Have you seen the movie The Help?  If you have not, see it.

Based on the 2009 historical fiction book by Kathryn Stockett, the 2011 film featured several well known actresses including Emma Stone, Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, Allison Janney, Cecily Tyson, Sissy Spacek and Octavia Spencer.  Spencer won the Academy Award that year for Best Supporting Actress.

It chronicles the way that white folks treated black maids during the early 60’s in Jackson Mississippi.

The scenes document the often atrocious, obnoxious, racist and demeaning treatment that black maids experienced by their white, mostly women employers.

Why am I writing about the film The Help now, some 12 years after it was released, you may ask.

Last week I spent four days in Mississippi including time in Jackson.  On the five hour flight back to Seattle I chose to watch a movie, and because The Help takes place in Jackson, I decided to watch the film again.  I had seen the movie some 10 years earlier.

As I watched the movie on the plane tears started to flow down my cheeks.  In fact, before I knew it, the film had me bawling, really crying.  Luckily, there was no one sitting next to me on either side, so I could cry without disturbing others.

The film brought out such feelings that were inside of me – feelings that have been there for 60 years.

When I think back on the events that occurred during those times, during the Civil Rights Movement —  events that I was touched by — I marvel at what a seismic period of social change it was.  I and others in my age bracket lived through it when we were in our early and late teen years – from 10 to 24 years of age, an impressionable period in anyone’s life.

Some of the events during that time included:

• The 1954 Supreme Court Brown vs. Board of Education decision, leading to the desegregation of schools
• Supreme Court decisions to ban segregation on buses (1956) and in interstate commerce (1960)

• Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955-1956

• The marches and the non-violent sit-ins of the Civil Rights Movement, especially the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965
• The Ku Klux Klan and the associated violence
• The election of JFK in 1960

• The burning of African American churches in Mississippi in 1964

• Martin Luther King’s I have a Dream speech during the March on Washington on the mall in Washington DC in 1963

• The attempts to integrate schools and colleges in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama and the actions of Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas, Governor Ross Barnett of Mississippi and Governor George Wallace of Alabama
• The assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968

• The assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968

• The assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963

• The assassination of Medgar Evers in 1963 in Jackson MS
• The introduction of Negro History courses in colleges in 1962
• The emergence of Malcolm X (1964) and the Black Power movement (1965)

• The Voting Rights Act (1968); the Fair Housing Act (1968), and the Civil Rights Act (1964)

• The urban riots in Watts in Los Angeles (1965), in Detroit (1967) and in Newark New Jersey and other cities in the summer of 1967

The movie The Help brought back for me all of these memories – the anguish, the turmoil, the frustration, the sadness, the emotional exhaustion associated with those memories.

I guess I did not fully appreciate the impact of this time period on me. Obviously, it was and still is significant.  Note that I am saying this as a white man living at the time in the northeast.  I can only imagine what the impact was on an African American living in the deep south or in one of our urban cities.

The other thought that really stands out for me is the fact that my children or for that matter anyone under the age of 50 did not experience any of the seismic events that I outlined earlier.  They have no way of fully understanding or grasping the monumental importance of what happened during that 14 year time period between 1954 and 1968.

This was brought home to me when a few years ago I took my son Guy to visit Dallas Texas.  I took him to the Texas Book Depository which is now a mini museum.  It is the location from which Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy that fateful day in November 1963.  I like many others can remember vividly where I was when I heard the news that day.

As my son and I are walking around the Book Depository I found myself tearing up.  And then I realized that my son was not even born when this assassination happened.  Holy cow!   How can he possibly appreciate, understand and take in the gravitas of that moment, I say to myself.

Watching the film The Help brought back very powerful memories, caused cascades of tears to flow down my cheeks and stimulated me to write this.

What a movie can evoke.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST