Black Maid Gets Court Date Against 'The Help' Author

JACKSON, MS - The movie adaptation of "The Help," a novel based on relationships between white families and their black maids in the segregated South of the 1960s, opens nationwide today.

Next week, the auhor Kathryn Stockett, will be in court to answer allegations she based one of the movie's characters on a real-life family maid without permission.

The hearing will be held Aug. 16 in the case of Ablene Cooper — a black nanny and housekeeper who works for Stockett’s brother and sister-in-law — vs. Stockett.

At that hearing in Hinds County Circuit Court, a judge will decide whether to grant Stockett’s motion to have the case dismissed, or whether the suit over the allegedly unjust use of Cooper’s likeness in the novel will move forward.