We had to arrange to be at the same spot at the same time, but pretended to have no relationship. Rutledge appeared to be simply another tourist taking photos, and I just happened to be in them.
One day we got some unexpected help. He approached a fruit stand in the French Market and began taking photographs. I walked up from another direction and bought some walnuts and an apple. An elderly and civil woman waited on me while another woman talked to him some distance away. She said, “Why don’t you hurry up and get a picture of that funny old nigger before he leaves?” Rutledge said he believed he would, and I, pretending to be unaware of the plot, obliged by hanging around the fruit stalls.
An hour later we went into the fish market. I showed interest in buying a fish and at that moment Rutledge walked up and asked the vendor if he minded being photographed with some of the fish. The vendor was delighted. He left me standing at the counter and went to pose with a giant fish in his hand. I followed, pretending to think this was the fish he would sell me. Trying not to be impolite to me, he nevertheless maneuvered every possible way to keep me out of the pictures, and finally, when I stuck close to him, he became irritated and told me customers weren’t allowed behind the counter. Then, when Rutledge said: “That’s good right there, hold it,” the man faced front and gave his most winning smile. A nod from Rutledge told me we had enough pictures, so I drifted away and out the door.
We returned to the shoe stand, where we had no problems since my old partner, Sterling Williams, was intelligent and knowledgeable. Otherwise we had to take the pictures quickly and disappear before a crowd gathered and began to ask questions,
The experience had subtler points that did not escape Rutledge. Having a Negro for a companion took him inside the problem. He could avail himself of any rest room, any water fountain, any café for a cup of coffee; but he could not take me with him. Needless to say, he was too much of a gentleman to do this, and there were times when we went without that cup of coffee or that glass of water.
December 14
Finally the photos were taken, the project concluded, and I resumed for the final time my white identity. I felt strangely sad to leave the world of the Negro after having shared it so long - almost as though I were fleeing my share of his pain and heartache.
December 15 Mansfield, Texas
I sat in the jet this afternoon, flying home from New Orleans, and looked out the window to the patterns of a December countryside far below. And I felt the greatest love for this land and the deepest dread of the task that now lay before me - the task of telling truths that would make me and my family the target of all the hate groups.
But for the moment, the joyful expectation of seeing my wife and children again after seven weeks overwhelmed all other feelings.
When the plane landed, I hurried to collect my bags and walk out front. The car soon arrived, with children waving and shouting from the windows. I felt their arms around my neck, their hugs and the marvelous jubilation of reunion. And in the midst of it, the picture of the prejudice and bigotry from which I had just come flashed into my mind, and I heard myself mutter: “My God, how can men do it when there are things like this in the world?”
The faces of my wife and mother spoke their relief that it was over.
That night was a festival. The country was aromatic with late autumn, with the love of family, with the return to light and affection. We talked little about the experience. It was too near, too sore. We talked with the children, about the cats and the farm animals.
Photographs by Don Rutledge
Photographs by Don Rutledge
Among Don Rutledge’s historical photographs of John Howard Griffin - taken after the Black Like Me journey, December 1959, in New Orleans - this image provided the cover art for several paperback editions around the world. It continues to be the most well known of Rutlege’s images and was featured as the cover art for Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me (Orbis Books,1997), Robert Bonazzi’s study of the classic text.
Griffin under the sunlamp: Ultraviolet radiation accelerated the darkening process, initiated by Oxsoralen, the drug used to treat vitiligo (a condition that causes white splotches on the skin).
Below: As described in the text, Griffin was warned against looking at white women - including movie posters (p. 60).
Griffin spent a great deal of his journey walking. Warned away from park benches and stoops - or any other resting place where a Black person could be accused of loitering - he found such casual racist attitudes curiously balanced by the inherent courtesy of the South.
Above: Griffin and Sterling Williams share a stew of corn, turnips, and rice, seasoned with thyme, bay leaf and green peppers (p. 28).
Below: Griffin orders a meal from the proprietress of one of the many Negro cafés he frequented.
Griffin collects his fee from a dapper patron at Sterling Williams’ shoe-shine stand in the French Quarter. Griffin worked with Williams off and on for a week in mid-November (p. 23 ff). All the change he collected he left with Williams.
On April 2, 1960, Griffin was informed that he had been “hanged in effigy” on Main Street in Mansfield, Texas. Griffin’s name and a yellow streak were painted on the dummy’s back. Taken to the town dump by the local constable, by the time a Fort Worth Star-Telegram photographer took this picture, someone had placed the dummy in front of this sign (pp. 159-160). Griffin later quipped that it was “not a very good likeness.”
Above: Griffin being interviewed by Mike Wallace (CBS Television) on March 23, 1960, as the April issue of Sepia was just hitting newsstands, over a year before the book was published (p. 155-157).
Below: Griffin being interviewed by Ted Lewis for a New York radio show. Griffin was interviewed by many other prominent journalists.
This previously unpublished portrait of Griffin as a Black man was taken in Gladys and Harold Levy’s guesthouse (the former slave quarters of an old plantation). Some years prior, during Griffin’s decade of blindness, the Levys had introduced Griffin to Sadie Jacobs, an innovative teacher of the blind. Griffin spent a week at the Levy guesthouse preparing himself prior to beginning his “journey” (pp. 7-13). Griffin does not mention the Levys by name in Black Like Me. See also, Man in the Mirror, pp. 41-42.
The Aftermath 1960
January 2
Mr. Levitan, the owner of Sepia, called and asked me to come in for an editorial conference with Mrs. Jackson. Though the magazine had paid for the trip, and I in turn promised them some articles about it, he gave me the opportunity to back out. “It’ll cause trouble,” he said. “ We don’t want to see you killed. What do you think? Hadn’t we better forget the whole thing?”
“Do you mean you’re willing to cancel this, after all you’ve been led to expect?” I asked.
“The only way I’ll run it is if you insist,” he said.
“Then I think we must run it,” I said, wishing with all my heart I could drop it. However, Sepia, unlike many magazines, is widely read in the Deep South by Negroes. I felt it was the best way of letting them know that their condition was known, that the world knew more about them than they suspected; the best way to give them hope.
The world would know, then, in early March. It was January. I had two months left in which to work before the storm would break.
February 26
The time drew to a close. The news became known. I had spent weeks at work, studying, correlating statistics, going through reports, none of which actually help to reveal the truth of what it is like to be discriminated against. They cancel truth almost more than they reveal it. I decided to throw them away and simply publish what happened to me.
A call from Hollywood. Paul Coates spoke to me, asked me to fly out and be on his interview program. I accepted.
March 14 Los Angeles
The first of the Coates shows was televised locally after it had been given heavy publicity over the weekend by the newspapers. I think almost every TV viewer in th
e area watched the show.
When the program was finished, and we heard Paul Coates announce we would return “tomorrow” to continue the interview, our attention switched to the telephone. We realized that now our neighbors knew, now the whole Dallas-Fort Worth area knew.
The phone began to ring. I picked it up, wondering what I should say if it were an abusive call. It was Penn and L.A. Jones from Midlothian. They talked for a long time. I realized that they were tying up the line so that no hate calls could come through. Finally, after almost an hour, we said good-by. Immediately my parents called to say it was fine. How full of dread their voices were - but they sincerely approved of what I had said.
After that, silence. We sat and waited, but the phone did not ring. The silence was so unnatural, so ominous, it weighed heavy on us. Were none of my friends, no other members of my family going to call?
March 17 New York
Flew to New York two days ago. Interview this morning with Time magazine in their new offices. They took photos and treated me with great cordiality. While I was at Time, the Dave Garroway show called. We were to have a preliminary interview that afternoon at five.
Unable to bear the silence from home, I returned to my room and telephoned to Mansfield. As a result of the two Paul Coates shows, my mother had received her first threatening call. It was from a woman who would not identify herself. The conversation had begun politely enough. The woman said they could not understand in town how I could turn against my own race. My mother assured her I had done this precisely for my race. The woman said: “Why he’s just thrown the door wide open for those niggers, and after we’ve all worked so hard to keep them out.” She then became abusive and succeeded in terrorizing my mother by telling her, “If you could just hear what they’re planning to do to him if he ever comes back to Mansfield - ”
“Who’s planning?” my mother asked.
“That’s all right. You just ought to be over at Curry’s [a local café and night spot on the highway leading into Mansfield, run by ardent segregationists]. You’d see to it he never showed his face in Mansfield again.”
My mother said she felt better when I talked to her. She had never been confronted by this sort of brutality before. She called my wife over and they sat together, frightened. Then they called Penn Jones, who came immediately and placed himself at their disposal.
Sickened that they would pick on a man’s mother and strike him through terrorizing her, I immediately made calls and asked for police surveillance of both my home and my parents’ home.
March 18
Garroway was immensely impressive. When we finally met this morning, briefly, before I went on camera, I told him I was afraid that my appearance would bring severe repercussions against him from the South. He stood large, larger than he appears on the screen. I told him I would answer his questions as carefully as possible. He bent over me and said: “Mr. Griffin - John - let me just ask you to do one thing.”
I braced myself against his request, fearing he would ask me to soft-pedal.
“Just tell the truth as honestly and as frankly as you can and don’t worry about my sponsors or anything else. You keep your mind clear to answer whatever I ask. Will you forget everything else and just remember that?”
I looked at him with a resurgence of faith in a public figure. He kept me on camera twenty minutes and he asked pointed questions that did not evade the issue. Before the interview was over, we were both deeply moved. At the end he asked me about discrimination in the North. I told him I was not competent to answer. I told him that the Southern racist invariably brought up the point that things aren’t perfect in the North either - which is no doubt so - as though that fact justified his injustices in the South.
March 23
It was a busy weekend. I spent more and more time in my room between interviews and conferences with Mr. Levitan and our PR man, Benn Hall, while Mr. Levitan had a constant stream of visitors in his suite.
On Tuesday I did a TV documentary with Harry Golden. The Mike Wallace show went on that evening, and then a long radio interview on the Long John show from midnight until four thirty in the morning. I got no sleep. Benn Hall offered me tranquilizers, but I did not dare take one for fear it would put me out completely. The Time article would be out that evening. I was anxious to see how they would treat the story. But I was most nervous about the Mike Wallace show, and told Benn Hall that if Wallace asked one wrong question, I would get up and walk out. He assured me Wallace would be sympathetic, but I had strong reservations. I particularly feared he would get embroiled in a religious discussion, bring in my Roman Catholicism in a way that could embarrass the Church.
The Golden show went all right. It was easy, with the director taking pains to keep it informal and to encourage me. I got off to a bad start, but we did it over and it came out all right.
Then, in the evening, Benn Hall came to pick me up. We took a taxi to Mike Wallace’s office, stopping at the corner of Broadway and 14th to pick up a copy of Time. It was around eight o’clock and the streets were wet under a drizzling rain. Benn left me in a cigar stand and ran across the street to get the magazine. In a moment he returned with two copies. The story was good - they told it right and straight. Relieved, we walked to Wallace’s office.
When they showed us in, Wallace rose from his chair behind the desk and shook hands. I was surprised to find him so much more youthful in appearance than I had imagined; but he looked also tired and uncomfortable. He offered me a seat and without pretense asked if I wanted to see the questions he planned to ask me. I told him no. He appeared to know that I viewed him cautiously and that I was not enthusiastic about this interview. He fumbled uncomfortably for words and I took a liking to him. From the hints he dropped (“We’ve investigated you pretty thoroughly”), I was aghast - he knew things about the trip, the names of people I had stayed with - many things I had tried to hide in order to protect the people involved.
“Please,” I pleaded. “Don’t mention those names on the air. I’d be afraid their lives would be endangered, and they were my friends.”
“Hell - I’m not going to do a damned thing to hurt them,” he said. “Look - I’m on your side.”
“How did you find out about all of this?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s part of the business,” he said.
We sat in his office, both of us dull, both of us tired to death. Our talk frittered out. He asked how the Coates shows went, said he heard they were excellent. “That makes me want to do better,” he said.
“He had a full hour - you’ve only got a half hour,” I said.
He pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his desk, offered me a drink. I refused. “Look, John - hell, I know you’ve done nothing but answer questions on all these shows and newspaper interviews; but will you pull yourself together and really work for me tonight?”
“I’d do that as a matter of conscience anyway,” I said.
“You want me to tell you something,” he said. “I’m scared to death of you - I mean a man who’d do what you’ve done - ”
“Then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did,” I said. “The truth is I’m scared to death of you.”
He burst out laughing. “Well, I guarantee you, you’ve got no reason to be.”
Liveliness returned. Both of us felt certain it would go well.
We walked out onto a stage that contained only two chairs and a smoking stand. The camera technicians and director prepared us, got cables out of sight, strapped mikes on our necks, shouted instructions. Wallace smoked incessantly and smiled at me while yelling oaths in answer to yelled instructions. “Remember,” he said. “We’ve got to do as well in a half hour as you did with Paul in an hour.”
“I’ll talk fast,” I said, peering past the lights into the camera jumble of darkness.
The count started. The red lights came on. Wallace talked and smoked. He poured intelligent questions into me and kept his face close, absorbing my attention, encouragin
g me. It was a supercharged moment. I answered, forgetting everything except him and his questions. Fatigue disappeared. Fascination took over. The excitement sustained us. I realized, when the time was up, that it had gone well. And when we went off the air, Wallace shouted, “Top notch. Cancel everything and schedule it immediately.”
It was an extraordinary experience. Never have I been handled more superbly by an interviewer.
April 1 Mansfield
Radio-Television Française flew a crew of five from Paris to do a television show of the person-to-person type at my home in Mansfield. We had three busy days, with Pierre Dumayet, the commentator, and Claude Loursais, the director of the Cinq Colonnes à la Une. I put them on the plane out of here yesterday evening, and only then had time to settle down and do some work. But work was difficult. The story had circulated all over the world, and mail, telegrams and telephone calls poured in.
The local situation was odd. I had no contact with anyone in town and no one had contact with me. However, I understood that I was loudly discussed in the stores and on the streets - that the druggist and a couple of others had risen to my defense when the discussions became hot. I avoided going downtown, going into any of the stores for fear my presence would embarrass people who had been my friends.
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