Analysis Of Black Like Me By John Howard Griffin

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Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin tells the story of racial prejudice of blacks during the 1960s. As the main character of the book, Griffin is very dedicated to raise racial justice. However, as a white man, he is unable to understand the experience of blacks, so he undergoes a medical treatment to change the pigment of his skin. Funded by George Levitan, the editor of a black-oriented magazine called Sepia, he leaves his family and sets out to New Orleans to begin life as a black man.

Once Griffin arrives at New Orleans in early November, he sets up a consultation with a dermatologist to darken his skin. After his transformation, Griffin panics after looking in a mirror, feeling a lost of identity. Griffin also meets Sterling Williams, …show more content…

Mississippi had recently had an unfair trial where a black man was lynched by a mob, but the mob was not found guilty even though there was enough evidence against them. During his stay in Mississippi, Griffin realizes how much more cruel the Deep South is to the blacks. In New Orleans, whites were at least courteous to the blacks’ faces, whereas in Mississippi, they were blatantly racist and hateful. Eventually, Griffin arrives back to New Orleans after a couple days. From there he gets a ticket to a more coastal town in Mississippi and decides to hitchhike his way to Mobile, Alabama. Griffin stays three days in Mobile with an elderly man, where each day he had to go out of his way to find a place to eat, drink, or use the restroom. Soon, he decides to hitchhike to Montgomery, Alabama. He meets a young black man who works at a sawmill. The sawmill worker generously gives Griffin a meal and a place to sleep despite his own problems of a large family suffering through …show more content…

As a white man, he could now dine wherever he pleased, smile at women and not be threatened, and enjoy all the small privileges that every white man takes for granted. Although Griffin feels a sense of liberation, he feels no joy because all he could think about was the other side of the story. Griffin starts going back and forth between being black and white. As a white man, Griffin receives warm smiles from the whites, but receives hateful stares from the blacks showcasing that racism went both

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