Black Like Me

Montgomery has a different atmosphere than other cities Griffin has visited, as he notices that Black people here are expressing passive resistance. They seem to be inspired and held together by the messages of Martin Luther King Jr. and refuse to remain in their current position. At the same time, white people are in a state of refusal as well, not allowing any sort of budging of rights to occur. Griffin compares the two groups to blocks of concrete, both unyielding and determined. Griffin is still given “the hate stare” (117) wherever he goes and finds himself grateful when someone looks at him without hatred.

Being in Montgomery is so bewildering to Griffin that he no longer feels at all comfortable having dark skin. He decides to spend his days in his room and only go out at night until his skin lightens.

Griffin scrubs his skin and considers the fragility of his transition and how careful he must be. When he feels ready, he goes out into the street, and almost immediately, he feels tension from Black people he passes along the way. A policeman smiles at Griffin, which he accepts as evidence that others see him as white, and he walks into a restaurant to eat. He feels shock at the sudden freedom and respect he seems to have again and cannot make logical sense of it. He gets a room at a hotel and marvels at how clean and upscale everything seems in comparison to the lodgings he has had. When he looks at women, they no longer stare back accusingly. He cannot take joy in any of it, however, knowing how he was treated just yesterday: “The miracle was sour” (119).

Griffin has conversations with all sorts of people he passes, most of whom have negative words to say about Black people or who just want to complain. Griffin listens more than talks, although he wants to correct people; instead, he attempts to understand. When he goes into a predominantly Black neighborhood, he finds himself stared at and mistrusted in the same way he was when he went into white-dominated areas with dark skin. Griffin wonders if there is even any point in continuing to try to convince people of their flawed perception.

Griffin starts switching between dark and light skin several times, going through each area he passes with both dark and light skin. He notices that when he appears white, white people treat him kindly, and when he appears Black, Black people treat him kindly. Griffin makes his way to Tuskegee by bus and marvels at the beauty and dignity of the university campus, noting the clear inspiration of George Washington Carver, a Black scientist and inventor who died the decade before. Griffin notes that since enslavement is still a recent memory, the students here seem to take a deep pride and importance in their education.

While heading toward the university, Griffin is stopped by a white man who claims to be a PhD student from New York studying race relations. He begs Griffin to go for drinks with him, but Griffin sees that attracting nothing but trouble and refuses. When a Black man selling live turkeys pulls up, the PhD student frantically offers to buy all the turkeys to prove that some white men aren’t “bastards.” Griffin is incredulous at the man’s attempt to fix problems much larger than himself with this simple gesture. The vendor hesitates to give the man multiple live turkeys, which causes the man to turn on him and start insulting him. Griffin makes a note in his journal about paternalism.

On the bus toward Atlanta, an incident occurs when two white women get on and two Black people are asked to change seats for them. Both people refuse to move, and one man starts threatening to hit them. The situation deescalates, and before reaching Atlanta, Griffin switches buses and visits a washroom to take the pigment off his skin again.

Griffin buses to a Trappist monastery in Georgia and finds its peaceful, loving atmosphere soothing and healing. He talks to a monk about racist people who claim to be Christian, and the monk points him to the philosophy of Jacques Maritain, who noted that people have a strong tendency to twist God’s word to justify their own views of the world. Griffin realizes that this sort of problem among racist people is nothing new. While sleeping that night, he again awakes from the nightmare of being accosted by white people.

Griffin is given a ride back to Atlanta, where he meets up with Don Rutledge, a photographer assigned to help Griffin report on civil rights and business activities amongst Black communities in Atlanta.

After interviewing several prominent local Black community leaders, Griffin marvels at the success of Black men in Atlanta and how uniting under a common purpose has changed so much for them. Along with a strong education and an open-minded local government, the existence of bold and truthful newspaper publications has helped with this change. Griffin laments that most newspapers in the South are prone to pandering, sensationalism, and creating misconceptions of the Black community while excluding positive news. Atlanta is also home to two banks founded by and for Black people to gain financial independence from white people, including the issuance of loans to buy upscale, rather than low-quality, housing. After completing their project in Atlanta, Griffin asks Don if he will accompany him back to New Orleans and photograph him with dark skin, living as he did weeks before.

Griffin and Don walk around the areas that Griffin frequented before and arrange to meet in places without interacting so that Don can photograph Griffin without arousing suspicion or unwanted attention. Griffin is photographed at a produce market and a fish market. Being around Griffin all day lets Don see the nature of segregation and the true horrors of its intentional inconvenience.

Griffin’s projects are finished, and he takes off his pigment for the last time, feeling an odd sense of grief for the life he is leaving behind.

Griffin flies home to see his family. Although his anticipation of seeing them again is the most overpowering emotion at the moment, he also dreads the risks that he is about to bring to himself and his family when he shares his experiences to the world. Griffin greets his family, and everyone seems relieved that his experiment is over.

Griffin talks to the owner of Sepia magazine that planned to run his story. The man seems hesitant to move forward with it, but Griffin insists that it is an important truth to tell and that it will assure Black people of the South that their experiences are understood. This, Griffin hopes, will give them hope.

Time runs out for Griffin before the set date of publication, and he becomes frustrated at the way that statistics and other facts fail to accurately represent the experience of Black people in the South. He decides to just publish his experiences directly as they occurred.

Griffin is called to interview for a popular television program and agrees. The broadcast attracts attention, and one of Griffin’s friends calls intentionally, speaking to him for an hour to prevent potential hate calls from coming in. Griffin phones his parents, who approve of his decision to speak out, but nobody else calls to discuss what he had revealed.

Griffin flies to New York to interview for Time magazine. Griffin’s mother receives a threatening phone call from a woman who complains Griffin has opened doors that should have remained closed and suggests he will be attacked or killed if he returns to Mansfield. Griffin has police surveil his and his parents’ homes afterward.

Griffin is interviewed on another popular talk show, where the host is unafraid to be honest and asks difficult questions. Griffin feels as though it is a true success. When asked how he feels about racism in the northern states, Griffin admits he doesn’t know enough about it to respond.

Griffin provides several more interviews and awaits the release of the Time article, which turns out to be direct and truthful, to Griffin’s relief. When Griffin interviews with journalist Mike Wallace for his show, Griffin is shocked to find that Wallace knows a great deal about the details of where and with whom Griffin stayed on his journey. Mike is a gentleman and respects Griffin’s request not to include those details in the show, and the taped interview goes well. Mike asks provoking and thoughtful questions, and Griffin feels as though he was truly heard.

Griffin’s story spreads around the world, and he is interviewed by a television show from Paris. He avoids going into town as much as possible to avoid making others uncomfortable, but he begins getting mail from people who congratulate him on his courage and the importance of his work.

Griffin receives a call from a reporter in a nearby town who tells Griffin that an effigy of his likeness was hung by the traffic lights on Main Street in Mansfield earlier that day. Griffin has not heard anything else about it and refuses to answer questions on the matter. Griffin receives no calls of sympathy from his neighbors, but friends in other cities offer their hospitality to help him and his family escape the potential threat while the controversy dies down. On the way home, Griffin is told by a passerby that people are planning to castrate him. Griffin and his family prepare to leave for Dallas to stay with a friend.

Protests against Griffin’s actions continue in Mansfield, and when they arrive in Dallas, the family is exhausted from the stress.

Griffin and his family return to Mansfield, where townspeople request that he not stir up any more controversy and keep the peace. Griffin laughs at this, believing that peace can only be achieved if all human beings have justice in their lives.

Griffin receives thousands of supportive and a few angry letters from across the country. He notices that many people of the South are, as he suspected, disapproving of segregation but too fearful to speak out about it. In his own town, however, Griffin is continually stared at, rebuffed, and ostracized.

Griffin’s parents move to Mexico to escape the hostility of the locals, and Griffin and his wife decide that their family must leave as well. Griffin stays behind for a while, not wanting to allow those who are threatening him to feel as though they have won in the fight to remove him from their city.

Griffin hires a young Black man to help clear out his parents’ vacant home. The man talks to Griffin as though he assumes Griffin will understand him, and Griffin is sad to hear that the man believes all white people hate him. Griffin looks to the future and hopes that Black people can obtain respect and equality without the need for revenge, believing that seeking revenge against white people will only sink the problem deeper into its hole.