Black Like Me Sparknotes

I read the book called Black Like Me, the book is based on a true story. The

author of the book is John Howard Griffin, and he is also the main character in the

story. In the story he is a middle-aged white man who is living in Mansfield, Texas in

He strongly believes in the case of racial justice and frustrated by his inability

as a white man to understand the black experience. Shortly he decides to take a

radical step, he wants to become a black man only for temporarily. He only decided

to tell two people, his wife and George Levitan. George is the editor of black-oriented

magazine called ‘Sepia’ which will fund Griffin’s experience in return for an article

about it,

Finally Griffin goes to New Orleans to begin his like

as a black man. Shortly

after that he contacts the black community, he meets and talks to a shoe-shiner

named Sterling Williams, and then begins a process with dermatological regimen of

exposure to ultraviolet light, oral medication, and lastly skin dyes.

Throughout the

process and time he starts to keep getting darker and darker. But he soon panics

sort of feeling like he has lost his identity as a white man, he is shocked about the

way that he looks. But after he wants to go explore the black community.

He expects to find prejudice, oppression and hardship, but he was totally

wrong and he was shocked. Everywhere he went he starts to experiences difficulties

Meghan Roberts

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U.S. History B

and insults. The word “nigger” echoes every street corner. It was impossible to find

a job, or even go to the bathroom that blacks are aloud to use. Store clerks refused to

cash his checks, also a lot of white bullies nearly attacked him before he chases the

man away.

After many days in New Orleans, Griffin decides to travel to the south of

Mississippi and Alabama, but it was even worse for blacks there. He spends a day in

the East during which time they discuss the way racial prejudice has been

incorporated into the South’s legal code by bigoted writers and politicians. Then

eventually, then Griffin leaves for a long trip throughout Alabama and

Mississippi.

Soon he finally finds out that the black conditions for blacks are appalling

and that black communities seem very run-down and defeated. He later on evens

notices a look of defeat and hopelessness on his own faces.

After only a few weeks of

being a black man. In Montgomery the black community is charged with

determination and energy by one of its leaders, his names was Martin Luther King,

Jr Blacks he was a preacher. Blacks in Montgomery have begun practicing passive

resistance, it was a nonviolent form of refusing to comply with racist laws and rules.

Griffin was depressed and weary of life as a black man. He shortly stops taking his

medication and that starts to lighten his skin back to his normal color. He soon

begins to go back and forth between both races, he started visiting places at first as a

black man then as a white man. He starts to notice immediately that when he is a

white man, whites start to treat him with respect and black treat him with

Meghan Roberts

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U.S. History B

suspicious fear. When he is black they treat him with generosity and warmth, while

the whites treat him with hostility and contempt.

Griffin concludes that the races do not understand one another at all. And

they tolerate eachother.

In Atlanta, Griffin conducts a long series of interviews with black leaders

before returning to New Orleans to make a photographic record of his time

there.

He then finally goes off his medication entirely, and permanently returning to his

skin color which is white. He then finally returns to his home to his family and then

starts to write his article, which was then published in March 1960.

He issues a plea for tolerance and understanding between the races fearing

that if the current conflict is sustained, that it will shortly explode in an outbreak of

terrible violence.

He didn’t die from diabetes but from the skin dyes, tablets and interjections

that allowed his skin to then go back to black. He shortly died a little later when he

finally finished writing the book but sadly wasn’t alive to see the influence it had on

American Society.