`Black Like Me' represents heritage
Letter to the Editor
Forget walking a mile in a man's shoes, how about becoming him? John Griffin faced a similar question in October 1959. He was then a middle-aged white man with a wife and children, and a burning desire to experience life as a black man. He originally intended his accounts to be published in the newspaper, "Sepia," which later formed the book, "Black Like Me." The title is taken from a Langston Hughes poem entitled "Dream Variation:"
Rest at pale evening...
A tall slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.
On Nov. 1 1959, Griffin began his journey in New Orleans, La., by meeting with a doctor to darken his pigmentation through medicines, UV treatments and stainer for touch-ups. By Nov. 7, he had become convincingly black, even fooling a shoe-shiner he frequented that week. He spent the next six weeks traveling the South as a black man, then near the end of the term switched between the white Griffin and the black Griffin. One day, he would be refused bathroom access and given "the hate stare," the next he could sleep in any hotel he wanted, with complete friendliness.
"Black Like Me" sets the stage for the American Civil Rights movement that most textbooks omit when they begin accounts with Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. "Black Like Me" not only represents a part of American heritage, but Roman Catholic as well. The black Griffin often found solace in Catholic places: from a bookstore, the sole business to cash his traveller's check, to a Trappist monastery offering refuge from a hostile society.
John Griffin sacrificed greatly for his project. His family had to leave their homes, friends greeted them with silence and he gave his life. The stainer that helped him live two lives ultimately took his own by poisoning him.
John Steinberg
Sophomore
Keough Hall
January 20, 1999
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, January 21, 2000
