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The Help And Society During The Civil Rights Movement

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The Help And Society During The Civil Rights Movement
The Help and Society During the Civil Rights Movement
America during the 1960s was on the verge of change for the equal rights of the colored community. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 the former slaves and colored community continued to be discriminated against and unfairly treated for nearly one hundred years. This was soon to change with the Civil Rights Movement bringing America the change it drastically needed. Kathryn Stockett plays into several themes of the Civil Rights Era in order to use her historical fiction novel The Help to bring attention to the social injustices that occurred during the time, one of the most prominent of them is race. In a culture dominated by white supremacy people of color often held labor-intensive positions with unfair pay and conditions. Jacqueline Jones from The American Prospect states that “...after emancipation, whites attempted to limit blacks to menial jobs.”(citation). The reasoning behind this was in order to keep the colored community in a labor-based economy without any power. You can see how this affects the colored women throughout the novel as they never hold high positions and rarely finished school. At one point Minny is speaking about Civil Rights and says “But truth is, I don't care that much about voting. I …show more content…
By bringing the impression of a true story to her novel, it brought to light the social injustices the people of that time had to endure. Therefore, this allowed the audience to truly connect with the characters of the book. Race has always been one of the most influential factors throughout history, especially at the pivotal time in history that the story is set in. Stockett uses the emotions and hardships to connect the characters in her story with the characters of history, bringing a greater understanding to the
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