Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin Research

Honors English

January 3, 2010

Obscene or Honest: Truths Exposed

It’s 7:14 pm and a young man has just walked five miles looking for the nearest place to stop and eat. His body glistens as the sweat reflects the setting orange and red sunrays off of his skin. His stomach screams for food while his nose smells the scent of baking bread as he passes numerous diners and grocery stores. Why doesn’t’ he just go inside? He can’t. The sign outside reads “Whites Only” and those words seem to beat him down the more they appear. As much as he wishes, there’s no disguising the dark brown tone of his negro skin so he’s stuck kicking rocks and gravel until he can reach a place to eat. Situations like this were recalled throughout the novel Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin. Although the book has been praised by literary critics, it has also been widely criticized from a negative stand point by the racist society of the 1960s (Contemporary Literary Criticism 194). Whether it was the charges of obscenity and vulgarity or the obvious dislike by the white public, Black Like Me has stirred up much controversy resulting in its removal from numerous school bookshelves.

Black Like Me originally started as a series of journal entries for the magazine Sepia and was later published into a novel (Contemporary Literary Criticism 193). Griffin’s goal was to learn how to understand what it meant to be black and fully understand the realities of racial discrimination (Rasmussen). In order to do so Griffin concluded “How else, except by becoming a Negro could a white man hope to learn the truth?” (Rasmussen) Consequentially, Griffin underwent a series of medical treatment that included using sun lamps, vegetable dyes, and pigment-enhancing drugs to darken his skin. (Contemporary Literary Criticism 193) He then added the finishing touch to alter his appearance and shaved his head bald (Sova 44). These steps were just the beginning of the life changing experiment Griffin was...