In the autumn of 1959, a white Texan journalist named John Howard Griffin travelled across the Deep South of the United States disguised as a working class black man. Black Like Me is Griffin's own account of his journey. Published in book form two years later it revealed to a white audience the day-to-day experience of racism in segregation-era America. Selling over five million copies, Black Like Me became one of the best-known accounts of race and racism in the 1960s. Embraced by some and fiercely criticised by others, its legacy sixty years on remains problematic, but Black Like Me nevertheless stands as a fascinating document of its time.

One of the most extraordinary books ever written about relations between the races. -- BBC Radio 4 * The Today Programme *
In 1959, a white American decided to turn himself into a 'Negro'...John Howard Griffin would venture alone into some of the Deep South's most virulently racist hotspots and experience life on the other side of the tracks...Black Like Me brilliantly reveals the dehumanisation of black people by the white majority...This reissued edition will introduce a whole new British readership to a work that is still an important, illuminating and fascinating read. -- Bernardine Evaristo * The Times *
Black Like Me is in the form of a two-month diary and revealed to white America - and Griffin himself - the indignities, abuse and threat of violence that black people had to put up with on a daily basis. -- The official magazine of Black History Month * Black History 365 *
John Howard Griffin...embarked on one of the most remarkable one-man social and psychological experiments in history...Griffin was the white man who fooled hundreds of Americans into believing he was a black man as he travelled through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia - and who felt at first hand the bigotry that meant...It is worth reading what he wrote - and then reflecting, in this age of the first African-American president, on how far we have come. And how far we have to go. * BBC News website *
One of the most fascinating journalistic investigations carried out in the USA...When Griffin described what he experienced...it awoke a vast section of the American public to what was happening in their country. * The Voice *
Fifty years after John Howard Griffin darkened his skin and travelled through the segregated US south, his record of the fear and prejudice he experienced is still resonant... As long as one group persecutes, fears and detests another, Black Like Me will, sadly, remain essential reading. * Guardian *

John Howard Griffin was born in Texas in 1920. As a student in France in 1939 he was caught up with the outbreak of the Second World War, and worked with the French Resistance befor ejoining the US Army. After the publication of Black Like Me he worked as a human rights activist, and taught at the University of Peace. He died in 1980.