[bksvol-discuss] Book submitted: Black Like Me
- From: "Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 7 Nov 2004 10:22:34 -0500
Book submitted under the .rtf section of the website.
Black Like Me
By John Howard Griffin
From the book Jacket:
John Howard Griffin undertook in the fall of 1959 a personal assignment to
find out the hard way, possibly the only way a white man can, what it is
like to be a Negro in the South. He decided to darken his skin and travel
through several southern states. Black Like Me is the record, offered in all
its crudity and rawness, of this dangerous and often terrifying mission.
Mr. Griffin found a doctor in New Orleans who was willing, with some
misgivings, to give him the necessary medication (a drug used in the cure of
vitíligo) . By accelerated treatments and the use of a sun lamp, he was able
to make the change in five days. From November 7 to December 14 he
hitchhiked, walked, and rode the buses through Mississippi, Alabama, back to
New Orleans, and finally to Atlanta, living always on the dark side of
towns, in rooming houses and cheap hotels. He learned what it was like to
search for miles across a city for a glass of water or a bathroom, to buy a
ticket, to try to cash a traveler's check. I walk the streets at night as
"... an a bald Negro - through a land hostile to
my color, hostile to my skin."
Mississippi and Alabama were a terrison; Atlanta was a ray of hope.
'"Atlanta changed my mind. Atlanta has in proving that 'the Problem' can be
solved and in showing us the way to do it." It was a far cry from the
enlightened leaders, both white and Negro, in the Atlanta city
administration to the Mobile plant foreman who said, when asked by the
author for a job, "No use trying down here. . . . We're gradually getting
you people weeded out from the better jobs at this plant. We're taking it
slow, but we're doing it. Pretty soon we'll have it so the only jobs you can
get here are the ones no white man would have."
This report is a shocking confirmation of the enormous wall of hostility
between the two races, a wall that is growing higher as some groups of
Negroes are learning to hate back as viciously as they have been hated by
some whites. Mr. Griffin is careful to emphasize the decency and kindness of
most Southern whites, and blames institutions rather than individuals for
the continuing abrogation of human rights. His book is a document of despair
and darkness, but he found light in Georgia and in the hope that keeps Negro
leaders from blowing the dangerous situation sky high.
Shelley L. Rhodes and Judson, guiding golden
juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Guide Dogs For the Blind Inc.
Graduate Advisory Council
www.guidedogs.com
The vision must be followed by the venture. It is not enough to
stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.
-- Vance Havner
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