A few weeks ago, I sat in Ron Perelman’s house in the Hamptons for one of his regular movie nights, not knowing too much about the film he was going to show. The normal Hamptons crowd showed up, as did all of the actresses and filmmakers of the movie. During the opening ten minutes of “The Help,” I knew this would be a film that everyone needs to see.
I rarely cry during funerals, but I will cry during a good movie … and I cried a good two or three times during this film. I was deeply moved by the courageous story during the 1960’s of these black Southern women who risked their lives to tell their heart-wrenching tales of working as domestic workers for white families to a local reporter, which ultimately became a best selling book called, The Help.
It was women like these, the unsung heroes of the civil rights movement that opened the doors for all of us to walk through. Rarely do we get to see characters like this on the Hollywood screen and when we do, it is inspiring and uplifting. Black women have championed many movements, from Sojourner Truth to Harriet Tubman to Rosa Parks to Michelle Obama. Heroines. Real heroines.
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Watching this film allowed me to reflect upon my childhood and my mother. I remember watching many women everyday board buses that took them to white neighborhoods where they would wash and clean other people’s homes and raise other people’s children.
Although growing up in Hollis, Queens was much different than Mississippi or Alabama or anywhere in the Deep South, still the stories were the same. Stories of determination and resilience by women struggling to make a better day for their own children.
A story I knew far too well in my life, as I have always had powerful women in my family. My grandmother was one of the first black nurses in New York and my mother, Evelyn, was a Howard University graduate who worked as a recreation director for the NYC Department of Parks, and was also an amazing painter.
I owe a lot of credit to my mother for her love, guidance and support of my choices in life and shaping me into the man I have become today. She has passed, but watching The Help, made me reflect on just how amazing she was.
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When the film was over, someone came up to me and said to me that he was “sorry,” as if I was “the help.” I kind of laughed it off, cause I knew he meant well.
I have worked tirelessly throughout my live to increase sensitivity among different groups of people in this country, and it wasn’t that this person was being insensitive, he just didn’t know better. No one should be sorry to me, we should all be sorry.
But, I know that the women who washed, cleaned, cooked and raised those children, “the help,” would not want us to be sorry, they would want us to be inspired to build a more tolerant and loving America. So in their spirit, go see The Help.
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The Help is in theaters nationwide on August 10th. For more info, visit TheHelpMovie.com
