I finally had the chance to see The Help. I actually enjoyed it and wasn't nearly as bothered as some by the movie.
Couple of quick thoughts here. First off, I was surprised to hear the main white character's name was Eugenia Phelan -- because that's the last name of an Alabama Supreme Court justice I used to be interested in.
Moving now to more substantive pieces of the movie. There are two pieces of property and trusts and estates that come up in it, which sort of surprised me. First: the ordinance that would require African American servants to use separate bathrooms from their white employers. I have never heard of such an ordinance, though I guess nothing along these lines should surprise me. Though this reminds me of a topic of interest to me, the influence of Jim Crow on architecture. One little vignette here -- when my favorite librarian and I were house-hunting in Tuscaloosa (now many years ago), we looked at an absolutely beautiful and charming but modest house in an older neighborhood in Tuscaloosa. (Tragically, I think the house was blown away in the tornado last spring.) We went down in the basement and were surprised to see a windowless room with a fireplace and a tiny adjoining bathroom. There was a separate entrance and it eventually dawned on us that it must have been the servants' quarters. Sort of surprising that a modest home like that would have had servants' quarters -- though I suppose that helps explain the tenacity with which people clung to Jim Crow. There was an awful lot of privilege that was being lost.
Twice I believe the movie referenced a servant who had been "willed" to a family member (or left in a will or some such language). Mind you, this was in the era of Jim Crow, not slavery. The trusts and estates professor in me was mightily interested in this. I have a filing draw filled with examples of pre-Civil War wills that devise human beings to family members. Heck, that's a major subject of my research these days. (Along those lines, here's a pdf of Gabriel Long's will from Greene County, Alabama that distributed Long's enslaved human beings to various members of his family -- including with restraints on sale of them, a topic that I plan to return to later this week.) But what I have not seen -- or even heard about -- are wills devising employees to family members. Now this is merely expressive, of course -- but what a statement it makes about family relationships and relationships between employers and employees. I'd love -- love -- to see one of those wills from the era of Jim Crow. Maybe next summer I'll spend in the Jackson, Mississippi, courthouse looking for such things.
Also, I thought I'd include one of the wills from one of my recent research projects -- on a contract between an African American woman and a white family where the woman promised to take care of the family until they passed away in exchange for some property. This is from the Rockbridge County probate records; I'll be talking a lot more about Rockbridge County and enslaved human beings and probate in the next couple of weeks.
Finally -- and drawing on Mark Auslander's wonderful op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution from last Sunday -- I'd like to conclude with an image of the monument to Harry, a "faithful" slave who's buried in the Marion Cemetery in Alabama. Harry was owned by Howard College's president and when a fire broke out in the dormitory at Howard College, he helped get students out, though he perished from injuries sustained in the fire. (Or so the story is told to us by the obelisk marking his grave.) The Help raises a similar theme of African Americans who sacrificed their lives for the well-being of white children. Perhaps in the process of recalling those sacrifices we can see humanity sometimes treated as though it was invisible.
As for looking for evidence of willing individuals in Jim Crow times -- you might want to look in the Delta counties more than Jackson. A few years ago I was at the deposition of an old African American man in the Delta (maybe Greenville) and I was absolutely shocked when, as he was going through his work history he said at one point he was "sold" to Mr. X. This would have been in the 40s probably. I don' t know if he was actually sold or if this was just the terminology used but I found it strange that he would say that.
Posted by: dec | August 28, 2011 at 08:53 AM
Thanks, dec, for the suggestion. Sounds like an excellent place to start. I, too, am shocked by your story.
Posted by: Alfred Brophy | August 28, 2011 at 10:15 AM
References to being "sold" could be made with respect to tenant farmers who became quasi serfs in much of the South. Some states had laws that made it very difficult to recruit laborers for movement within or outside the state. Either Alabama or Mississippi had a law that required a person transporting laborers through the state to pay a fee for each county through which the laborer was transported. These laws were even in effect during WWII and resulted in an oversupply of agricultural labor in the South so that agricultural laborers in the South averaged about only 180 days of work in WWII. Given such an environment, it would make sense that a tenant farmer may regard himself as "sold" when the land he worked was sold. This is another great example of selfish greed rising above national interests in a war. Unfortunately, it is not even close to being unique.
Posted by: Bill Turnier | August 29, 2011 at 09:33 AM