John Howard Griffin

John Howard Griffin Jones
Born	June 16, 1920(1920-06-16) Dallas, TX
Died	September 9, 1980(1980-09-09) (aged 60)
Education	University of Poitiers
Occupation	Writer
Spouse(s)	Elizabeth Ann Holland (1953 to his death)
Religious belief(s)	Roman Catholic
Notable credit(s)	Black Like Me

John Howard Griffin (June 16, 1920 – September 9, 1980) was an American journalist and author much of whose writing was about racial equality. He is best known for darkening his skin and journeying through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to experience segregation in the Deep South in 1959. He wrote about this experience in his 1961 book Black Like Me.

Early life

Griffin was born in Dallas, Texas to John Walter Griffin and Lena May (Young) Griffin. His mother was a classical pianist, and Griffin acquired his love of music from her. Awarded a musical scholarship, he studied French and literature at the University of Poitiers and medicine at the École de Médecine. At 19, he worked as a medic in the French Resistance army, where he was in charge of a psychiatric hospital. He also helped smuggle Austrian Jews to safety and freedom.

Griffin then served 39 months in the United States Army Air Corps, stationed in the South Pacific. He spent 1943-44 as the only Caucasian on Nuni, one of the Solomon Islands, where he was assigned to study the local culture; he even married an islander. His 1956 novel Nuni is a semi-autobiographical work that draws heavily on his year "marooned" on the island, and shows an interest in ethnography he followed more fully in Black Like Me. He was decorated for bravery.

Left blind by a 1946 accident in the United States Air Force, he began to write. He came home to Texas and taught piano, marrying one of his students. In 1957 he regained his eyesight and became an accomplished photographic artist. Griffin's experiences in blindness were posthumously published as Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision.

In 1952 Griffin converted to Catholicism and became a Third Order Carmelite. He was also a lifelong Democrat.

Black Like Me and later

In the fall of 1959, Griffin determined to investigate the plight of African-Americans in the South first hand. He consulted a New Orleans dermatologist, who prescribed a course of drugs, sunlamp treatments, and skin creams. Griffin also shaved his head so as not to reveal his straight hair. He spent weeks travelling as a black man in New Orleans and parts of Mississippi (with side trips to Alabama and Georgia), getting around mainly by bus and hitch-hiking. His memoir, Black Like Me, became a best seller in 1961. The book described in detail the problems an African American encountered in the Deep South meeting such simple needs as finding food, shelter, and toilet facilities. Griffin also described the hatred he often felt from white Southerners he encountered in his daily life — shop clerks, ticket sellers, bus drivers, and others. He was particularly shocked by the curiosity white men displayed about his sexual life. His account was tempered with some anecdotes about white Southerners who were friendly and helpful.

Black Like Me made Griffin a national celebrity for a time. In a 1975 essay included in later editions of the book, Griffin described the hostility and threats to himself and his family which emerged in his own hometown. He eventually was forced to leave America and moved to Mexico.

Throughout his life, Griffin lectured and wrote on race relations and social justice. In 1964, he received the Pacem in Terris Award, named after a 1963 encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII that calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in Terris is Latin for "Peace on Earth."

In his later years, Griffin focused on researching his friend Thomas Merton, an American Trappist monk and spiritual writer he first met in 1962. Griffin was chosen by Merton's estate to write the authorized biography of Merton. His health prevented him from completing this project, Griffin's nearly finished portion of the biography - on Merton's later years - was posthumously published in 1983 as Follow the Ecstasy: Thomas Merton, the Hermitage Years, 1965-1968.

Death and rumored effects of Oxsoralen

John Howard Griffin died in Fort Worth in 1980 at age 60 from complications due to diabetes.

It has been erroneously claimed that the large doses of Oxsoralen Griffin used in 1959 eventually led to his death from skin cancer. However, Griffin did not have skin cancer; the only negative symptoms he suffered because of the drug were temporary and minor. The worst, arguably, were fatigue and nausea.

Works

• The Devil Rides Outside (1952)
• Nuni (1956)
• Land of the High Sky (1959)
• Black Like Me (1961)
• The Church and the Black Man (1969)
• A Hidden Wholeness: The Visual World of Thomas Merton (1970)
• Twelve Photographic Portraits (1973)
• Jacques Maritain: Homage in Words and Pictures (1974)
• A Time to be Human (1977)
• The Hermitage Journals: A Diary Kept While Working on the Biography of Thomas Merton (1981)
• Follow the Ecstasy: Thomas Merton, the Hermitage Years, 1965-1968 (1983), slightly revised as Follow the Ecstasy: The Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton (1993).
• Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision (2004)
• Available Light: Exile in Mexico (2008)

Further reading

• Crossing the Line: Racial Passing in Twentieth-century U.S. Literature and Culture by Gayle Wald. Duke University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-8223-2515-2.

External links

• "A Revolutionary Writer", John H. Griffin
• Full-view books about John H. Griffin at Google Book Search
• John Howard Griffin Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin