Booker T. Washington dinner at the White House

On 16 October 1901, shortly after moving into the White House, Theodore Roosevelt invited his adviser, the African American spokesman Booker T. Washington, to dine with him and his family, and provoked an outpouring of condemnation from southern politicians and press. This reaction affected subsequent White House practice, and no other African American was invited to dinner for almost thirty years.

Roosevelt, while governor of New York, had frequently had black guests to dinner and sometimes invited them to sleep over.

in 1798 John Adams had dined in the White House with Joseph Bunel, a representative of the Haitian President, and his black wife.

Black people, including leaders such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, had been received at the White House by Presidents Lincoln, Grant, Hayes and Cleveland. At the invitation of First Lady Lucy Hayes, Marie Selika Williams became the first African-American professional musician to appear at the White House.

The following day, the White House released a statement headed, "Booker T Washington of Tuskegee, Alabama, dined with the President last evening". The response from the southern press and politicians was immediate, sustained and vicious. For example, Senator James K. Vardaman (D) of Mississippi complained that the White House was now, "so saturated with the odor of nigger that the rats had taken refuge in the stable"; the Memphis Scimitar declared it "the most damnable outrage which has ever been perpetrated by any citizen of the United States" and on 25 October the Missouri Sedalia Sentinel published on its front page a poem entitled "Niggers in the White House", which ended suggesting that either the president's daughter should marry Washington or his son one of Washington's relatives. Senator Benjamin Tillman (D) of South Carolina said "we shall have to kill a thousand niggers to get them back in their places". The Northern presses were more generous, acknowledging Washington's accomplishments and suggesting that the dinner was an attempt by Roosevelt to emphasize he was everybody's president.

...
Wikipedia