The Civil Rights Movement Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Civil Rights Movement - Research Paper Example This was while the latter had no time to care for their own families. This paper will examine the novel The Help, connecting its themes and events to those of the civil rights movement and other relevant issues. The Help offers insight into the provocative subject of racial, gender and class segregation during the civil rights movement era. Stockett’s novel is an intriguing novel that examines the lives of black maids during the civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Stockett shows the relationship between African Americans and the whites as a complex continuum of abuse, mistrust, hate, dependence, attachment and shockingly, love. Notably, Stockett wittingly portrays this array of emotions in a humorous and agile manner. However, her expression at the end of the novel shows that portraying these mixed emotions was not an easy feat. In a personal excerpt at the novel’s conclusion, Stockett notes that there is no trickier subject for a Southern writer than that of love between a white and a black person within the imbalanced world of segregation. Nonetheless, Stockett portrays these emotions with equal degrees of seriousness and humor. However, the absence of reference to one of the most critical mass struggles of the South gives a sense of inaccuracy with regard to the novel. The mass struggle in this case refers to that which shattered the Jim Crow structure in the South during the civil rights movement. ... Prior to the year, 1965, African Americans sought to break state disfranchisement but were unsuccessful. However, the motiveless attack of peaceful marchers by state troopers, in Alabama, forced Congress and President Johnson to counter the resistance of Southern legislators to allow African American’s enfranchisement. The Help centers on the lives of three characters. They include: Skeeter, a fresh grandaunt from an affluent white family aiming at a journalist career; Aibileen and Minny, black maids who consented to speak out about the tribulations of African Americans. The three set out on a project to expose the ills of racial segregation in the South. The trio’s project coincides with the upsurge of the second wave of the feminist movement. Although the novel revolves around feminist movement events that preceded the Women’s Liberation Movement and the foundation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) by feminist leaders like Betty Friedman, the novel s hows that women, particularly African American women, began seeking freedom from segregation before such movements become public (Maslin 16). While The Help does not provide a perfect description of the events of the 1960s by suppressing the budding feminism of certain characters, the novel still touches on many pertinent issues relevant to 1960s feminism movement and civil rights movement. The Help showcases the role of women’s feminism movements in the larger civil rights movement. Stockett uses different characters to describe the feminist issues at the center of the civil rights movement. Firstly, Skeeter’s independence and rebelliousness towards restrictions enforced by societal norms shows not only a hint of feminism, but also the progress of the civil rights