The Help

Plots: An aspiring author during the civil rights movement of the 1960s decides to write a book detailing the African American maids’ point of view on the white families for which they work, and the hardships they go through on a daily basis. In early-1960s Jackson, Mississippi, Skeeter (Stone) is a Southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends’ lives–and their hometown–upside-down when she decides to interview the Black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent Southern families. Aibileen (Davis), Skeeter’s best friend’s housekeeper, is the first to open up–to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit Black community. Despite Skeeter’s lifelong friendships hanging in the balance, she and Aibileen continue their collaboration and soon more women come forward to tell their stories–and it turns out that they have a lot to say. Along the way, unlikely friendships are forged and a new sisterhood emerges, but not before everyone in town has a thing or two to say themselves when they become unwittingly–and unwillingly–caught up in the changing times. In 1963 Jackson, Mississippi, with the Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation, budding journalist Eugenia “Skeeter” Phelan returns to her hometown after graduation. But the vibrant, good-hearted white woman doesn’t come home empty-handed: Skeeter has come up with the radical idea to interview local Black maids and tell their side of the story in her book, a collection of their distressing, moving stories. As Skeeter gradually wins the cooperation of the fearful African-American housekeepers to dish the dirt on the upper-crust Southern families, she inevitably locks horns with bigoted community leaders, arrogant childhood friends, and her family. However, nothing can stop the winds of change–not even the assassination of American civil rights activist Medgar Evers.