John Howard Griffin

John Howard Griffin ( born June 16, 1920 in Dallas, † 9 September 1980 in Fort Worth ) was an American author. He became famous through his book Black Like Me ( 1961): Griffin had artificially darkened his skin as white to experience racial discrimination as a black man.

Life

John Howard Griffin was born the second of four children of John Walter and Lena May ( Young) Griffin in Dallas. He attended RL Paschal High School in Fort Worth. At 15, he left the United States to continue his education at the Lycée Descartes in Tours in France. He studied French and literature at the University of Poitiers, Medicine at the École de Médicine and music at the Conservatoire de Fontainebleau.

During the Second World War, he served 39 months in the United States Army Air Corps in the South Pacific, was wounded and decorated for valor. While stationed in the Pacific, he married a native of the island Nuni. Either as a late consequence of the injury or because of a chronic diabetes, he lost his eyesight from 1946 to 1957 and was blind. From 1957 to 1960 he worked as a journalist.

In 1952 he converted to Catholicism and became a member of the Order of Carmelites, more precisely the third order of Carmel, is also open to married couples. For his second marriage to Elizabeth Ann Holland on June 2, 1953 in Mansfield, he received a private dispensation of the Vatican. The couple had four children.

Black like me

Black like me was the title of the work, the Griffin abruptly made ​​famous in the U.S. and reasons for its reputation to this day. In the autumn of 1959, Griffin moved into a room at the Hotel Monteleone (214 Royal Street ) in New Orleans. He took medication that changed his skin color, sat down for several hours daily artificial sunlamps from, shaved his head and turned gradually into a black man. Then he crossed six weeks the south, drove through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia - and wrote down what happened to him. His stories of the degrading treatment by whites as " citizens tenth class " were first published in the Journal sepia photo, a publication that was published for black Americans and blacks.

The reaction in his home town of Mansfield was violently - his family received death threats, he was publicly vilified as " traitors to the white race ." Griffin to the safety of his family, fearing moved to Mexico, where he summarized the stories into a book with the title Black like me.

The white critics praised the show in 1961 the book, it climbed in the sequence in the bestseller list. The black critics were more reticent. Griffin was in any case by the book. A sought-after writer and reader travelers

The edition of the book is 10 million, it has been translated into 14 languages ​​and made ​​into a film in 1964 starring James Whitmore in the lead role. In America it is since its release part of the curriculum at many high schools and universities.

Works

His works include:

• The Devil Rides Outside. 1952
• Nuni. 1956 The last nuni or joy. Novel. Schünemann, Bremen 1958

• Travel through the dark. Desch, Munich / Vienna / Basel 1962