John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me

BLACK LIKE ME

In 1961 the author John Howard Griffin published a true story book called “Black Like Me”. This book is about John Griffin who lives in Texas and he dresses up in disguise as a black man, he fully changes from head to toe by getting his skin turned black and looking like any other African American on the street. John did this because he was committed to the cause of racial justice, and wants to know the life of a black man between a white man. Before he starts his journey he goes to a man called George Levitan and shares the idea with him and hopes he can support him. George and a man named Adele Jackson producers of “Serpia” magazines are shocked by the idea and before he fully commits George lets him know the dangerous he

Was it worth trying to show the one race what went on behind the mask of the others?” (Griffin,126), and realizes that not all whites treat blacks with hatred it’s the blacks that treat the other blacks the same and some whites. After Martin Luther Kings speech in the late 50’s the world did change a lot but not completely but it just needed to take time. The way John Howard Griffin writes his book where he puts himself in the book as the main character and lets the reader know how life was like back in the late 50s and 60s, and how much are world has changed in the past few decades and how cruel white and black people were. Until one day John explains really well on how a man named Martin Luther King Jr says one of the most famous speeches until this day called “I Have A Dream” speech and that speech changed the way people look at blacks. They way John wrote in the story made me feel like I was in the same shoes he was going through too. I really liked this book it but, was hard at sometimes to follow. One of my favorite quotes he said in the book was "He who is less than just is less than man"(Griffin,55). I wasn’t able to relate to the book the way John was able to and the people in the 50s and 60s, but I was able to create a good