Lessons from ‘Black Like Me’ have stayed with me

Ifirst read John Howard Griffin’s “Black Like Me” in Mrs. Dickinson’s seventh-grade English class at Cascade Junior High in 1975.

I don’t know how often I have reread that book since, probably more than a dozen times.

Because it changed me.

Before I explain how, let me offer this brief introduction to people who aren’t familiar with the book or Griffin. After all, his book was published more than 60 years ago.

Griffin was a Catholic, a laity Carmelite monk concerned about social injustice in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement when segregation was legal. Determined to see and experience what he could about it firsthand, he dyed his skin black and traveled about the South in 1959.

His book was a sensation … and a source of sharp controversy.

Many Black people took offense at