Similarities Between Black Like Me And A Patch Of Blue

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During the civil rights era, tensions between races were at an all time high.
These tensions can be seen in John Howard Griffin’s autobiography, Black Like Me, and Guy Green’s screenplay, A Patch of Blue; yet while there are many historical and cultural similarities between the two works, there are also large dissimilarities.
A Patch of Blue was originally a screenplay written in 1959 called Be Ready With Bells by Elizabeth Keta (Kringas). Born Elizabeth McDonald, Keta based her story after thinking deeply about the “intolerance and prejudice [against African Americans] for many years”, and “decided to tell the story through the mind of a blind person” ("Elizabeth Kata"; Kringas). Keta’s screenplay was adapted into the movie, A Patch of Blue, …show more content…

Mr. Griffin was a “white American author who temporarily altered the pigment of his skin in order to experience firsthand the life of a black man in the South” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Black Like Me depicts the hardships blacks in the south had to endure. In one incident, Griffin was being stalked by a young, white man as he walked to his next destination: “I’m going to get you, Mr. No-Hair. I’m after you. There ain’t no place you go I won’t get you. If it takes all night, I’ll get you - so count on it” (Griffin 68). In the events of this terrifying encounter, Mr. Griffin tried to get help from a white couple, but the couple would not help him. In the end, he found a safe haven, but this shows what any black human had to deal with during this period of time from random whites in the south. Towards the end of his experiment and after so many encounters such as this, Griffin began to falter and lose his faith in …show more content…

Griffin dyed his skin to appear as a black man, but he was still a white man on the inside. Moreover, Griffin could leave the abyss whenever he pleased, whereas a true African American would be stuck in this world of racism until the day he or she died. Tim Stanley, a historian and columnist for The Telegraph, provides his insight on how Griffin could never truly understand the difficulty of life as a black man: “A white man disguised as black could not understand the insecurities and resentments that came with hundreds of years of inherited slavery – nor did he have the right to lecture black people on the need for love and reconciliation. White people had a role to play in civil rights, but it had to be as allies rather than leaders. The movement needed to be for black people, by black people” (Stanley). Thus, Griffin’s difference in reality in comparison to a black man’s has not gone unnoticed. Moreover, Griffin did not experience a lynching or a civil rights march as a black man. He was not a black man when Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy, was lynched after a white woman said she was offended by him. Additionally, John Howard Griffin was not a black man when 600 people marched 54 miles from Selma, Alabama to Montgomery, Alabama (The First March From Selma”). As for A Patch of Blue, Sidney Poitier is a black man who grew up dealing with the struggles of racism. However, A Patch of Blue

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