John Howard Griffin’s ‘Black Like Me’: Essential Reading

About twelve months ago now, I went into the Aldham Robarts Library at Liverpool John Moores University and stood in front of a large selection of books. I scanned the titles as quickly as I could, my eyes jumping from one part of the shelf to another. All the books appealed to me. I did not know where to start reading.

I wish I could say this book jumped out at me, but I picked it up at random. I read the title. Black Like Me. I read it over and over in my head. Black Like Me. Black Like Me. The book was a lot smaller than many of the other books. It was the same size as my New Testament. There wasn’t very many pages in it, and it was quite battered. It was ragged, and worn.

I made the assumption this was an educated black academic writer, putting pen to paper and explaining (or at least, trying to explain) what it was like on a day-to-day basis to be a black man.

I was wrong.

I was very, very wrong. This book goes beyond that. It draws attention to the part of American society that officials claim does not exist, but everyone knows that it does. John Howard Griffin first highlighted it, then drew a line underneath it, and then got ten, 4,000 watt light bulbs and pointed them all directly at it. Everyone could see. The problem was clear, and there was no disputing it. It existed, it was real, and it was American: racism. It could not be denied.

But Black Like Me is more. It gets under your skin. It eats into you, though you, and leaves you empty. There is nothing left in you. What remains is a hole. You are incomplete. Your soul is incomplete. How can you be complete when someone tells you that the black man is equal, but he is not? He is just the same; the only thing which is not equal is his relationship to society, and this is different because society treats him as different, but Griffin confirms what educated people already know -- that he is not different. He is just the same. You cannot be complete if you have a soul and you know that people just like you are in trouble. They are the brotherhood of Man. They are my brothers, they are your brothers, they are our brothers.

Some whites will say this is not really it. They will say this is the white man’s experience as a Negro in the south, not the Negro’s. But this is picayunish, and we no longer have time for that. We no longer have time to atomise principles and beg the question. We fill too many gutters while we argue unimportant points and confuse issues. The Negro. The South. These are the details.

That is John Howard Griffin speaking. In the preface, he abolishes the primary concern of the reader. And he is right. I wish he was wrong. But he was not. He was not wrong in 1959. I doubt he would be wrong in 2007.

Rest at pale evening…
A tall slim tree…
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright