What Actually Happened When a White Journalist Darkened His Skin in the 1960s South
The premise sounds like something you'd summarize quickly at a cocktail party, but the reality of what Howard Griffin Black Like Me documents is far messier than a simple social experiment. Griffin was a white Texan journalist who, in 1959, spent weeks under intense UV light and applied skin-darkening medications to appear Black while traveling through the Deep South. He visited Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and other states where Jim Crow laws were actively enforced. The book came out in 1961 and became a national sensation almost overnight. The core methodology wasn't particularly complex from a technical standpoint, but executing it required persistence that most people wouldn't attempt. Griffin used a combination of long exposure to ultraviolet radiation from tanning lamps and a topical medication called desoximetasone, which darkens the skin as a side effect. He also wore dark contacts and styled his hair in a way that altered his appearance further. The transformation took roughly two months to reach a point where he could pass as a Black man in the South without drawing immediate suspicion. He adopted the name "Lonnie Griffin" during his travels. He documented everything he experienced — the separate water fountains, the back-of-the-bus seating, the casual cruelty from strangers, the constant awareness of his physical safety. Much of this wasn't new information for Black Americans living through it daily, which is exactly why the book provoked such intense debate when it was published.
Why It Still Matters and Where the Book Falls Apart
I've read this book multiple times over the years, and each time I notice different flaws that become more obvious with context. The biggest issue people gloss over is that Griffin's experience, while harrowing in its own right, was fundamentally temporary. He could walk away from it. He returned to white privilege afterward and continued publishing articles about his experience. For the Black men and women he encountered during those weeks, there was no walking away. Another detail that doesn't get enough attention is how selectively he chose where to go. Griffin mostly traveled through small towns and rural areas rather than major cities. The segregation dynamics in places like Birmingham or New Orleans operated differently than in the smaller communities he visited. His account is valuable precisely because it captures a particular slice of Southern life, but it isn't comprehensive. Someone reading this as a complete picture of racial dynamics in the 1960s South would be misinformed. The book also predates modern publishing standards for memoir and journalistic ethics. There are moments where Griffin's narration slips into savior-adjacent framing, and some of his interactions with Black individuals feel more like performances than genuine exchanges. Scholars have pointed out several instances where Griffin's recollections don't quite align with corroborating evidence from the period. That doesn't make the book worthless. It makes it a primary source that requires careful reading.
How to Access the Book and What to Read Alongside It
Black Like Me is in the public domain in many respects but still widely available through standard booksellers and libraries. You can find physical copies, e-books, and audiobook versions from publishers like Marlowe & Company, which released a well-regarded edition with additional introductory material. Several university presses have also issued annotated versions that include historical context and critical essays. What I'd strongly recommend reading alongside it are works by actual Black authors from the same era. James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son, Lorraine Hansberry's To Be Young, Gifted and Black, and John Howard Griffin's own later reflections provide important counterpoints. Reading Griffin alone gives you a distorted angle on the subject. Reading him alongside Black voices from the period gives you something closer to a real understanding of what was happening.
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The Practical Value of Reading This Today
The book has limitations, but it remains useful for a few specific reasons. It gives readers who didn't experience segregation firsthand a concrete sense of how arbitrary and deeply embedded the system was. Griffin's descriptions of everyday interactions — being refused service at a diner, being followed in a store, being spoken to differently by police — carry weight because he was documenting things most white readers of 1961 had never considered. It also serves as a case study in the ethics of immersive journalism. The technique of having a reporter live inside a community they're writing about has been used repeatedly since, sometimes with more integrity and sometimes with less. Understanding where Griffin succeeded and where he fell short helps you evaluate similar work that comes out decades later. If you're approaching this text as a casual read, you'll probably find it gripping for the first hundred pages and then somewhat repetitive. The encounters Griffin describes, while serious, follow a pattern that becomes predictable. Pushing through that middle section is worth it, though, because the later chapters where he reflects on what the experience meant to him contain the most honest material in the book.
