The Help

The bus scene

There’s a scene in “The Help,” the movie based on Kathryn Stockett’s

novel, that cracks open the early-’60s world of strained .It’s after hours,
and Aibileen, a maid played with determined grace by Viola Davis, is
going home. Suddenly the bus stops, and a white man who was ruthless
orders the black passengers off, explaining that a black man has been
shot — except that he doesn’t say black, he says colored. Aibileen was
looking scowled at the white man and in a pool of dreadful night,
Aibileen and a young man trade goodbyes and rush off. And then this
sturdy, frightened woman starts running as if her life were in danger,
because it’s Mississippi, and it is.

When she gets to safety, Aibileen learns that the man who has been shot
is Medgar Evers, the civil rights activist who was gunned down in
Jackson on June 12, 1963, in front of his home. His wife and three young
children, who were trained to lie on the floor in case of gunfire, found
him, and Evers died shortly afterward.