Black Like Me is a stirring, non-fiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin first published in 1961. A white Texan, Griffin artificially darkens his skin with sunlamps and shoe polish, then passes himself off as a black man. He spends a difficult six weeks hitchhiking and travelling on Greyhound buses throughout the racially segregated South, keeping a journal that describes how he was regarded as a black man by both whites and blacks, then removing the shoe polish and returning to the same scene – where he was treated differently. In 1959, at the time of the book's writing, race relations were particularly strained in America – and his book was not particularly well received in circles where the politically correct view was that blacks were content to be second-class citizens and would never rise any higher. I was given the book at Christmas by a liberal Canadian uncle who annually liked to stir his teenage nephew’s complacency with thought-provoking inspiration. The title of the book is taken from the last line of the Langston Hughes poem Dream Variations: “Rest at pale evening... A tall slim tree... Night coming tenderly -- Black like me.”

~ Rob Kerby

Purchase "Black Like Me" here.