The Help

This summer, one of the books I read was The Help, by Kathryn Stockett.  I also got to see the movie the first week it was out. 

The story is set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962-1963, with the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement.  It is historical fiction.  The main character is a young white woman who decides to write a book that highlights the life-experience of the black domestic servants in her town.  To do so, she enlists the help of first 1, then 2, then many who share their stories with her.  Eventually their book gets published and read by just about everyone in town.  Of course, this stirs a pot which is already boiling.

The movie does a very good job of depicting the story in the book, but as is usually the case, the book has a lot more complexity than the movie.  Some things in the book are de-emphasized in the movie, some are left out totally, and at least 1 key issue in the book is changed. 

I loved the book so much that I was sad when I finished it.  I could hardly wait to see the movie, and I enjoyed it as well, in spite of the fact that I cried at several points.  This is absolutely something I will encourage friends to read and see, and I will recommend it to my students as well.  My freshmen always read To Kill A Mockingbird  in the fall, and this movie will be a great supplement to that book.

I found several connections to this story which made it more meaningful to me than it might be to others.  When I was a child growing up near Dayton, OH, 2 of my great aunts had black domestic help.  The woman I remember the most was named Henrietta, and she worked for my Aunt S. and Uncle H.  There was also a black man who did yard work and was sort of a handyman for them.  His name was John, and he was related in some way to Henrietta.  Then Henrietta’s daughter Anna also worked first for my Aunt K, and then later for my grandmother. 

Henrietta worked for my great aunt and uncle for many years, and she had replaced a woman named Geneva (the 2 women were cousins) who had also worked for them for many years, starting around 1940.  It seems her main tasks were to clean, do laundry/ironing and cook. She worked until about 3 pm each week day.  There were always fresh homemade cookies available.  Geneva was like a member of the family to them, and Uncle H. paid for her funeral when she passed away around 1954.  Both Geneva and Henrietta were known for being excellent cooks.  When I was a child, it was common for Aunt S. to have big family gatherings at her home, and Henrietta usually did most of the cooking.  I think Aunt S worked with her though, moreso than we see depicted in The Help.

I was around these people in the early ‘60s, until about 1967 when we moved away (I was 8 when we moved away).  During those years, these servants were the only black people I had any interactions with.  Henrietta always treated me very kindly and called me “Miss Amy”.   She was a very large woman with a big gold tooth that showed when she talked and smiled.  Whenever I saw her, she was wearing a uniform.

Anna worked for my grandmother into at least the mid ’70s and mostly did cleaning and laundry/ironing.  Grandma always said she did the best ironing of anyone she’d ever known.  I don’t think Anna did much cooking for Grandma.  I remember that she rode the city bus to my grandmother’s house once a week.  She always wore a blue uniform dress with a white collar and white shoes that I usually associated with nurses.  Anna and Grandma would have lunch together at the kitchen table and talk about everything under the sun.  I think they actually became quite good friends, and they were very much mutually respectful of each other.

John was the largest man I had ever seen, and was also the darkest black person I had ever seen.  His eyes were quite large and very white in contrast to his skin.  Because of his size and dark color, I was always scared of him, so whenever he was around, I usually went somewhere else.

I don’t know how the issue of the help using the family bathroom was handled at my Aunt S’s house.  That house had a finished basement with a bathroom near the laundry room, so it is possible that was the bathroom for the help, but knowing my aunt and uncle as I did, it is hard for me to imagine that being an issue for them.  I do know that my Aunt K only had one bathroom, and I know that my grandmother’s helper used her main bathroom as well. 

It seems to me and based on what I’ve learned from my cousin that many middle class white families in Dayton had black domestic help from as early as the 1930’s into the 1970’s, although I think the practice was fading fast in the late ’60s and early ‘70s after the Civil Rights Movement.