Black Like Me (1960)

by John Howard Griffin

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▾Member reviews

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Showing 1-5 of 39 (next | show all)

I read this book in grade 10 and even almost 30 years later it has still stuck with me. At the time I thought the racism in the south of America was totally appalling only years later did I realise it wasn't much better in Australia. (

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jodes101 | May 9, 2013 |

Fantastic story of the white writer John Griffin who in 1959 medicated himself to get black skin and went into the US South to see the different treamtent of blacks and white. What he saw astonished him. (

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ohernaes | Mar 10, 2013 |

I am a white man from England and reading this book filled me with rage. I can't believe that this book was written in 1959. Just over fifty years ago black people could not go onto the beach in certain areas. They could not go into certain restaurants and not even use the same toilets as the white man. Despicable. The book is a must read for everyone to get a true feel of what went on and what must never be forgotten.

nightstalker2013 | Feb 6, 2013 |

http://joriesreads.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/john-howard-griffins-black-like-me/ (

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RWListen | Jan 21, 2013 |

Excellent book, a profound look at racial issues Griffin experienced while assimilating himself as a black man in the South, 1952. (

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G.Whilliquor | Mar 31, 2012 |

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Series (with order)

Canonical title

Black Like Me

Original title

Alternative titles

Black Like Me

Original publication date

People/Characters

Important places

Important events

Civil Rights Movement, USA

Related movies

Black Like Me (1964 ∙ IMDb)

Awards and honors

Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (1962)

501 Must-Read Books (Memoirs)

Epigraph

Rest at pale evening... A tall slim tree... Night coming tenderly... Black like me. --From "Dream Variation" Langston Hughes

Dedication

First words

"This may not be all of it. It may not cover all of the questions, but it is what it is like to be a Negro in a land where we keep the Negro down." - preface

"For years the idea had haunted me, and that night it returned more insistently than ever."

Quotations

"The most obscene figures are not the ignorant ranting racists, but the legal minds who front for them, who invent for them the legislative proposals and the propoganda bulletins. They deliberately choose to foster distortions, always under the guise of patriotism, upon a people who have no means of checking the facts."

"He cannot understand how the white man can show the most demeaning aspects of his nature and at the same time delude himself into thinking he is inherently superior."

"I learned within a very few hours that no one was judging me by my qualities as a human individual and everyone was judging me by my pigment."

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Disambiguation notice

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▾References

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Wikipedia in English (3)

Black Like Me

Jim Crow laws

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Black Like Me (1987)

▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

Haiku summary

Some drugs and makeup
Transform a white man to black
To learn of racism.
(yoyogod)

▾Book descriptions

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0451208641, Paperback)

In the Deep South of the 1950s, journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross the color line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.

(retrieved from Amazon Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:13:46 -0400)

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▾Library descriptions

"In the Deep South of the 1950s, a color line was etched in blood across Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross that line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. What happened to John Howard Griffin - from the outside and within himself - as he made his way through the segregated Deep South is recorded in this searing work of nonfiction." - Cover.… (more)

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