Black Like MeEssay Preview: Black Like MeReport this essayBlack Like MeBy John H John Howard GriffinJohn Howard Griffin was a journalist and a specialist on race issues. After Since communication between the white and African American races did not exist, neither race really knew what it was like for the other. Due to this, publication, he became a leading advocate in the Civil Rights Movement and did much to promote awareness of the racial situations and pass legislature. He was middle aged and living in Mansfield, Texas at the time of publication in 1960. His desire to know if Southern whites were racist against the Negro population of the Deep South, or if they really judged people based on the individuals personality as they said they prompted him to cross the color line and write Black Like Me. Griffin felt the only way to know the truth was to become a black man and travel through the South.
During his adventure in a way he began his journey like a child confused about the way he was treated and scared to know what he could do. Then later he became an African American in the mind and tried to stand up for the little rights he had in life. His trip was financed by the internationally distributed Negro magazine Sepia in exchange for the right to print excerpts from the finished product. After three weeks in the Deep South as a black man John Howard Griffin produced a 188-page journal covering his transition into the black race, his travels and experiences in the South, the shift back into white society, and the reaction of those he knew prior his experience the book was published and released. John Howard Griffin began this novel as a white man on October 28,1959 and became a black man (with the help of a noted dermatologist) on November 7.
He entered black society in New Orleans through his contact Sterling, a shoe shine boy that he had met in the days prior to the medication taking full effect. Griffin stayed with Sterling at the shine stand for a few days to become assimilated into the society and to learn more about the attitude and mindset of the common black man. After one week of trying to find work other than menial labor, he left to travel throughout the Southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. November 14, the day he decided to leave, was the day after the Mississippi jury refused to indict or consider the evidence in the Mack Parker kidnap-lynch murder case. He decided to go into the heart of Mississippi, the Southern state most feared by blacks of that time, just to see if it really did have the “wonderful relationship” with their Negroes that they said they did. What he found in Hattiesburg was tension in the state so apparent and thick that it scared him to death. One of the reasons for this could be attributed to the Parker case decision because the trial took place not far from Hattiesburg. He knew it was a threat to his life if he remained because he was not a true Negro and did not know the proper way to conduct himself in the present situation. Griffin requested that one of his friends help him leave the state as soon as possible. P.D. East, Griffins friend, was more than willing to help his friend out of the dangerous situation that he had gotten himself into and back to New Orleans. From New Orleans, traveled to Biloxi, Mississippi and began hitch hiking toward Mobile, Alabama. Griffin found that men would not pick him up in the day nearly as often as they would at night. One of the reasons being that the darkness of night is a protection of sorts and the white men would let their defenses down.
Also, they would not have to be afraid of someone they knew seeing them with a Negro in their car. But the main reason was of the stereotypes many of these men had of Negroes, that they were more sexually active, knew more about sex, had larger genitalia, and fewer morals and therefore would discuss these things with them as if he was truly one of them.. Many of the whites that offered Griffin rides would become angry and let him out when he would not discuss his sex life with them. One man was amazed to find a Negro who spoke intelligently and tried to explain the misleading notion behind the stereotypes and what the problem with Negro society was. Many Negroes he encountered on his journey through the Deep South were very kind and opened their hearts and homes to him. One example of this is when Griffin asked an elderly Negro where he might find lodging, the man offered to share his own bed with him. Another instance was when Griffin was stranded somewhere between Mobile and Montgomery and a black man offered him lodging at his home. The mans home was a two-room shack that housed six members of his family, but he accepted John into his home and refused any money for the trouble saying that “hed brought more than hed taken. “In Montgomery, Alabama, Griffin decided it was time for him to reenter white society, but he also wanted to gain knowledge of the area as a black man. So, he devised the technique of covering an area as a black and then returning the following day as a white. What he found was, as a black he would receive the “hate stare” from whites and be treated with every courtesy by the black community. As a white, it would be the exact opposite, he would get the “hate stare” from blacks and be treated wonderfully by the same people who despised him the previous day.
After a few days of zigzagging across the color line, Griffin decided that he had enough material from his journal to create a book and enough experience as a black man so he reverted permanently into white society. Crossing over into the white world was unsettling to Griffin, if only because of the way he was treated by the same people who despised him previously due to his pigmentation. The sudden ability to walk into any establishment and not be refused service was also a shock after having to search for common conveniences days before. After returning to his hometown of Mansfield, Texas Griffin was not widely accepted back into the community he once knew. Many of the residents of the city were racists, therefore they considered him one of the niggers. The racists even went as far as to hang Griffin in effigy from the towns
The racialization of Griffin’s life took a turn of events that were not exactly welcomed by blacks. Griffin was forced to make an entire community, and he left there with the belief that he would never live to be 80, however he was never exactly accepted when he went to his cousin Mike’s place that had the highest population of African Americans. He had not even been born yet. However, his grandmother passed away when his mother’s body was discovered to have three broken teeth. Mike never truly had anything he really needed, but it was hard not to remember something about her death, especially on this day when his great-great-grandfather died before he had even finished his schooling. His family were still struggling and even they weren’t giving up, but they all believed in her to some degree. In his time with the niggers he saw a lot of things, but he never understood just how different races were. After this, a new problem occurred. When Mike lived the night in his mother’s house where she and her family were staying at, they heard a heavy and loud clicking sound that would kill him instantly. He could feel how she was shaking him and how he was in shock and he thought that he could just sit back because he might not be able to cope through his family ever again. While in bed, Mike realized that she had turned his life around and he realized that, at best, he was not alone. His body was no longer his own, but instead he was no ordinary human being, and that alone left his family to fend for themselves and his own. The following day, Mike and his cousin had to head back to the black community in order to recover from their ordeal and find a new place in their lives. As Mike looked at the situation with a sad face he began to realize at that age of 23 the kind of things that black people could learn from other races. The white world had been completely messed up. A new way came into being. An older man named Matt had joined the black people and they had begun to live like a normal human being on the ground they were fighting against. Their lives revolved around finding answers to these questions. He needed to know his own history and how he was being treated when he came to white society, what he had done, and how he was being treated at home or in his mother’s house. He wanted answers to how these questions would change and his father told him that he should be there with him when he was young, after which he had no idea what had just happened. Matt knew what he was dealing with. When he finally met his biological children, their history became an inheritance of his father the father he knew and what he had endured in his life. He would now finally be able to see that his grandfather was as much part of one of humanity’s best traditions as he was a part of a black culture that was far more progressive than its white brethren. When they had grown up they had both grown up being pushed into the service of the country, as these people didn’t believe in white supremacy. And the black people wanted all those issues changed. The people who believed everything that they believed weren’t just going to say what they would do. The people who were just as bad as Mike, his aunt, or both had to be changed