I’m reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a book about black women who ran the homes and raised the children of wealthy white women for little pay and zero respect. I haven’t finished it yet, but the premise is that a white woman risks the the lives of two of these women by helping them write their story about what it’s like to serve in a white house and raise white children at the mercy of demanding white women.
It’s crazy to me that the common belief was that African Americans were diseased and contagious, and yet white families felt perfectly comfortable handing their children over to be raised by these women. My only hesitation with this book is continued portrayal of these women as that stereotype for “mammy” that has been developed over time.
I watched a show last week where an African American man was attempting to trace his genealogy back to Africa. He learned that his great great great great grandmother was sold into slavery when she was eleven years old. ELEVEN YEARS OLD! It was common practice to enslave these young girls and raise them to be “breeders” in an effort to ensure a white family might never run low on slaves.
I know none of this is new or groundbreaking information. I’ve read plenty of books like this, watched plenty of documentaries, but sometimes it just hits me different. How is this even the same planet? How did we allow this to go on for so long? How was an eleven year old girl not SEEN as an eleven year old girl?
And if I were born in those times, would I have just blindly followed suit? I’m glad I don’t have to live through that era to find out.
{ 60 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m going to have to find this book. Interesting that you bring up how they were thought to be diseased, yet there wasn’t a second thought to handing your child and home over to them to take care of.
I have often wondered the same… if I had been alive during that time would I have risked my own life or comfortable living to stand up and be kind to the black population? Or would I have sat back and quietly disagreed with it? I stand up for what I believe in now…. so I’m hoping I would have then too.
I’ve tried explaining segregation & Civil Rights to my kids. They don’t get it. I would love to tell them that the opinions & beliefs they learn about aren’t stil alive, but living in the South we see it daily.
I also hate to admit that I had a Mammy growing up. She was my grandmother’s housekeeper & would keep me as well if she ever had to leave the house or run errands.
My husband and I both read this book and liked it very much. I was very surprised that this terrible treatment of blacks still went on in the 60s. Here is a link to our review if you get a chance to stop by: http://ourstack.blogspot.com/2010/07/help-by-kathryn-stockett.html
I read this book back in the spring and I really loved it. I was surprised by a lot of it, but I loved it.
I read it, loved it and didn’t want it to end.
And we still do have stuff like this going on in other countries. Girls kidnapped and sold into the sex slave market. Very, very sad.
I read this book and I absolutely loved it. I can’t even read the newspaper ads you’ve shown here without feeling like throwing up. How ABSURD and idiotic were these white people, who made seperate bathrooms for their nanny’s? These wonderful women who were RAISING their children? Cleaning their home, and cooking for them every single day of their lazy assed lives? SO sad.
Isn’t it just amazing how things chane in such a short period of time. Kind of makes ypun wonder what things we do now that will be met with amazement in 10 or 20 years.
I read this book too. It’s worth finishing.
I read this amazing book. It was our Book Club book. What an interesting read! The characters seemed to step right off the page! Loved it.
I also saw the show you are talking about. Very shocking, but interesting.
It still stuns me when I read the stories of the families back in that time. It wasn’t too long before I was born that there were still separate drinking fountains in use.
I grew up with a step-father that continuously referred to people as G-D N***ERS and once proudly proclaimed that he would never buy a product that had a G-D-N in their commercial. I am embarrassed just thinking about it as it was so foreign from the way I was raised before he came along.
His outbursts made it even more important to me to treat people …ALL people as people. Not stereotypes, not colors, just people. You don’t have to be a certain color to be a jerk, as my very white step-father proved so often.
I only wish I could see his reaction when he finds out that my son is in a wonderful, loving relationship with a beautiful (inside and out) and bright African American girl. I am fairly certain the old mans head would explode right then and there.
Kat, I truly believe – with all my heart – that had I been alive during this time, I would have thought slavery was wrong. And that’s what eventually happened – people could not take the injustice any more. Slaveowners’ wives would let slaves escape… people rose up to speak out… a war began. We hear about it and are a little desensitized to it.. but reading personal stories – so heartbreaking.
I’ll echo the comment above. Sex slavery is so prevalent in our own country. The main difference is – besides it being obviously illegal – is that it is not the social norm.
If you have a moment, you might like to check out love146.org. It’s a grassroots organization devoted to freeing children from sex slavery. Some of their testimonies are amazing.
It blows your mind how they were seen as animals, right? I just don’t see how people couldn’t have seen: their features are the same, they are humans, they bleed, poop, breathe, and eat the same. It’s just strange to know about. I’m with you though, I’m thankful I don’t have to live through that time to find out if I would have just gone along with it or seen it as wrong.
Hard to believe that girls and boys are still sold into slavery today, too.
I read that and technically, Skeeter didn’t risk the lives of the two women. They risked their own. She didn’t make them do it. But I loved the book and it was completely startling and then I felt bad that it WAS startling, you know???
HM
Blogging, blogs to read, 3 kids, childcare, husband, house…WHEN do you have time to read? I have the same, except only 2 kids and no blog of my own…. and would fall dead asleep on page 2 of anything I tried to sit down and read. :o)
I read The Help too, and I really liked it. I am half Puerto Rican and a quarter Samoan, and I’m often asked if I’m black. But I was raised by my mom, who looks white, and my stepdad, who is white, and they have four children together, who all look white. I grew up in New York City, and people frequently assumed I was my siblings’ nanny. It’s kind of frightening that if I’d lived pre-Civil War, I’d probably be a social pariah, or worse. Even if I’d grown up in the sixties, my life would be totally different than it is now. My husband’s mother is white and his father is Samoan, and is very dark-skinned. They encountered a great deal of prejudice when they got married (I think in the early to mid-1960s).
I’m just grateful to be alive now. Even though things are far from perfect and so many inequalities still exist, there have been so many changes for the better.
I just finished that book last month too. I loved it. In fact there was one point where I just had to put it down the tension was so great. I couldn’t bear to read any more just before going to sleep.
I noticed that the last image was from St. Louis. I live south of there.
Missouri was on the fence about slavery – some areas of the state approved of it; others, not so much. It is said that the very land I live on is slave burial ground, and that a stone house (across the street from where I get my mail each day) had a tunnel for slaves to escape to the Mississippi River, where they headed North.
It’s supposed to be haunted here.
I am also in the midst of The Help–about two-thirds through. As I’m reading I keep asking myself, would I have been a Hilly or a Skeeter? I hope I would have been a Skeeter but I really don’t know. Maybe I would have been a Celia!
The other thing that boggles my mind is that this WASN’T THAT LONG AGO! The 60s wasn’t like some other century. It’s amazing to see how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go.
P.S. I’m in awe of Kathryn Stockett for writing her first novel and totally knocking it out of the park!
I found some audio files of former slaves talking about their lives (recorded during the Depression). I want to visit the museum that houses the exhibit when I visit the capitol in two weeks.
http://www.mostateparks.com/statecapcomplex/statemuseum/se_audio.htm
I love this book. What was amazing to me about it was the time period that it was set in. There’s another I just read…Same Kind of Different as Me. And it’s amazing that as recently as the 1900s there were conditions like this.
Chocolate cake anyone? Or haven’t you gotten that far. Don’t want ot ruin it. LOL
People wonder just how they would have reacted “back then” … when people were being mistreated for something they had no control over (the color of their skin).
People may as well take a look at how they react today because this problem is far from gone. Just ask a gay person.
Isn’t it amazing how short of a time ago that was? I haven’t read the book but it’s amazing to me that people were bought and sold.
it breaks my heart. I can’t fathom.
I read that book – keep going – they are much more than mammies. I still have trouble accepting that this was going on when I was a young adult, but I was a northern girl and we didn’t experience it firsthand. It took a long time and a lot of hard work and the sacrifice of lives (literally and figuratively) to change things, and still some of it persists. There have been a lot of changes in attitudes during the life of our country, and many more to come, I’m sure.
I loved that book. It took me a while to get through it because I just soaked up every word. So thought-provoking and an incredible read.
It’s disturbing for me that so many young people do not know much about this ugly part of our history and now many high schools are beginning their history studies with Reconstruction–meaning that they are not learning much about this. Where I teach, they’re cover early US History-Civil War at the middle school level and then pick up with Reconstruction during their junior year. As a result, they know next to nothing about that period of History. Until they walk into my classroom and I begin my To Kill a Mockingbird instruction by discussing the Antebellum South and the Civil War then taking them through to the Great Depression and on to the Civil Rights Movement. It is an eye-opening experience for them.
I know, and that makes me wonder what our blind spots are now–what are the attitudes prevalent in current society that one day we will ask (or our grandkids), how in the world could we have missed that? (Someone else probably already said that, but it’s way too late to be reading comments.)
What makes the situation much worse is that it was not that long ago, honestly, that we ended slavery. Worse yet? There are still instances (especially here in Oklahoma) where there is a common (yet “hidden”) interest in the idea of African Americans being slaves still, and women shutting up and cooking and making babies. This whole scenario is not completely gone…
I have to find this book sounds
like everyone enjoyed reading it I love a good book..
what a sad story though
I too have always wondered what made one slave more human than the others, that they would be comfortable enough to allow wet nurses and mammies take care of their kids.
That last article is intruiging, I wonder if they ever got away or got captured?
Great post!
excellent book!
and really impressive as it’s the author’s very first book.
Finished the book on Wednesday, and was sorry to see it end. I hope that Hilly went crazy and became the cat lady who everyone in town avoids. :) It was a beautifully written book, and I am hoping to read more from this author. Some of my favorite books have been Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and Roots. My MIL found an old library copy of Roots that had been pulled when it was removed from the shelves…..It. Was. Mind blowing. A phenomenal book.
wow – loved the post! (I stumbled onto your blog by browsing other blogs).Very interesting and sad. it IS hard to believe there was a society such as this.
I read The Help. That is a excellent book-trust me these women find their voice!!!
I read The Help. That is a excellent book-trust me these women find their voice!!! Chad & I went to the Atlanta History Museum and I was asking myself the same exact questions as you posed here. The ability of the human race to be cruel to one another never ceases to be completely terrifying.
It is hard to believe that that kind of thing went on.. However, there were a LOT of ‘white’ people who thought it was wrong and helped ‘slaves’ escape. What is really sad to me, is that there are people in the world today who are treated that poorly..
I am always appalled at what used to go on in the world of slavery. We went to Charleston, SC a few years ago while visiting my family and we went to the place where slave trade used to take place. The whole place was turned into a “Market” but I was so saddened by the feelings I got when we learned about it on a carriage ride. I often wonder what I would have done back then. Would I be appalled like I am now or would I have found it acceptable? Scary for me to think I would think differently. I hope I would.
*I mean I hope I would feel like I do now…appalled.
I took an African-American literature course while in college and it changed me forever. I was a few years out of high school and learned for the first time the real truth and lives of slaves. We were taught about slavery in high school, yes, but it was glossed over. Our history as humans is filled with many appalling events that make us question now in this day and age how the people of the time just accepted it as norm. That is the scary thing. Yet, we still have a long way to go…
I saw that episode of Who Do You Think You Are. Amazing. Terrifying that in Africa, slave trading STILL goes on!! I was shocked, heartbroken, and horrified to learn about the trafficking of children. :(
Well said. I would love to think I would have stood for justice regardless of the cost to myself, but I seem to be able to put up with a lot of atrocity today. I may occasionally blog from my soapbox, put me in a room with a starving, or sexually exploited human being, and my shame will tell me I don’t do enough.
Thank you for a book title – will put this on my list of books to read. I read “Classic Slave Narratives” several years ago – I’m sure some of the narratives were edited to keep from offending the sensibilities of the predominantely white, female readers.
When researching my husband’s family, I discovered they had been slave owners. It was very sad to me to find “slave census” records – and rather than put the names of the slaves on the census, they were only counted as 1 negro woman, age 40; 1 mulatto man, age 21, for example. I had mixed feelings about putting the records online – would people be offended? Would those searching for their ancestors, who had been slaves, be glad to find something that might indicate that “1 negro woman, age 40″ could be part of their tree? I didn’t know – so I sent the records to a web site for African-American ancestry, anyway.
Yes – slavery is very much glossed over. “The Lost German Slave Girl” is a very interesting read, as is “Slave: My True Story” by Mende Nazer and Damien Lewis . The first title is an account of a German girl who was separated from her family, of dark complection, mistaken for a slave. The second title was published in 2003, and is a modern-day account.
I LOVED The Help… as someone said when I wrote about it on my blog, when I finished, I wished I could read it all over again for the first time. It’s interesting, now that I live in the south, learning about the different dynamics that I was largely sheltered from up north. The school in which I teach was originally a segregated school for black children.
it’s really heartbreaking. and it’s really important that we don’t forget.
I am on the waiting for this title on audiobook – cannot wait to read it!
Your blog is so much fun! And your kids are adorable! I’m officially stalking you now. (that was supposed to sound funny, but it just sounds kind of creepy huh.) ;)
Forgot to be relevant to ‘This’ post.
My grandmother grew up in the South in the 1930′s and she shared many stories. I’m going to make it a point to finally get & read this book.
Hard to believe people lived through these times and said nothing. Or maybe they were afraid to? I’m sure there were tonnes of what closet “ni**er lovers” as we would have been so endearingly referred to…
I took an African American History class my last quarter in college, and it was the most life-changing experience I’ve ever gone through. It was mostly writing/reflection. I can’t tell you how angry and shocked I was to learn, in such depth and detail, the atrocities that were inflicted upon the African American community. Not only in the era of slaves, but pre-Civil Rights as well. It truly made me immensely sad. And made me want to move to Greenland (they’ve never hurt anybody).
I have the book sitting here to read. It is a very painful subject so I am waiting until I am in right mood to read…
I live in an old home with a small, cramped kitchen that is serviced by its own set of shabby stairs leading to ‘servants quarters’. The time was such that help was kept out of the way and in poor conditions YET entrusted to raise your kids.
Uh I know!!! And I live in Alabama of all places. When I moved here the racism that STILL EXISTS is so common! It makes me want to puke! They do NOT celebrate Martin Luther King Day but get this… everyone gets Jefferson Davis’ birthday off AND there is a big event at the governor’s mansion for it. I get why Alabama would want to celebrate Jefferson Davis but you’d think Martin Luther King would be way more important here (in Montgomery) of all places! I mean hello?! Selma to Montgomery march? Right in my backyard practically! But it’s a measly little holiday here. I can’t imagine what it was like when slavery was legal because the racism that exists now is so bad!
I, too, read this book not very long ago, and I thought this author brought such a fresh and unique perspective to race relations in our country. I rarely cry when reading literature, but found myself moved to tears by the power of the emotions in this story.
I live in a middle- to upper-middle class area, and I couldn’t help but wonder, who among my social circle would have been the ones to employ ‘help’? Because certainly, I would easily count myself as one who would *never* ‘stoop’ to such a level as the white women in this book. But when you think about the times, and the social mores that prevailed, I think it begs the question, ‘Would I be better? *Could* I be better?’ I can’t answer in the definitive (because I think you never know for certain until you are *in* a situation yourself), but I wholeheartedly hope the answer would be a resounding “YES!!!”
You didn’t say in your post where you are at in your journey with this book, but I so hope you enjoy it. If nothing else, it is a testament to great writing, in that it makes you think — and think deeply. The author has created characters that remain in your conscience, and keep you thinking long after you have closed the page on the last chapter. I thought Kathryn Stockett did a brilliant job of portraying the perhaps lesser-known nuances of race relations during the early 1960′s; kudos to her accomplishment. I hope you find it as rewarding and thought-provoking as I did.
My 9 y/o daughter and I just read your post and we both decided that if we lived back then, we’d be against slavery – it’s just wrong. We realize that ‘back then” it was just the way people thought and we are both glad that today, things are much, much different.
pam and mackenzie
I just finished this book, and I loved it. I too am amazed when I see rampant prejudice like this. The thinking doesn’t make sense to me, so I can’t understand the justification. African Americans had to use different drinking fountains and use different bathrooms because they supposedly had diseases, however, they could raise your children just fine.
I still remember the first time I realized how bad racism is. I watched “Roots” on TV, and for weeks afterward I couldn’t get it out of my head. I couldn’t believe you could be killed because of the color of your skin. So I like to tell myself that I would have always been able to see that a person is a person no matter their outside appearance.
The sad thing is that I think I am still prejudice in a different way. Like when I see a homeless man coming up the street toward me, I automatically clutch my purse and want to cross to the other side of the street. Don’t you think that now days people are more prejudice against people with low socioeconomic status than to whatever their race is?
I absolutely LOVEd THE HELP. It really resonated with me as well. Maybe because it took place in the 60′s, which really isn’t so very long ago. I just started this book that I bet you’d love. It’s called CANE RIVER. The author quit her job at a Fortune 500 company to research her family…..initially to find out if her great great grandmother was born into slavery or not. She ended up writing a novel about her ancestors……drawing from her own family, she wove a story that seems pretty compelling so far…..
I know. The mind? It boggles. Can’t even wrap my brain around that mindset.
To previous commenter Mandi – I lived in Birmingham for about a year and that was not the norm there. Don’t write the whole state off as racist. There are definitely different experiences to be had there!
Wow–I read this book too in the past couple weeks (and reviewed it on my blog). I loved it! I love how the perspective changed and you could hear the voice of both two African American servants and also the voice of a young white woman who was able to break some longstanding barriers.
I haven’t read this book, but from what you and the other commenters have mentioned about it, you might also like “Same Kind of Different as Me” by Ron Hall and Denver Moore–it’s true story of lives that originated in the more modern sharecropper life–from different perspectives, and how they came to know one another. Excellent book.
Thanks for sharing this. I’m an African-American from Alabama and I appreciated the authors interpretation of that time. Alabama and Mississippi are often compared as having similar racial environment and I’d have to agree. I’ve had family members who have told me stories of taking care of white families’ kids and the twisted and outrageous social norms of racism that prevailed then. While things have certainly progressed in the South since that time, the remains of the Jim Crow system and slavery are still very apparent, even today.
After reading The Help and seeing how popular it has become, I hope more people are able to understand the lasting impact that slavery and Jim Crow laws have had on race relations.