John Howard Griffin

Writer John Howard Griffin decided to perform an experiment fifty years ago. In order to learn firsthand how one race could withstand the second class citizenship imposed on it by another, he dyed his white skin dark, left his family, and traveled to the South to live as a black man. What began as scientific research ended up changing his life in every way imaginable. This is an eyewitness account of discrimination and segregation that is terrifying...

Based on the landmark memoir by John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me stars James Whitmore as Griffin, who medically altered his pigment and, with the help of a sunlamp, reinvented himself as an itinerant black writer navigating his way through Mississippi and Alabama. Along the way he experienced firsthand both crushing racism and the incredible life force of the Afro-American communities.