John Howard Griffin
BLACK LIKE ME
He talked with the FBI for the last preparations to change his skin colour from white into black. He got a lot of tips from them and from his doctor too, and then he started the process – from now on he was a black man.
He did not want to look into a mirror, because he knew that he would not find himself in the reflected image.
In the middle of the night he stepped out of his house and went to the YMCA. There he had his first conversation from black to black.
Griffin decided to tell somebody the truth about him and his real colour: The shoe-shine-man!
It was a good decision, because he told Griffin that he should shave his arms, because blacks do not have any hair on their arms.
Someday someone followed him, calling him names.
Griffin had a funny feeling, because in his papers there did not stand black, there stood white! At this day he also saw a lot of restaurants where he, as a black, was not allowed to sit and eat or drink something.
He also sat in a park and a white man came up to him and told him, that he was not allowed to sit there, so Griffin thanked him and walked away. Later he learned that blacks were allowed to sit there and that the white guy was a racist, who had just wanted to have some fun.
On the same day he had a bad experience on a bus: When Griffin wanted to get off the bus – he dawdled a bit – the bus driver shut the door in front of Griffin’s nose. Griffin was only able to leave the bus, when other white people wanted to leave the bus.
No one wanted to change the money for Griffin, just because he was black. Then he bought a bus ticket to go from New Orleans to Hattiesburg. When the bus made a rest only the white people were allowed to leave the bus to go to the toilet. So the blacks urinated on the aisle in the bus.
In Hattiesburg he took a taxi (‘cup’) to get to a hotel where he had a bed, but he could not sleep all night.
After some days P.D. took Griffin back to New Orleans. P.D. told him a story about a black man who was not allowed to vote for a president just because a white man did not want him to vote.
Griffin found out that black people just get badly-paid jobs or no job because the white people did not want that the black people got too rich and mighty.
Another day Griffin hitchhiked and travelled with a white guy. First he was a bit afraid, but the most, not everyone, was quite nice.
Griffin talked a lot about sex.
He searched for jobs but he did not find any. He heard things like: “We don’t want you people”
Griffin hitchhiked again. First he was not sure if he should get into the car because he saw, that the man had a gun. The man said that that gun was just for hunting deer, so Griffin sat in the car.
Then he came to a restaurant. First the woman, who was working there, did not want to give him something to eat, but then she did. After eating a black man drove Griffin to the blacks house and his family, and his wife allowed Griffin to sleep there.
He hitchhiked with another black person. It was a man who had six children and a very nice wife. Griffin was allowed to eat and sleep by this friendly family.
Next day he hitchhiked with two young white men and then he drove by bus to Montgomery. Since this day he had been a black person for three weeks. He decided to take no more pills for staying black.
The live as a black in Montgomery is a bit strange. The whites sometimes provoke the blacks, and if the black person fights back, the white person beats the black person up and then the white can say that this was self-defence.
He got white again and everything changed. For Griffin it was “just” his skin, but for the rest of the world he was a total other person.
He drove bye bus to Tuskegee, where he got a new friend who was a teacher.
Then Griffin got to Atlanta and he slept in the YMCA.
Griffin talked to a monk and asked him a few questions about discrimination. The monk told Griffin that if people want to pray to god, they do not want to have an argument.
Griffin’s new friend, the professor, brought him to Atlanta, where he met the photographer, Don Rutledge, who worked out a story with Griffin for a magazine called “Black Star”.
He wrote a lot about politic into his diary. Then he drove back to New Orleans and jacked out from the YMCA.
When the story has been finished, Griffin changed his skin white again. He described, that this was a funny feeling, as if he would miss his blackness.
Then he flew back home. Seven weeks have been gone since he had seen his family the last time.
After some time Griffin published the whole story. He got interviewed! The Interviewer asked him about the two coloured doll which was hanged by some people who were racists.
His family drove to Texas to begin a new live. But he drove back after some time, because he did not want to be afraid in his whole live.
END
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