Study Guide: Black Like Me (A BookCaps Study Guide)

By BookCaps

The perfect companion to John Howard Griffin's "Black Like Me," this study guide contains a chapter by chapter analysis of the book, a summary of the plot, and a guide to major characters and themes.

BookCap Study Guides do not contain text from the actual book, and are not meant to be purchased as alternatives to reading the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookCaps
• Release date: Dec 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465986542

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John Howard Griffin’s

Black Like Me

By BookCaps Study Guides

© 2011 by Golgotha Press, Inc.

Published at SmashWords

Historical Context:

John Howard Griffin was born in Dallas, Texas in 1920. He attended school in France as a teenager and discovered that the white supremacist attitude that he had grown up knowing did not exist there. As he realized a point of view, he had never known before he became passionate about ending racism in America.

After graduating high school in 1938 Griffin stayed in France to study and joined up with the French Resistance underground during the Second World War. Eventually Griffin joined the American army and sustained a concussion toward the end of the war that was so severe it caused him to lose his sight suddenly. He returned to America in 1947, blind, and, in 1952, he was married and he and his wife move onto a ranch. He continued with his passion of promoting racial equality, which he did through his writing for newspapers, magazines, and even his own memoir.

Suddenly in 1957 Griffin regained his sight, which only helped him to write more efficiently. Griffin decided he would undergo a medical treatment that would change his skin color so he would more effectively understand what it was like to live as a black person; his experience of living for two months with darker skin is chronicled in his second memoir, Black Like Me.

Griffin was able to experience what was like living in a white people’s world and even the uplifting and hopeful environment that surrounded the Civil