“Black Like Me” is a non-fiction book by white journalist John Howard Griffin first published in 1961. The title of the book is taken from the last line of the Langston Hughes poem “Dream Variations.”
The book describes Griffin’s six-week experience traveling on Greyhound buses throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia passing as a black man in 1959.
Under the care of a doctor, John Griffin artificially darkened his skin to pass as a black man using large oral doses of the anti-vitiligo drug Oxsoralen and spent up to fifteen hours daily under an ultraviolet lamp. He changed the length of his hair and used makeup to fill in any unevenly toned areas.
After the publication of the book, the public response was divided. He received death threats for his experiment, but the book earned him international respect by human and civil rights activists. Griffin’s accounts of receiving a hateful stare from white people on his journey gave readers a truthful account of Southern hatred pre-civil rights movement. Unfortunately, his family was forced to relocate to Mexico when the rejection from his experiment forced Griffin and his family out of town.
In 1964, director Carl Lerner would turn Griffin’s novel into a movie starring James Whitmore. The movie received mixed reviews, citing that Whitmore was not convincing as a black man, but the storyline gave the blatant view of racism in America.
(Photo: AP)
Little Known Black History Fact: ‘Black Like Me’
was originally published on
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