brian Boyd, U.S. faith liaison for the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, read the inclusion of Anthropic’s co-founder Olah as a recognition of its prominence in the field and as similar to a papal audience with a head of state: not an endorsement.

Anthropic is an “enormous corporation that is taking onto itself an enormous risk and responsibility,” Boyd said, adding that the company has “demonstrated genuine goodwill and integrity and interest in dialogue.”

Winfield reported from Middletown, Connecticut, and Huamani reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writers Kelvin Chan in London and Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Pope Leo XIV, left, attends the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV, left, attends the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah speaks during the presentation of Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV attends the presentation of his first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV, left, greets Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah during the presentation of the Pope's first encyclical, "Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence," at the Vatican, Monday, May 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)

Pope Leo XIV waves to faithful at the end of the Pentecost Mass in St. Peter's Basilica, at the Vatican, Sunday, May 24, 2026. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)