Everyone knows by now what the shortened version of Black Lives Matter looks like.
Written on the signs of protesters and now painted on 16th street in Washington, D.C. the letters, BLM, in short form, represent a message about the racial divide that has been around for decades, despite the progress in civil rights in the 1960’s thanks to people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
But the letters BLM also remind many of a book published almost 60 years ago entitled Black Like Me.If you’re old enough, you may remember it and may have even read it.
Black Like Me was the real life story of a white man who grew up in Texas, a writer of novels and a Catholic, by the name of John Howard Griffin, who came up with a daring idea.
To understand the lives of black people, he had his skin chemically darkened to become black.And as the civil rights movement at the time was growing, he travelled through the South from New Orleans to Atlanta.
Black Like Me was published in October of 1961.Newsweek called it “piercing and memorable.” The book was translated into 14 languages, made into a movie and is still included in some high-school curriculums.
It’s become somewhat of a classic but also long forgotten by many. But with what’s happening in our country at this moment, it’s one book that would be a good one to be on a lot of summer reading lists here in 2020.
Read more about Black Like Me.
(Photo credit Getty Images)