Author, "Black Like Me" based on his darkening his skin and traveling in The South in 1959.
Story presented on PBS as, Uncommon Vision: The Life and Times of John Howard Griffin

http://www.morganatk...ights.html#vision
gets you a synopsis and a comment by Studs Terkel ... amazing life, circumstances, man.
His description of The Hate Stare curdles blood.

Uncommon Vision: The Life and Times of John Howard Griffin

is a "work in progress" Morgan Atkinson documentary on the remarkable life of a son of the American South, who became a citizen of the world and stirred the conscience of a nation.

John Howard Griffin is best known as the white man who in 1959 disguised himself as a black man and then traveled anonymously through the heart of Dixie. From his experiences he wrote “Black Like Me”, a groundbreaking best seller that today stands as a testament to Griffin’s moral commitment and a document of one of the more extraordinary events of the Civil Rights era.

“Uncommon Vision” focuses on Griffin’s social activism but will also examine how a spiritual commitment led him from a segregated childhood in Fort Worth to fighting with the French Underground, sustained him during ten years of blindness incurred by war injuries and inspired him during a prolific creative life as a writer/photographer.

It’s an inspiring, entertaining and edifying story. Studs Terkel, one of the great chroniclers of 20th century American culture and a frequent interviewer of Griffin, summed him up thusly.

John Howard Griffin was one of the most remarkable people I have ever encountered…
He was just one of those guys that comes along once or twice in a century and lifts the hearts of the rest of us.

--Studs Terkel