Author John Howard Griffin Publisher New York: Signet, [1996] Middle-aged and living in Mansfield, Texas, John Howard Griffin desired to know if Southern whites were racist against the Negro population of the Deep South, or if they really judged people based on the individual's personality as many said they did. Since communication between the white and black race did not exist, neither race really knew what it was like for the other. Because of this, Griffin felt the only way to know the truth was to become a black man and travel through the South. This prompted him to cross the color line and write Black Like Me. On October 28, 1959 he began his transition and with the help of a dermatologist became a black man on November 7th of that year. The internationally distributed Negro magazine Sepia in exchange for the right to print excerpts from the finished product financed his trip.He entered black society in New Orleans, LA through his contact Sterling, a shoe shine boy that he had met in the days prior. Griffin stayed with Sterling at the shine stand for a few days to become assimilated into the society and to learn more about the attitude and mindset of the common black man. After a week of trying to find work other than menial labor, he left to travel throughout the Southern states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. The day he left (November 14th) was the day after a Mississippi jury refused to indict or consider evidence in the Mack Parker Kidnap-Lynch Murder Case. He decided to go to Mississippi, the southern state most feared by blacks of that time, to see if it really did have the "wonderful relationship" with their Negroes that they said they did. He found Hattiesburg, MS so full of tension that it scared him. He knew it was a threat to his life if he remained because he was not a true Negro and did not know the proper way to conduct himself in this situation.He traveled to Biloxi, MS and began hitch hiking towards Mobile, A...
