BLACK LIKE ME is a 1964 film based on the nonfiction book of the same name by journalist John Howard Griffin. Griffin, a white native of Dallas, first published the landmark memoir Black Like Me in 1961. The book, hailed by the New York Times as an "essential document of contemporary American life," describes his six-week experience traveling on Greyhound buses (occasionally hitchhiking) throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia passing as a black man. At the time of the book's writing in 1959, race relations were particularly strained in America; Griffin's aim was to explain the difficulties facing black people in certain areas. The poignant and moving film dramatizes this ground-breaking and powerful piece of literature.
