Where is the help set?

Question

Clémentine Infuhr · Answer

The Help is a historical fiction novel by American author Kathryn Stockett and published by Penguin Books in 2009. The story is about African Americans working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the early 1960s.

A USA Today article called it one of the "summer sleeper hits."[1] An early review in The New York Times notes Stockett's "affection and intimacy buried beneath even the most seemingly impersonal household connections," and says the book is a "button-pushing, soon to be wildly popular novel."[2] The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said of the book: "This heartbreaking story is a stunning début from a gifted talent."[3]

Stockett began writing the novel — her first — after the September 11th attacks.[4] It took her five years to complete and was rejected by 60 literary agents, over a period of three years,[5] before agent Susan Ramer agreed to represent Stockett.[6][7] The Help has since been published in 35 countries and three languages.[8] As of August 2011, it had sold seven million copies in print and audiobook editions,[9] and spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list.[10][11]

The Help's audiobook version is narrated by Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer, and Cassandra Campbell. Spencer was Stockett's original inspiration for the character of Minny, and also plays her in the film adaptation.[6]

The Help is set in the early 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi, and told primarily from the first-person perspectives of three women: Aibileen Clark, Minny Jackson, and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan. Aibileen is a maid who takes care of children and cleans. Her own 24-year-old son, Treelore, died from an accident on his job. In the story, she is tending the Leefolt household and caring for their toddler, Mae Mobley. Minny is Aibileen's friend who frequently tells her employers what she thinks of them, resulting in her having been fired from nineteen jobs. Minny's most recent employer was Mrs. Walters, mother of Hilly Holbrook.

Skeeter is the daughter of a wealthy white family who owns Longleaf, a cotton farm and formerly a plantation, outside Jackson. Many of the field hands and household help are African Americans. Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from the University of Mississippi and wants to become a writer. Skeeter's mother wants her to get married and thinks her degree is just a pretty piece of paper. Skeeter is curious about the disappearance of Constantine, her maid who brought her up and cared for her. Constantine had written to Skeeter while she was away from home in college saying what a great surprise she had awaiting her when she came home. Skeeter's mother tells her that Constantine quit and went to live with relatives in Chicago. Skeeter does not believe that Constantine would leave her like this; she knows something is wrong and believes that information will eventually come out. Everyone Skeeter asks about the unexpected disappearance of Constantine pretends it never happened and avoids giving her any real answers.

The life Constantine led while being the help to the Phelan family leads Skeeter to the realization that her friends' maids are treated very differently from the way the white employees are treated. She decides (with the assistance of a publisher) that she wants to reveal the truth about being a colored maid in Mississippi. Skeeter struggles to communicate with the maids and gain their trust. The dangers of writing a book about African Americans speaking out in the South during the early 1960s hover constantly over the three women.

Eventually, Skeeter wins Aibileen's trust through a friendship which develops while Aibileen helps Skeeter write a household tips column for the local newspaper. Skeeter accepted the job to write the column as a stepping stone to becoming a writer/editor, as was suggested by Elaine Stein, editor at Harper & Row, even though she knows nothing about cleaning or taking care of a household, since that is the exclusive domain of 'the help.' The irony of this is not lost on Skeeter, and she eventually offers to pay Aibileen for the time and expertise she received from her.

Elaine Stein had also suggested to Skeeter that she find a subject to write to which she can be dedicated and about which she is passionate. Skeeter realizes that she wants to expose to the world in the form of a book the deplorable conditions the maids in the South endure in order to barely survive. Unfortunately, such an exposé is a dangerous proposition, not just for Skeeter, but for any maids who agree to help her. Aibileen finally agrees to tell her story. Minny, despite her distrust of whites, eventually agrees as well, and she and Aibileen are unable to convince others to tell their stories. Skeeter researches several laws governing what blacks still can and cannot do in Mississippi, and her growing opposition to the racial order results in her being shunned by her social circle.

Yule May, Hilly's maid, is arrested for stealing one of Hilly's rings to pay her twin sons' college tuition after Hilly refused to lend the money. The other maids decide that they are willing to take a chance with their jobs, and their safety, and join the book project.

Thus the thrust of the book is the collaborative project between the white Skeeter and the struggling, exploited "colored" help, who together are writing a book of true stories about their experiences as the 'help' to the white women of Jackson. Not all the stories are negative, and some describe beautiful and generous, loving and kind events; while others are cruel and even brutal. The book, entitled "Help" is finally published, and the final chapters of "The Help" describes the aftermath of the book's success.

A film adaptation of The Help was released on August 10, 2011.[12] Stockett's childhood friend Tate Taylor wrote and directed the film.[13]

Parts of The Help were shot in Jackson, MS, but the film was primarily shot in and around Greenwood, MS, representing Jackson in 1963.[14]

At the 84th Academy Awards, Octavia Spencer won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in this film. The film also received three other Academy Award nominations: Academy Award for Best Picture, Academy Award for Best Actress for Viola Davis, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Jessica Chastain.[15]

Ablene Cooper, a housekeeper who once worked for Stockett's brother, criticized the author for stealing her life story without her knowledge and basing the character Aibileen on her likeness. Cooper sued Stockett for $75,000 in damages. Cooper also criticized her for making the racist comparison of her character's skin color to that of a cockroach. A Hinds County, Mississippi judge dismissed the case, citing the statute of limitations.[16] Stockett denied her claim of stealing her likeness, stating that she only met her briefly.[16][17]

Yuen Woster · Answer

Despite beginning and ending with ‘the help’, Aibileen (Viola Davis), Tate Taylor’s film of Kathryn Stockett’s best-seller slips almost inevitably into the noble-white-people-helping-the-downtrodden-blacks genre. Comic scenes of social snobbery undermine the genuine horrors of the period, but superb – and Oscar-winning – performances save the day.

The story is set in early 1960s Jackson, Mississippi – where a little of the film was shot – but it was largely made 90 miles to the north, around the comparatively untouched city of Greenwood, on the Yazoo River. And, please remember that many of the film’s locations are private houses, so there’s the usual gentle reminder not to disturb residents.

There’s a clear divide between the haves and have-nots, with the social elite clustering around Greenwood’s Grand Boulevard, the tree-lined thoroughfare running through the heart of its most gentrified district north of the Yazoo.

The house of the cartoonishly ghastly Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), where Minny (Octavia Spencer) avenges years of casual humiliation by serving up the least appetising screen delicacy since Pasolini’s Salo, is 413 Grand Boulevard, while the housewives gather for bridge club in the home of Elizabeth Leefolt (Ahna O’Reilly), a little to the east at 1101 Poplar Street.

There’s a different feel a few blocks to the south, where maids line up to catch the buses to work at Little Red Park, on the junction of Poplar Street and East Adams Avenue.

Only recently married into money, and now ostracised by the cliquish ladies, Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), the ‘tacky’ girl from Sugar Ditch, lives “thirty minutes out of town” at Cotesworth, a gracious home on Old Granada Road, north of Carrollton.

Aspiring writer Skeeter Phelan (Emma Stone) lives with her ailing mother Charlotte (Alison Janney) at the Whittington Farm, 7300 County Road 518 (Money Road). The home’s interior, by the way, was actually filmed in 613 River Road, running along the south bank of the Yazoo.

Also south of the Yazoo, Aibileen’s own modest home is 203 West Taft Street.

The home of the beloved, and unfairly sacked, maid Constantine (Cicely Tyson), which Skeeter belatedly visits, is 1080 County Road 150.

Pursuing her literary career, Skeeter drives into ‘Jackson’, to take a job writing the ‘Miss Myrna’ cleaning advice column for the Jackson Journal. The town is actually Clarksdale, and the newspaper office is that of the Clarksdale Press Register (the town’s actual newspaper), at 123 East 2nd Street.

After deciding to collate untold stories of the local ‘help’, it’s at Mississippi’s State Capitol Building in the real Jackson that Skeeter gets a copy of the state’s old monstrous racial code – the notorious ‘Jim Crow’ laws which institutionalised the strict segregation of black and white.

Repellent as the attitudes of the 50s were, the era’s style has acquired an undeniable charm, no more evident than at Brent’s Drugs, 655 Duling Avenue, in the Fondren District of Jackson, which is the drugstore-diner where the ladies fix up conspicuously single Skeeter with a blind date.

And also in Jackson, you can find the Mayflower Café, 123 West Capitol Street at North Roach Street, the restaurant in which Skeeter gets a second date, over oysters, with rich boy Stuart (Chris Lowell), after her proto-feminist outspokenness sees the first date going horribly wrong.

It’s back to Greenwood for the rest of the film’s locations. The church in which Aibileen is inspired by a sermon on courage, after Minny’s sacking, is Little Zion MB Church, 63530 County Road (Money Road). Incidentally, this is also the last resting place of legendary Blues guitarist Robert Johnson, whose inspired playing was – according to the famous folk legend – the result of a pact with the devil.

The ‘Junior League of Jackson’, where Hilly announces her ‘Home Health Sanitation Initiative’ (that is, a prissy way of demanding outside toilets for blacks), is the Mississippi Garden Club Headquarters, 401 East Market Street; but the ‘Robert E Lee Hotel’ – site of the patronising ‘African Children’s Benefit Ball’, where a little too much alcohol scuppers Celia’s attempt at reconciliation with Hilly, was filmed at two separate locations.

The imposing pillared exterior is Leflore County Courthouse, 306 West Market Street; and the interior is the Old Greenwood Elks Lodge, 102 West Washington Street. ‘Avent and Clark’ the bookstore, where The Help by Anonymous, finally goes on sale, is stationery and gift store A Pocket Full of Posies, 309 Howard Street.

There’s the briefest of detours to Clarksdale to find the supermarket in which Minny and Aibileen realise that the book has become the town’s must-read sensation. It’s Wong’s Foodland, 520 Anderson Boulevard.

Sacked, but having finally broken her silence, the film’s final shot sees Aibileen walk off to a new future, along Greenwood’s Grand Boulevard.

Aspi Umanath · Answer

Since approximately 95% of The Help was filmed in Greenwood, tour requests for Greenwood have dramatically increased. As a result, Greenwood now has its own ”The Help Tour.”

“We plan to have the tour indefinitely,” says Paige Hunt, executive director of the Greenwood Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Steel Magnolias was released in 1989, and the tours are still around.”

Sign up for the Greenwood The Help Tour and you’ll get to see not only the private houses where the movie was filmed, but also favorite hangouts of the cast and crew, such as The Alluvian Hotel, Tallahatchie Tavern, and Webster’s Restaurant.

Each day, more and more tourists, inspired by The Help, continue to come to Mississippi. “I received a call from a lady in Louisiana who is coming here with some girlfriends for a weekend getaway,” shares Hunt. “They’re not just doing The Help tour. They’re taking a class at Viking Cooking School and exploring what Greenwood has to offer. The movie has brought a lot of excitement to our community.”

As icing on the cake, tourists to Greenwood can also stop by the charming indie bookshopTurnRow Book Co. It was a daily hangout for the film’s directors and producers. The bookstore may still have a few signed copies of The Help for you to take home as a special souvenir.

Below is a list of some of the major Greenwood film sites in The Help. Most are private property, so please be respectful if you have a chance to visit them. (The list is from here. You can also view the Greenwood filming locations on a Google Map.)

One of the main film locations in Greenwood is Baptist Town. Many scenes in the movie were shot there. Baptist Town is a historic 100-year old African-American community. It was also once home to blues legend Robert Johnson. In the past few years, this neighborhood has been plagued with problems of drug abuse, youth gangs, unemployment, and a general lack of community focus.

“During the filming in Baptist Town, it became apparent to members of the cast and crew that there was a large amount of potential talent and imagination present within the Baptist Town community,” says Chris Columbus, producer of The Help and director of numerous films, includingHarry Potter 1 and 2, Mrs. Doubtfire and Home Alone.

With the interest and support of the cast and crew of The Help, Baptist Town Community Development was created to rebuild the town and to provide an educational, cultural, and recreational community center for its residents. The goal of the community center is to provide opportunities for community members to learn, develop, and enhance their academic and artistic abilities.

Net proceeds from The Help’s screening in Madison, Mississippi, on July 30, 2011, went to Baptist Town Community Development as seed money for the Baptist Town Community Center. About 1,100 people attended the benefit screening resulted in approximately $150,000 in ticket sales.

The Baptist Town Community Center is the first step in The Baptist Town Revitalization Plan, a master plan for improving the community. “We are incredibly grateful to those who recognized the need for such a plan and have put so much time and energy into these development efforts,” states Greenwood Mayor Carolyn McAdams. “While revitalization of communities in need is an ongoing process, the residents of Baptist Town are encouraged and eager to move forward with improvements to their community.”

Igor Gould · Answer

The film and best-selling novel The Help tells the story of Skeeter Phelan, a white Ole Miss graduate who collaborates on a secret writing project with the Black women who work as maids for white families in 1960s-era Mississippi.

While some have been wary of the story by University of Alabama graduate Kathryn Stockett because it depicts Black females in demeaning, stereotypical roles, others point to the compelling plot and the strong African-American characters.

Filming took place in Mississippi, and the main host cities – Greenwood and Jackson – are still eager to guide visitors to locations from the movie and novel. (Some scenes were also shot in Clarksdale and Greenville). Here’s how to visit The Help filming locations in Mississippi.

Greenwood, a historic Delta town with deep roots in cotton and the blues, is about 90 miles northwest of Jackson and distributes a map and guide to filming locations. The town plays 1960s-era Jackson in the movie. It’s also near a site linked to one of the most notorious and influential moments of the entire Civil Rights Era: the killing of teenager Emmett Till.

While only a few scenes were filmed in Jackson, the capital city has a detailed guide to sites mentioned in the book, from the Junior League headquarters to McDade’s Market.

While most the filming sites in this town of 16,000 are on private property, a fan will definitely recognize city scenes, buildings, exteriors and landscapes. The film-makers liked the frozen-in-time look of the city – including gracious Southern buildings, and “modern” 1960s-era homes.

The major sites are below. Most are private property, so be respectful. You can find a Google map showing them all: here.

Greenwood is located about 10 miles south of Money, one of the notorious spots in U.S. Civil Rights history. It’s the site of Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, which is linked to the 1955 murder of teenager Emmett Till. The boy’s crime? Whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, at the store. Two days later the 14-year-old boy was dragged from his great-uncle’s home and brutalized. His body was later found in the Tallahatchie River. Bryant’s husband and his half-brother were charged with the crime, but acquitted by an all-white jury. Later, they confessed.

Till was visiting from Chicago, and his mother insisted that the funeral have an open casket. Pictures of her son’s mutilated body were seen around the world. The public was outraged and some link Till’s death to the start of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The casket is now displayed at the Smithsonian African-American History Museum, and is one of the most moving exhibits in Washington.

The grocery store has been left as a ruin, and the historic marker has been repeatedly vandalized over the year. But it’s definitely worth the drive to visit a tiny crossroads that changed history.

Greenwood itself has a checkered civil rights past. It’s the birthplace of the White Citizens’ Council, which formed in 1955 to fight desegregation and quickly spread throughout the South. It was considered more socially acceptable than the Ku Klux Klan, often acting behind the scenes with businesses and government.

Greenwood has a surprising array of attractions, and civil rights tour. For more city info, visit the tourism bureau. Find Mississippi travel info here.

Many people come from across country to attend the celebrated cooking school run by Viking Range Corp.

TurnRow Books, an independent book store, was a daily hangout for the film’s directors and producers. The store often has signed copies of The Help, a great souvenir of your visit.

If you want to sleep where the stars stayed, try the Alluvian, a boutique hotel renovated by the local Viking Range Corp. It has won national attention for design, and the Mississippi art gracing the walls. The Thursday night happy hour was a favorite with the Hollywood visitors. The hotel’s also home to Giardina’s, a famed Creole-Italian restaurant serving diners since 1936.

Jackson has been eager to embrace its role in The Help. It has maps and tour routes for fans of the novel, which has been a book-club staple for several years now.

The story’s set in Jackson’s historic Bellhaven neighborhood. Although a work of fiction, many of the sites in the book are real. Click here for a detailed driving tour of the neighborhood sites tied to the novel. This link provide a tour of other Jackson sites from the novel.

And here are all the sites on a Google map, below.

Jackson is worth a visit alone for its comprehensive and stirring Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. It’s modern and interactive , with films narrated by Oprah Winfrey and exhibits that will make you stop in your tracks. You can (and should) easily spend a couple hours here.

Other than the museum, the city’s most important civil rights location is the site of Medgar Evers‘ assassination. The field secretary for the NAACP was shot in his driveway in 1963 hours after President John F. Kennedy gave a speech supporting integration , reacting to Alabama governor George Wallace’s defiant “Stand at the Schoolhouse Door” earlier that day, when he tried to block Black students from enrolling at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. The event, mentioned in The Help, made headlines around the world.

Evers helped lead a boycott against white Jackson merchants, and was a key player in James Meredith’s integration of the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), which outraged many white Mississippians. Evers, who served in the U.S. Army, was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

Evers’ assassin, Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens’ Council, was twice tried and freed when juries were unable to reach a verdict. In 1994, charges were brought again and he was convicted.

Evers’ home, 2332 Margaret Walker Alexander Drive, was recently marked with a Mississippi historic marker. Visitors will notice it does not have a front door. The Evers family thought it would be safer to have an entrance through the carport. Tours of the home are by appointment. To schedule a visit , call 601-977-7839 or 601-977-7710 or email mwatson@tougaloo.edu. Or take a virtual tour below.

You’ll also find a Mississippi historic marker at Jackson’s old Greyhound bus station, 219 N. Lamar Street, where protesters were methodically arrested during the Freedom Rides of 1961.

See more Jackson sites here.

For more information on Jackson, see Visit Jackson‘s online guide, including a comprehensive, downloadable civil rights driving tour.

For an authentic taste of the South, try a pig ear sandwich from the Big Apple Inn in Jackson’s Farish Street Historic District.

Or try the equally famous blackberry cobber from Bully’s Soul Food.

Jackson offers some top dining options, which mix Southern cooking with modern techniques.

Favorites include: Walker’s Drive-Inn, an upscale, James Beard-honored restaurant; Saltine, a fun oyster bar in a former school building; and Manship Wood Fired Kitchen, which combines Southern and Mediterranean flavors.

For a treat, “Help” fans may want to splurge for a stay at the historic Fairview Inn, which housed the cast during filming, and makes an appearance on page 148 of the book. If nothing else, try to stop by for their Sunday brunch.

You’ll find a full array of chain hotels, including the top ranked Hilton Garden Inn Jackson Downtown, in a restored office building

Didi Ellingson · Answer