Black Like Me

John Howard Griffin was a musicologist who served, and was injured, in the Air Force during World War II. Blind for a decade, Griffin became an acclaimed novelist and essayist and when his sight returned, almost miraculously, he became a remarkable portrait photographer. Following his cross-racial exploration in the South, he was personally vilified, hanged in effigy in his hometown, threatened with death, and severely beaten by the Klu Klux Klan. Respected internationally as a human rights activist, he worked with major Civil Rights leaders throughout the era, taught at the University of Peace, and delivered more than a 1,200 lectures in America and abroad. He is the author of The Devil Rides Outside and posthumous works such as Prison of Culture: Beyond Black Like Me. Robert Bonazzi is a widely published writer and the author of Living the Borrowed Life, Maestro of Solitude: Poems and Poetics, and The Scribbling Cure: Poems and Prose Poems. He is the literary executor for the estate of John Howard Griffin. He lives in San Antonio, Texas. Studs Terkel was a cultural commentator, columnist, interviewer, and author of many books on American history and culture, including Touch and Go: A Memoir and The Studs Terkel Reader: My American Century.