John Howard Griffin, the author and main character of Black Like Me, was a middle-aged white man living in Mansfield, Texas in 1959. Deeply committed to the cause of racial justice and frustrated by his inability as a white man to understand the black experience, Griffin decides to take a radical step. He under went a medical procedure to change the color of his skin and pose as a black man. Griffin lived as a black man for nearly two months, during which time he traveled extensively throughout the South, experiencing white racial prejudice and black solidarity firsthand. These experiences became the basis for Black Like Me, a memoir of his experiences as a black man. Still today it is debated over whether or not he should have colored his skin. Griffin made the correct decision because he gained acceptance of both races, he noticed the simple and nave things of a colored person's life, and he was conditioned as a colored person. .
Griffin noticed instantly that when he was a white man, the white race treat him with respect and the black race treat him with suspicious fear. When he was a black man, the white race treat him with hostility and contempt, while the black race treat him with generosity and warmth. He said "I, the white man, got from the Negro the same shivering treatment I, the Negro, had got from the white man- (Griffin, 123). Once his memoir was published he was accepted by the white race because he gained knowledge without degrading his race. The black race also accepted Griffin because he respected them as an individuals and thought their life was meaningful. Griffin would have not been able to even attempt to bridge the terrible gap separating them as only a white person. He needed to be accepted in both worlds. Griffin concludes that the races do not understand one another at all, and that a tolerant dialogue is needed to bring them to a better understanding of each other.
