Black Like Me (30 page)

The inculcated misconception that posits the
Other
, simply because a person has darker pigmentation or worships a different god or follows “strange” customs or speaks in a “foreign” tongue, has led humanity to tragic consequences. Extrinsic differences separate us instead of the deeper commonalties that should unite us—survival and basic needs, raising families, creating art, desiring peace, risking love, daring to hope, enduring pain, and dying—everything that makes us human. How can we know the suffering of innocents and not be human rights advocates? “This is insidious,” Griffin writes, “because it is often done in good faith, is often accomplished with an illusion of benevolence. It leads to master delusion. The delusion lies in the fact that no matter how well we think we know the
Other
, we still judge from within the imprisoning framework of our own limited cultural criteria, we still speak within the cliché of the stereotype.”

That
master delusion
began when we were taught to pre-judge a person from another culture without the benefit of sufficient or unbiased knowledge of their culture. This tragic phenomenon, based on a faulty and rigid generalization, reveals our unconscious hostility toward other groups. It fulfills the irrational function of making us believe we are superior to all “outsiders” and that our culture reigns supreme. But culture is
not
human nature, even as it shapes our view of human nature. What we learn to label as differences in human nature are merely the stereotypes of our cultural viewpoint. Never shall we understand fully another culture if we are imprisoned in our own; and never shall we fully understand our culture if it remains out of awareness. Yet encountering
another culture can provide a dramatic contrast that may awaken a fresh view of ourselves, may illuminate our blind spot toward the
Other
. “I believe that before we can truly dialogue with one another”—says Griffin in “Beyond
Otherness
”—we must first perceive intellectually, and then at the profoundest emotional level, that there is no
Other
—that the
Other
is simply
Oneself
in all the significant essentials.”

Look around, sisters and brothers, the Global Village arrived while we were out to lunch or napping through re-runs of starving children on the death channel. Look inward to the Great Spirit and know that the reality of human nature has been—and will always be—universal.
Black Like Me
means
Human Like Us
.

John Howard Griffin and
Black Like Me

John Howard Griffin (1920-1980) received the following awards for his humanitarian work: The
Journey Into Shame
series in
Sepia
magazine was recognized in 1960 by the National Council of Negro Women; the annual Ainsfield-Wolf Award from
Saturday Review
went to
Black Like Me
in 1962; Griffin shared the
Pacem in Terris
Award with President John F. Kennedy in 1963; he received the Christian Culture Award from Assumption University of Windsor, Ontario in 1968; and in 1980 he was given the Kenneth David Kaunda Award for Humanism from the Pan African Association.

Black Like Me
has remained available in English since being published in 1961. It has been translated into 16 languages, selling over 12 million copies worldwide. It was first published by Houghton Mifflin in cloth, then reprinted in 1962 as a Signet mass paperback from New American Library. Houghton Mifflin published a second cloth edition that included Griffin’s “Epilogue” in 1976 and Signet/Penguin issued a new paperback in 1977. In 1996, a 35th Anniversary Edition appeared (with an Afterword by Robert Bonazzi); and in 2009 Penguin published a 50th Anniversary Edition (with a new Afterword by Bonazzi).

The first Wings Press publication of the Griffin Estate
Edition of
Black Like Me
appeared in 2004, the first cloth edition since 1976. The second printing of 2006 includes the first index to the American classic. This Ebook is based on the 2006 edition, but with a revised Afterword and updated Notes.

The following notes on the works and authors cited in the Afterword, in order of their first appearance:

The Mohandas Gandhi’s quote is from
Gandhi on Non-Violence
(edited by Thomas Merton, New Directions, 1965); Ralph Ellison’s quote is from
Invisible Man
(Random House, 1952).

“The Intrinsic Other” was written in French in 1996 and anthologized in
Building Peace
(edited by Dominique Pire). Its first US publication was in
The John Howard Griffin Reader
(edited by Bradford Daniel, Houghton Mifflin, 1968). The essay was reprinted in
Encounters With the Other: A Personal Journey
(edited by Robert Bonazzi, Latitudes Press, 1997); that edition also included a personal essay by Griffin on Chief John Vutha.

Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision
(Orbis Books, 2004) was published 40 years after it was written. Several chapters had appeared in
The John Howard Griffin Reader
.

Griffin’s
Handbook for Darkness
was produced by the Lighthouse for the Blind in 1949, both as an English-language text and in a Braille edition.

The Devil Rides Outside
was published by Smiths, Inc. of Fort Worth, Texas in 1952. It was an alternate selection of the Book of the Month Club. The 1954 paperback from Pocket Books was banned in Detroit. It was submitted as a test case and adjudicated
as “not pornographic” by the United States Supreme Court in a landmark case (
Butler v. Michigan
) in 1957. This case established the precedent that no book could be censored merely on the basis of “objectionable” words or passages, but had to be considered in terms of its entire text.

Nuni
, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1956.
Street of the Seven Angels
was published by Wings Press in 2003, 40 years after Griffin had completed it.

“Racist Sins of Christians” was first published in 1963 by
Sign
magazine as a cover story; it was reprinted in
The John Howard Griffin Reader
.

“Dialogue with Father August Thompson” first appeared in
Ramparts
magazine as a cover story in 1963; it was reprinted in
The John Howard Griffin Reader
and
Encounters With the Other: A Personal Journey
.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was written in April 1963 in response to a statement by eight white Alabama clergymen, calling for a cessation to the civil rights demonstrations in Birmingham. The text has been reprinted in 40 languages since.

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America
was written by Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton (Knopf, 1967).

The Church and the Black Man
included Griffin’s texts and photographs, a manifesto by the Black Priests Caucus, and a diskette with speeches by Reverend Albert B. Cleage and Father James Groppi (Pflaum, 1969). A French edition by Brouwer appeared in 1970.

A Time To Be Human
was published in 1977 by Macmillan (US/ Canada), and by Collier in the UK that same year.

Heartfelt thanks to those who have contributed to this ongoing project: Especially to Don Rutledge, whose
Black Like Me
photographs are included in
Light: The Photojournalism of Don Rutledge
(Baptist History and Heritage Society/Field Publishing, 2006), and to the late Studs Terkel, who interviewed Griffin five times and wrote of him in
American Dreams: Lost and Found
(Pantheon, 1980).

Continued appreciation to the four children of Elizabeth Griffin-Bonazzi (1935-2000) and John Howard Griffin, for they are the Griffin Estate: Susan, John, Gregory and Amanda; also to Barry Griffin for his efforts toward making a new feature film about Griffin’s life.

Deep thanks to friends Daniel L. Robertson, Michael Power and Paul Christensen for textual insights; to Brother Patrick Hart and Father August Thompson, for spiritual support; and to Joanna Marston Co-Director of the Rosica Colin Agency for intelligent guidance.

Thanks also to new friends: Morgan Atkinson, a filmmaker at work on the first Griffin documentary; to editor Rudolf F. Rau for sharp editorial suggestions; and to Kamala Platt for creating the first-ever index to this American classic.

Long term appreciation to Robert Ellsberg, editor and publisher of Orbis Books, for directing Griffin volumes into print—
Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision
(2004) and
Follow the Ecstasy: The Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton
(1993)—and for editing
Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me
(1997).

Last but not least, Bryce Milligan, publisher of Wings Press, who has designed several versions of
Black Like Me
, as well as editions of Griffin’s novel,
Street of the Seven Angels
in 2003, and
Available Light: Exile in Mexico
in 2008. Without my old poet- friend, these last two titles would never have seen the light of day.

Note: Pages cited refer to the printed edition, not to the ebook.

Alabama 96–131

Birmingham bombing 189

Mobile 85, 95–103

Montgomery 107, 118, 121–27

Selma 119–20, 189

Alinski, Saul (see Civil Rights Movement leaders)

American Dream 144

Atlanta, Georgia 131–32, 134, 139, 142

Atlanta Journal-Constitution
141, 189

Atlanta Negro Voters League 144

Baldwin, James 224

Black history 204 (see also Negro)

Black Power 226–28, and

Black Liberation Movement 227

Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America
226, 237

Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Turé) and Charles V. Hamilton (authors) 226–27, 237

Griffin as ally-observer 196

Bonazzi, Robert 213–238

(
Man in the Mirror)
149, 156

Boyle, Sarah Patton 182, 185

Carmichael, Stokely (see Black Power)

Carver, George Washington 127

Catholic church 20–21, 31–33, 51, 220–22

(on race) 56, 58–59, 225 and

Griffin’s protection of 163, 225

Griffin’s
The Church and the Black Man
226, 237

Jesuits 82

Jude, St. 38

Merton, Thomas 225, 237

New Orleans 33

Murphy, Father J. Stanley 225

Thompson, Father August 225

Trappists 135–38

censorship of books 229–30

charity

St. Augustine on 96

Mohandas Gandhi on 226

Chicago 204, 225, children (and racism) 13, 14, 79, 82, 93–96, 110, 112–15, 173–74, (Bonazzi, 216, 229)

citizenship (denied Blacks) 122

second class 46

civil disobedience 226–228

Civil Rights Bill (of 1964) 189, 226

Civil Rights Movement leaders (see also Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Alinski, Saul 205

Cleage, Albert (Black theologian) 207–08, 225, 227

Davis, A.L. Reverend 33

Farmer, James 194, 205

Gregory, Dick 185–86, 191, 194–195

Groppi, Father James 205

Wilkins, Roy 194, 205

Young, Whitney 185, 194

Coates, Paul 160–61

Creole 7, 20

cultural stereotypes 215, 217, 231, 234

Davis, A.L. Reverend 33

debt (in the South) 109, 204

desegregation, bus 23, 54 (see also segregation)

despair 197

dignity 24, 121

(and food) 28–29, 111, 152

discrimination (also see prejudice) and

“alienating souls” 225

buses 51–53, 131–34 (see also desegregation)

cabs 65

check-cashing 50–51

food 7, 28–31, 86, 107–08, (“white meal”) 124

housing 20, 191–92

individualism 47

internalized 43

job 39, 41–42, 101, 190

military men and lack of 54 (soldiers’ responsibilities 122)

parks 44–45

press 190

restaurants 43–44, 46–47, 86, 100, 107–08, 124,

restrooms 20–21, 24, 46–47, 61–63, 86–87 (as sanctuary from, 133)

The South 125 (and The North) 162, 224–25

taxes, 76, 122, and beach privileges denied 84, 190

voting 80–81

water 26, 31

distance (between races) 124–25, 174–75

Dryades St. (see Louisianna, New Orleans)

East, P. D. (see press) economic injustice 41–42, 190

effigy 154, 167–68, 223

Eighth Generation
,
The
115

Ellison, Ralph (
Invisible Man
) 213, (censorship of, 229), 237

ethnicity 57–58

fairness and

Mayor Morrison 17

Mayor Hartsfield 144

Farmer, James (see Civil Rights Movement leaders)

FBI 6, 48, 63

fear 12–13, 37, 66, 73, 121–24, 186–87, 213, 225 and

courage to die in civil rights struggle 185–86

Griffin’s own 215

“knee-knocking courage” 186

“self-power” 105

white fear of “intermingling” 122

rumor-mongering 197–99

Fort Worth Star-Telegram
(see press)

For Men of Good Will
(Robert Guste, New Orleans priest) 82, 137

Gandhi, Mohandas 121, 213, 226, 237

Garroway, Dave (see press)

Geismar, Maxwell 74

Georgia 133

Atlanta 131–32, 134, 139, 142

Griffin, Governor of 133

Global Village 234

Golden, Harry (see press)

Gregory, Dick (see Civil Rights Movement leaders)

Griffin, Elizabeth Holland (wife)
v
, 5, 69, 120, 148, 221–22, 238

Griffin, John Howard and

Army Air Force 219–20

“Beyond
Otherness
” 233, 234

blindness 6–7 (
Handbook forDarkness
) 221–22, 226 (
Scattered Shadows
) 221, 236

childhood and youth experience 217–218 (with Lillian Smith’s
Strange Fruit
) 111