 When Fields began his tenure at the White House in 1931, senators from the U.S. South frequently addressed him with the racially condescending term "boy", and an obvious racial hierarchy existed between white and black White House house staff, with whites dominating.While the attitudes of most southern U.S. senators would not begin to change until the advent of the Civil Rights Movement, Roosevelt took it upon himself to remove racial tensions among the house staff by making it all black.After his retirement in 1960, Fields published "My 21 Years in the White House," in which he wove together his private papers and cryptic journals, written while serving, with his recollections.