Black like Me
Black like Me, nonfiction book, published in 1961, by American journalist John Howard Griffin, describing his experiences as a white man who transformed his appearance into that of a Black man and traveled through the Deep South.
In 1959, Griffin, who was dedicated to the ideals of racial justice but frustrated by his inability to understand what life was like for Black people, decided to find out about racism firsthand. Griffin first secured his wife’s agreement and the financial and moral support of George Levitan, the white owner and publisher of Sepia magazine, which covered various aspects of Black culture, in exchange for Griffin’s writing about his experience for the magazine. Moving to New Orleans, he took drugs used to treat vitiligo and used ultraviolet lamps and skin dye, and he also shaved off his hair, until he was convinced that he could pass as a Black man.
The book, written in the form of a diary, begins with his decision and his transformation. Before his transformation, he tells a Black shoeshine man, Sterling Williams, that he is a journalist writing an article about Black life. After his transformation is complete, Griffin finds himself almost frightened by his own appearance in a mirror. He finds that now he is treated with open hostility by white people but with warmth and kindness by Black people. He returns to Williams and reveals his identity and plan to him, and Williams is delighted to help him. Griffin finds the material deprivation and threats of violence that Black people routinely experience to be deeply distressing. He finds that he cannot secure employment and that finding places to eat, drink, and use the bathroom are hugely complicated and difficult.
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After learning of a lynching in Mississippi, Griffin decides to travel there, but merely buying a bus ticket elicits hostility and degrading treatment from the person behind the counter. He gets off the bus at Hattiesburg and is almost immediately greeted with racial epithets and pelted with fruit. He contacts a friend, a white newspaper editor devoted to racial justice, who takes him home and gives him a collection of materials on white racism. Later, Griffin travels through Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama, often by hitchhiking. He is surprised to find that white drivers will pick him up, but these drivers want him to tell them about his sex life and sometimes boast of having had sexual relations with Black girls. In Montgomery, Alabama, he sees his face in a mirror and notices that he now has the defeated look he has often noted among Black men.
Griffin finds that living as a Black man has become nearly intolerable to him after about a month, and he stops taking the medication that darkens his skin. When he emerges from his hotel room as a white man, he finds that the difference in the way he is treated is disorienting and saddening. This to him underscores the gulf between the experiences and perceptions of white and Black people. He then begins a period of switching back and forth, noting the differences in his experiences as a white man and as a Black man in the same locations. He also notes the beginnings of what became the civil rights movement in both Montgomery and Atlanta. After six weeks, he concludes his experiment by returning to New Orleans with a white photographer, reconnecting with Sterling Williams, and then stopping all skin-darkening treatment.
In addition to writing the promised series of articles for Sepia, Griffin is interviewed by reporters and talk show hosts about his experiences. While these interviews and the articles receive many positive responses, in Texas, where Griffin’s family lives, there is also violent hostility, and eventually Griffin moves to Mexico with his family, where he turns his writings into the book Black like Me.
Griffin has a keen ear for dialogue and sharp eye for detail, so the memoir reads like a gripping, well-written novel. Despite the furor the material caused initially, Black like Me soon became an extremely popular and influential book. It was filmed in 1964, and it became a staple in high school and college curricula throughout the United States.
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