“The Real Help”

Emma Williams (1912-1998) was my maternal grandmother and her mother was Irish American. You remember the movie “The Help?”  Well, that’s what she did for most of her life. She served as a maid for white families in the Mississippi Delta in my hometown of Greenwood, Mississippi. She was the help and she also worked at restaurants. The one story that always stands out in my mind was the day the guy that murdered Emmett Till came into the restaurant where she worked and bragged about killing him. My grandmother kept that to herself for many decades because she was just fearful of what would happen to her and to her family had she said anything about that.