Although today African-Americans have the same equal rights as whites, the Civil Rights Movement is recognized as an influential period in American history. All historical non-fiction contains several or little content of history, but in the prominent novel The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, contains many elements from history. The novel is about African-American maids and a white young woman risking their lives and many others to write a book about what it is like to be a black maid in the south. The setting of this novel is set during the Civil Rights Movement in the early 1960’s in a southern state. Although the characters and plot event are not genuine or historical, the novel does contain information about civil rights and how African-American …show more content…
For instance, the novel quotes, “They are scared, looking at the back door every ten minutes, afraid they’ll get caught talking to me. Afraid they’ll be beaten like Louvenia’s grandson, or, hell, shot to death in their front yard like Medgar Evers. The risk they’re taking is proof they want this to get printed and they want it bad”(328). Skeeter, Aibileen, and the other maids knew the dangers of writing the book, yet they continued to write the book. Writing the book was a way to protest without physically protesting. In comparison, Martin Luther King Jr. was well known for nonviolent protest and the dangers of those protest. A text from an article by The Grolier Library of Northern American Biographies states, “The marches continued, though police were brutal, using clubs, police dogs, and the powerful streams from the fire hoses to subdue the blacks. But they kept on marching” (132). Not only were King and the marchers getting beaten while protesting, but they did not stop the protesting. The characters never gave up on finishing the book throughout the novel ultimately because writing the book was a form of nonviolent protest. Neither of the protests involved guns, but rather the power of words or simple actions such as sit-in, speeches, and