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Black Like Me
50th Anniversary Edition
John Howard Griffin

Wing Press
2011/ ISBN 0916727688
Nonfiction / Memior
Amazon

Reviewed by Willie Elliott

Wings Press has issued a 50th anniversary edition of John Howard Griffin's classic account of a man who transformed himself in what appeared to be a black man to get a first-hand view of how he would be treated as a black man in the South in Black Like Me.

For people who have read the book earlier, it is important to reread to see what progress we have made and what still needs to be done. But more than that it should be read to remind people of what we did to our fellow man and how we tried to justify it as the way things should be done.

One of the things that strike the reader is the fact that the people who treated blacks so unfairly were not the dregs of society but the very upper crust—the very people who should have been looking after the blacks’ interests were the worst offenders.

Much additional updated information is included in the book including a foreword by Studs Terkel, additional texts by the author, historical photos by Don Ruteledge, and an afterword by Griffin biographer, Robert Bonazzi,but the book itself should be read carefully and and pondered upon.

Hopefully, people who read or reread this book will become more tolerant of other groups who are now victims of prejudice and hate.

Reviewed 2011
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