Black Like Me: A historical review of a white man’s experience as a Negro

By Bethamehi Joy Syiem

In 1959, John Howard Griffin, a white Texan novelist/journalist decided to see for himself what being
“black” meant. Disguising himself as a Negro, he hitchhiked, walked and rode buses through Mississipi,
Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia. He embarked on the journey with the purpose of conducting a
scientific research study of the Negro in the Deep South, but what came out of the experience was a thin
volume journaling his own experience as a “so-called first class citizen…cast on the junk heap of second
class citizenship.”1 In the following paragraphs, we will seek to historically analyse the black experience
in the Deep South during the Jim Crow era through the lens of Griffin’s bestselling book, Black Like Me.

Historical Background – The Jim Crow Era

In 1870 African-American men gained the right to vote. They helped elect Republican President
Rutherford B. Hayes in 1877. However, the election was so close that Hayes took the white house only in
exchange for supporting the Democrats in southern states (Bargain of 1877). Hayes quickly ordered
federal troops to stop guarding the state houses in Louisiana and South Carolina and allowed
Democratic claimants to become governor. This was essentially the end of Reconstruction. Politically,
the situation was such that the Reconstruction’s previous victories for the blacks were in the process of
being overturned.
In wide areas of the South, secret societies sprang up with the aim of preventing blacks from voting and
destroying the organization of the Republican Party by assassinating local leaders and public officials.
The most notorious such organization was the Ku Klux Klan, which in effect served as a military arm of
the Democratic Party in the South. From its founding in 1866 in Tennessee, the Klan was a terrorist
organization. It quickly spread into nearly every southern state. Led by planters, merchants, and
Democratic politicians, men who liked to style themselves the South’s “respectable citizens,” the Klan
committed some of the most brutal criminal acts in American history. In many counties, it launched
what one victim called a “reign of terror” against Republican leaders, black and white.2

The period post reconstruction and at the beginning of the civil rights movement was found itself in a
time of enforced segregation in the Deep South under the infamous Jim Crow Laws. Despite slavery no
longer being present as an entity, this was a time when the “humiliations and indignities of racism, class
pretensions, and waged work” 3 were at their worst.

From the late 1870s, Southern state legislatures passed laws requiring the separation of whites from
“persons of colour” in public transportation and schools. Generally, anyone of ascertainable or strongly
suspected black ancestry in any degree was for that purpose a “person of colour”. The segregation
principle was extended to parks, cemeteries, theatres, and restaurants in an effort to prevent any

1
John Howard Griffin, “Black Like Me” (New American Library, 1961).
2
Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty! An American History | Volume 1 : To 1877 (W. W. Norton & Company, 2005).
3
Robin D G Kelley, “" We Are Not What We Seem ": Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow
South,” The Journal of American History 80, no. 1 (1993): 75–112, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2079698 Accessed:
contact between blacks and whites as equals. It was codified on local and state levels and most famously
with the “separate but equal” decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

Jim Crow laws were named after a character created by a white actor in 1828. The actor blackened his
face. He played a character named Jim Crow. As a racist caricature of an African American, Jim Crow
became a negative term for African Americans.4 Most of the laws ordered businesses and public places
to keep white people and African Americans separate. Restaurants could not serve food to whites and
African Americans in the same room. Whites and African Americans could not play any game together.
White and African-American children could not attend the same schools. An African-American barber
could not cut the hair of white women or girls. Employers had to provide separate bathrooms for white
and African-American men. Other laws stated African Americans could not date, marry, or touch whites.
It was this segregated landscape that John Howard Griffin would enter as a white man turned black.

John Howard Griffin – A social and scientific experiment

After deciding that the only and best way to find out if America had secondary citizens and what their
plight was, would be through becoming one of them, Griffin decided to undertake a project unlike any
other. Calling a professional dermatologist in New Orleans, he was told that the best attempt would be
through oral medication followed by exposure to ultraviolet rays. This was the same process that was
used on victims of vitiligo, a disease that causes white spots to appear on the face and body. The process
would usually take up to six weeks but for lack of time and not caring for the risks or side effects, Griffin
decided to go for an accelerated treatment. Five days later, Griffin had a dark undercoating of pigment
which he could touch up perfectly with a stain.

John Howard Griffin had decided that he would travel the Deep South without changing his name or
identity. He merely changed his pigmentation, asking the question, “Do you suppose they’ll treat me as
John Howard Griffin, regardless of my color- or will they treat me as some nameless Negro…?” His friend
answered, “As soon as they see you, you’ll be a Negro and that is all they’ll ever want to know about
you.” 5

Being black

On November 8, 1959- Griffin awakened as black man and as he later walked the streets of New
Orleans, he was distinctly aware that the world now saw him differently. His first brush with segregation
came on a bus ride as he noticed that many more whites than blacks boarded. Soon the bus was nearly
full, but white passengers who did not find an empty seat next to another white stood rather than sit
next to a black passenger. When Griffin saw a white woman stand nearby, he began to rise and
relinquish his seat. There was a wave of disapproval from the blacks that forced him to sit back down.
This movement caught the woman's attention and, as their eyes met, she scowled at him: "What're you
looking at me like that for?" His innocent act of offering a seat to a lady had been twisted into
reinforcing the stereotype that all black men lusted after white women.

Later, finding a friend and a mentor in Williams, the man who used to be in shoe polisher, Griffin began
to explore the local terrain and the social interaction of the races in New Orleans. He noticed that living
in sordid slum like communities or ‘ghettos’, the blacks had formed enclaves of their own. This can be

4
Kathleen M. Muldoon, The Jim Crow Era (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Abdo Publishing, 2015).
5
Griffin, “Black Like Me.”
linked to Eric Foner’s 6 comments that racial barriers in housing, and therefore in public education and
jobs, continued to be reinforced. The economic barrier between the whites and the blacks was also
clear. Griffin first learnt this when he learned that he was overdressed for the role of bootblack. Second,
he was taught the necessity of stocking one's own food and water. Third, it was imperative to locate the
nearest "separate facility" in order to relieve oneself.

The next lesson Griffin was to learn had to do with access. Attempting to find employment, he was
rejected day after day as he applied for jobs as a typist, a bookkeeper and a photographer-vocations for
which he was qualified. He stated, “"The best jobs I got were menial-shining shoes, unloading trucks and
carrying bags in the bus station.”7 This was the beginning of his new life as a black man.

In his entry for November 14, Griffin notes the anger and frustration of his newly made black friends
over the Mississippi Parker Lynch case, a reference to “Southern justice” in the Jim Crow era. The fact
that an accused man was deprived of a fair trial, kidnapped and lynched by a mob apparently had no
effect on the Grand Jury’s decision. No one from the lynch mob was convicted. That same day, Griffin
decided to buy a bus ticket to Hattiesburg, Mississippi. On the journey, he encountered many instances
of racism and discrimination, being denied even basic rights such as to go relieve himself at a rest stop
but one thing that was unexpected to him was a profound sense of inclusion with the other blacks as
they bore the brunt of the system together. The obvious communal caring among the black passengers
was extended immediately to those who boarded at the small towns and joined them at the back of the
bus. His point of view slowly adjusted from seeing a Negro collective from the outside to identifying with
them individually to becoming included as one who "sought comfort from his own."8

As the bus moved deeper into the state and neared Poplarville- the sight of the Mack Parker lynching-
Griffin mentioned a wave of "agitation swept through the bus." After arriving, he walked out towards
the address of his contact person when a car filled with whites sped by. He was assaulted by obscenities
and a tangerine that missed. At the end of that day, his journal read, "1 switched on the light and looked
into a cracked piece of mirror bradded with bent nails to the wall. The bald Negro stared back at me
from its mottled sheen. I knew I was in hell. Hell could be no more lonely or hopeless, no more
agonizingly estranged from the world of order and harmony.”9

By November 16, he began with his arrival at the Biloxi (Mississippi) bus terminal. The next morning, he
asked a local about the splendid beaches and was informed that they were manmade, intended for
whites only, even though the project had been funded by a gasoline tax. The local man expressed his
protest of the segregated policy and said that he and other black taxpayers were considering political
action to right the injustice.

Later in the book, he talked about wage inequality when he asks a white man, “But if I could do you a
better job, and you (would) paid me less than a white man…” He replied, “I’ll tell you… we don’t want
you people. Don’t you understand that?” Griffin moved on in his journey travelling the Deep South and
when he reached Georgia, he hitchhiked to get a lift from “two young white boys”. He immediately,

6
Give Me Liberty! An American History | Volume 2 (W. W. Norton & Company, 2005).
7
Griffin, “Black Like Me.”
8
Griffin.
9
Griffin.
noted then that they were kinder than other white men he had met. Here, he implied that they were
kinder than the older generation.

In many instances throughout the book, Griffin pointed out acts of charity and kindness between fellow
Negroes. One night, he became the unexpected guest of a family that includes six young children. Here,
the reader encounters a black family imprisoned by a controlled economic system, living in a two-room
wooden shanty without an indoor privy or even beds for the children, who sleep on feed sacks placed on
the floor at night.
Further on in the book, he reached Montgomery, Alabama- which had been the scene of the historic bus
boycott, initiated when Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in December of 1955. Unlike the
other cities in the Deep South, it had a spirit of passive resistance. Elsewhere, he had only noted a sense
of despair and hopelessness. He noted, "The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.'s influence, like an echo of
Gandhi's, prevails. Nonviolent and prayerful resistance to discrimination is the keynote. Here, the Negro
has committed himself to a definite stand. He will go to jail, suffer any humiliation, but he will not back
down. He will take the insults and abuses stoically so that his children will not have to take them in the
future."10 It was in Montgomery that he would finally scrub himself clean in the morning of November
29 and in the dark of the night, re-enter the white side of the town.

Critical analysis

Black Like Me was widely read and quickly became a best-seller by claiming to have "what it is like, really
like, to be a Negro in the deep South But it was not without criticism. Many claim that it contends with
the problematic of presenting anthropological "truths” in the sense that it makes a familiar claim to
truth revealed through personal experience. According to Baldwin 11, the author simultaneously
attempts to inscribe himself within a "black" persona, while also creating “a disjunctive space where his
whiteness always persists in framing his blackness.” Furthermore, one could also say that while Griffin
sufficiently speaks about the black experience in his own eyes as well as indirect mention of the politics
of the time, direct engagement with historical detail or politics is scanty.

What is also interesting to note is that Griffin portrays himself as a “Southerner” and not a “Northerner”
as well as his disassociation with the civil rights movement. Baldwin 12 reads this as a bidding to
disentangle black liberation from left politics. Eric Lott 13 further criticises Griffin for using “reflection
theory” to create a space of appropriation using black symbolic and cultural capital as raw material- to
reproduce white cultural dominance.

Interestingly, there is much mention of black sexuality in the book as well. In one conversation he had,
he says, “Well, you people don't seem to have the inhibitions we have...” almost confirming the racial
stereotype about black promiscuity and thereby, social inferiority. He continues, "Oh, don't get me

10
Griffin.
11
“Black like Who ? Cross-Testing the " Real " Lines of John Howard Griffin ’ s " Black like Me ",” Cultural Critique,
no. 40 (1998): 103–43, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1354469.
12
(1998)
13
Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism (Harvard University Press, 2017).
wrong," he implores. "I admire your attitude, think it's basically healthier than ours. . . .” There is clearly
a hint of paternalism here as mentioned by Bonazzi.14

Another limitation of the book one may note is the lack of reference to the Churches, institutionalised
racism and segregationist ideology. Admitting this, he later commented, "First, I was so deeply shocked
to be driven away from churches that would have welcomed me any time as a white man that I did not
know how to handle this and I feared I might be committing an injustice. Second, in my naivete, I was
certain that as soon as these conditions were made known to church leadership, the matter would be
corrected."15

Yet while one notes the problematics of Griffin’s book and his perspective on “blackness”, we must also
keep in mind why he did what he did. After his book had become a national bestseller and when asked
why he did what he did, his response was that he was researching the escalation of black male suicides
in the South and, because he believed the only way to discover the real causes was to experience black
reality directly, he had to become a Negro. He documented this “official” explanation in A Time to Be
Human, his final work on the subject of racism, by providing detailed information about his premise and
its data.

On less public occasions, he gave a more personal answer. “I think it finally boiled down to the fact that I
had three children. I knew with the out a doubt that my own formation, no matter how benevolent, had
filled me with prejudices at deep levels that had probably handicapped me for life. And I did not want
my children, or the children of any person (of any color), to grow up in a climate of permissive
suppression of fellow human beings if I could do anything to prevent it. In other words, my deepest
motive was simply to preserve my children and the children of others from the dehumanizing poison of
racism.”16

The Saturday Review called the book a “scathing indictment of our (American) society” while the Dallas
News echoed, “No one could read it without suffering.” Fifty years later, the book is still considered a
modern American classic, having sold over ten million copies. Gerald Early, a black scholar from
Washington University states, “Black Like Me disabused the idea that minorities were acting out of
paranoia. There was this idea that black people said certain things about racism, and one rather
expected them to say these things. Griffin revealed that what they were saying was true.”17 In a
balanced review of the book, Robert Bonazzi finally states, “It’s a useful historical document about the
segregated era, which is still shocking to younger readers. It’s also a truthful journal in which Griffin
admits to his own racism, with which white readers can identify and perhaps begin to face their own
denial of prejudice. Finally, it’s a well-written literary text …”18

Conclusion

14
Robert Bonazzi, Man in the Mirrow: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me (Maryknoll, New York:
Orbis Books, 1997).
15
Peter I Rose, “Review : Race Relations in the U . S . A,” The British Journal of Sociology 16, no. 2 (1965): 159–63,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/588357.
16
Bonazzi, Man in the Mirrow: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me.
17
Gerald Early, Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity and the Ambivalence of Assimilation (Penguin Books,
1994).
18
Bonazzi, Man in the Mirrow: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me.
In Black Like Me, the emotional appeal is obvious throughout the book; the logical appeal resides
primarily in the concealed syllogism behind the "same man" theme19, that the same man was both black
and white. But the major strength of the book seems to be in its ethical appeal. Yet the question
remains, what of its historical significance? During the experiment recounted in Black Like Me, Griffin
had listened to Negroes expressing “inner thoughts and feelings without fear of reprisal, because he had
been accepted into their community.” What he was privileged to hear, no white person would have
been trusted to hear. And what he learned was that “blackness was not a colour but a lived experience.”
What we note here is the significance of Griffin’s book as a “dynamic ethical witness” of the black
experience during the period of segregation. It is this black experience that would fuel the oncoming
full-fledged Civil Rights movement as led by the like of Martin Luther King Jr. Through a creative act of
insight, Black Like Me transcended the societal perceptions of that era and opened a fresh vision for
human rights. From a historical point of view, it is perhaps most important for it gives us insight into the
sociology of race relations in its time period.

Bibliography

Baldwin, Kate. “Black like Who ? Cross-Testing the " Real " Lines of John Howard Griffin ’ s " Black like
Me ".” Cultural Critique, no. 40 (1998): 103–43. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1354469.
Bonazzi, Robert. Man in the Mirrow: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me. Maryknoll, New
York: Orbis Books, 1997.
Early, Gerald. Lure and Loathing: Essays on Race, Identity and the Ambivalence of Assimilation. Penguin
Books, 1994.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History | Volume 1 : To 1877. W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.
Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty! An American History | Volume 2. W. W. Norton & Company, 2005.
Griffin, John Howard. “Black Like Me.” New American Library, 1961.
Kelley, Robin D G. “" We Are Not What We Seem ": Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim
Crow South.” The Journal of American History 80, no. 1 (1993): 75–112.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2079698 Accessed:
Lott, Eric. Black Mirror: The Cultural Contradictions of American Racism. Harvard University Press, 2017.
Muldoon, Kathleen M. The Jim Crow Era. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Abdo Publishing, 2015.
Rank, Hugh. “The Rhetorical Effectiveness of " Black Like Me ".” The English Journal 57, no. 6 (1968):
813–17. https://www.jstor.org/stable/812027.
Rose, Peter I. “Review : Race Relations in the U . S . A.” The British Journal of Sociology 16, no. 2 (1965):
159–63. https://www.jstor.org/stable/588357.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/black-like-me-50-years-later-74543463/

19
Hugh Rank, “The Rhetorical Effectiveness of " Black Like Me ",” The English Journal 57, no. 6 (1968): 813–17,
https://www.jstor.org/stable/812027.