I finally got around to reading Black Like Me (better late than never), and found it as powerful now as it must have been 43 years ago.
Only thing that got me to wondering was how good was his physical conversion (by chemicals and ultraviolet) to pass as black? Yes, today, in Hollywood, with make-up and prosthetics, I’m sure Arnold Schwarzenegger could be made to look exactly like Halle Berry (okay, maybe not exactly :D), but this was 1959, and basically done in the backroom of his doctor’s office.
The only photo I’ve seen of Griffin as a black man was the one on the back of the old paperback edition of the book I read, and it was so damn dark and shadowed that I got the impression it had been manipulated to hide a shitty make-up job.
A Google image search didn’t help. Griffin arranged to have a photographer “surreptitiously” be shooting at locations that he just happened to turn up at (to allay any suspicions, etc.). Anybody know if these photos are on the net?
Thanks,
Sir Rhosis
Self-hijack. Griffin was blind from 1946-1957? What’s the story on this?
Please feel free to hijack this thread to any interesting angle on Griffin and Black Like Me.