Student Essay on Black Like Me, A Review

John H. Griffin's Black Like Me is a very touching book. The book taught me that there are people out there that do care about to struggles that the blacks in America went through. The book is a real life experiences that the author John Griffin went through. Griffin in the book for six long weeks transforms himself into a black man, to see how it really fells to be a Negro in the 50's. Griffin's writing is filled with interesting information especially because he is showing different struggles that black men were dealing with at the time. In Black Like Me the story takes place in Texas. Griffin talks about how he traveled from many states. For six weeks the Griffin, who is from Texas, hitchhikes, walks, or takes a busses through the streets of four other Southern

States Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia.

What I like about the book is that Griffin sets out on a personal quest to discover what it is really like to be a Negro. He knows sees how, many freedoms and rights that he had as a privileged white are now forbidden to him. He also encounters many racial issues that exist between whites and Negroes. This was an interesting part of the book because Griffin is know just getting to see what it is really like being black. The things that he is being put through are a very big eye opener for him.

What caught my eye about Black Like Me is that it shows me that people in those days didn't even know how the Negro's struggled. Even for an author like Griffin he was in a state of shock when he sees how he was being treated. He had left his family, his wife and children to go out and see what it feels like to be a black man, and he had nothing but hard times the whole six weeks.

This most important park of the book to me was when Griffin finally finds friends. Griffin encounters many common Negro men and women, who show him much politeness and kindness even though they are total strangers. One such person is the Negro shoeshine man Sterling Williams, the author's first Negro friend. Then he also meets a few strange Negro men in Atlanta, who let him know who they have made it through a lot. This is my favorite part of the book because you can tell how Griffin was starting to become a different man.

This book is also good because it is full of conflicts, One of the major conflicts is when the book ends tragically, with the worrying fear that the blood, sweat and tears the Negroes have suffered at the hands of the cruel and deadly white racists, will force ever increasing numbers of innocent Negroes towards becoming black racists themselves. Racists, who will then haunt and hound innocent whites, in revenge for what they Negroes have suffered for centuries.

Black The Me was a good learning experience for me because, I learned about how anyone can appreciate their race and others race. Because Griffin show how the race issues can affect the personalities of their all-racist people, in spite of the people don't mean harm to any one. And because of his talented writing he may have changed some racist peoples nasty ways. I would tell people to read this book because this book could influence people to dig deeper into a person's personality and not into a persons skin color. This book is truly a good experience for me.