Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin

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Black Like Me - John Howard Griffin

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He trudged southern streets searching for a place where he could eat or rest, looking vainly for a job other than menial labor, feeling the "hate stare." He was John Griffin, a white man who darkened the color of his skin and crossed the line into a country of hate, fear, and hopelessness–the country of the American Black man.

About the Author
John Howard Griffin was born in 1920 in Dallas, Texas and was educated in France. He served in the U.S. Air Force in the South Pacific, where an injury sustained in a Japanese bombardment led to the loss of his sight for ten years. He is the author of two novels, Nuni and The Devil Rides Outside, as well as a biography of Thomas Merton and numerous other works of nonfiction. He died in 1980.

From AudioFile
In the late 1950s John Howard Griffin, a white man, artificially darkened his skin and took up the impossible task of masquerading as a black man in the Deep South. The book he wrote about his firsthand experience of racism galvanized America and ultimately led to death threats against him and his family. Delivering this compelling and incisive piece of investigative reporting, Ray Childs voices the thoughts of the blacks and whites Griffin encounters and becomes close to, or reviled by. Only the coldest of hearts could be unaffected by this story, told with dignity and warmth, conviction and steadfast honesty. Audiobooks like this can help heal wounds and open minds about racism, an issue our nation still struggles with.