Black Like Me (21 page)

Griffin spent a great deal of his journey walking. Warned away from park benches and stoops - or any other resting place where a Black person could be accused of loitering - he found such casual racist attitudes curiously balanced by the inherent courtesy of the South.

Above:
Griffin and Sterling Williams share a stew of corn, turnips, and rice, seasoned with thyme, bay leaf and green peppers (p. 28).

Below:
Griffin orders a meal from the proprietress of one of the many Negro cafés he frequented.

Griffin collects his fee from a dapper patron at Sterling Williams’ shoe-shine stand in the French Quarter. Griffin worked with Williams off and on for a week in mid-November (p. 23 ff). All the change he collected he left with Williams.

On April 2, 1960, Griffin was informed that he had been “hanged in effigy” on Main Street in Mansfield, Texas. Griffin’s name and a yellow streak were painted on the dummy’s back. Taken to the town dump by the local constable, by the time a
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
photographer took this picture, someone had placed the dummy in front of this sign (pp. 159-160). Griffin later quipped that it was “not a very good likeness.”

Above:
Griffin being interviewed by Mike Wallace (CBS Television) on March 23, 1960, as the April issue of
Sepia
was just hitting newsstands, over a year before the book was published (p. 155-157).

Below:
Griffin being interviewed by Ted Lewis for a New York radio show. Griffin was interviewed by many other prominent journalists.

This previously unpublished portrait of Griffin as a Black man was taken in Gladys and Harold Levy’s guesthouse (the former slave quarters of an old plantation). Some years prior, during Griffin’s decade of blindness, the Levys had introduced Griffin to Sadie Jacobs, an innovative teacher of the blind. Griffin spent a week at the Levy guesthouse preparing himself prior to beginning his “journey” (pp. 7-13). Griffin does not mention the Levys by name in
Black Like Me
. See also,
Man in the Mirror
, pp. 41-42.

M
r. Levitan
, the owner of
Sepia
, called and asked me to come in for an editorial conference with Mrs. Jackson. Though the magazine had paid for the trip, and I in turn promised them some articles about it, he gave me the opportunity to back out. “It’ll cause trouble,” he said. “ We don’t want to see you killed. What do you think? Hadn’t we better forget the whole thing?”

“Do you mean you’re willing to cancel this, after all you’ve been led to expect?” I asked.

“The only way I’ll run it is if you insist,” he said.

“Then I think we must run it,” I said, wishing with all my heart I could drop it. However,
Sepia
, unlike many magazines, is widely read in the Deep South by Negroes. I felt it was the best way of letting them know that their condition was known, that the world knew more about them than they suspected; the best way to give them hope.

The world would know, then, in early March. It was January. I had two months left in which to work before the storm would break.

T
he time drew
to a close. The news became known. I had spent weeks at work, studying, correlating statistics, going through reports, none of which actually help to reveal the truth of what it is like to be discriminated against. They cancel truth almost more than they reveal it. I decided to throw them away and simply publish what happened to me.

A call from Hollywood. Paul Coates spoke to me, asked me to fly out and be on his interview program. I accepted.

T
he first of the Coates
shows was televised locally after it had been given heavy publicity over the weekend by the newspapers. I think almost every TV viewer in the area watched the show.

When the program was finished, and we heard Paul Coates announce we would return “tomorrow” to continue the interview, our attention switched to the telephone. We realized that now our neighbors knew, now the whole Dallas-Fort Worth area knew.

The phone began to ring. I picked it up, wondering what I should say if it were an abusive call. It was Penn and L.A. Jones from Midlothian. They talked for a long time. I realized that they were tying up the line so that no hate calls could come through. Finally, after almost an hour, we said good-by. Immediately my parents called to say it was fine. How full of dread their voices were - but they sincerely approved of what I had said.

After that, silence. We sat and waited, but the phone did not ring. The silence was so unnatural, so ominous, it weighed heavy on us. Were none of my friends, no other members of my family going to call?

F
lew to New York
two days ago. Interview this morning with
Time
magazine in their new offices. They took photos and treated me with great cordiality. While I was at
Time
, the Dave Garroway show called. We were to have a preliminary interview that afternoon at five.

Unable to bear the silence from home, I returned to my
room and telephoned to Mansfield. As a result of the two Paul Coates shows, my mother had received her first threatening call. It was from a woman who would not identify herself. The conversation had begun politely enough. The woman said they could not understand in town how I could turn against my own race. My mother assured her I had done this precisely
for
my race. The woman said: “Why he’s just thrown the door wide open for those niggers, and after we’ve
all
worked so hard to keep them out.” She then became abusive and succeeded in terrorizing my mother by telling her, “If you could just hear what they’re planning to do to him if he ever comes back to Mansfield - ”

“Who’s planning?” my mother asked.

“That’s all right. You just ought to be over at Curry’s [a local café and night spot on the highway leading into Mansfield, run by ardent segregationists]. You’d see to it he never showed his face in Mansfield again.”

My mother said she felt better when I talked to her. She had never been confronted by this sort of brutality before. She called my wife over and they sat together, frightened. Then they called Penn Jones, who came immediately and placed himself at their disposal.

Sickened that they would pick on a man’s mother and strike him through terrorizing her, I immediately made calls and asked for police surveillance of both my home and my parents’ home.

G
arroway was immensely
impressive. When we finally met this morning, briefly, before I went on camera, I told him I was afraid that my appearance would bring severe repercussions against him from the South. He stood large, larger than he appears on the screen. I told him I would answer his questions as carefully as possible. He bent over me and said: “Mr. Griffin - John - let me just ask you to do one thing.”

I braced myself against his request, fearing he would ask me to soft-pedal.

“Just tell the truth as honestly and as frankly as you can and don’t worry about my sponsors or anything else. You keep your mind clear to answer whatever I ask. Will you forget everything else and just remember that?”