Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin Read Free Book Online Page B

plate,” I said, sinking into a chair.
    “How about some beer?”
    “No … you got any milk?”
    “Don’t you like beer, honey?”
    “I like it, but I’ve got diabetes.”
    “Oh … Say, I’ve got a couple of pig tails left. You want me to put them in with the beans?”
    “Please.”
    She carried the platter to my table and fetched my milk. Though Negroes apparently live on beans and rice in this area, it is no handicap. They are delicious and nourishing. I tried to eat the pig tails, but like chicken necks, they are mostly bone and little meat.
    Later, in my room, I undressed for bed. The game still went noisily at the Y next door. Though the large house was still, I heard the TV from Mrs. Davis’s room somewhere on the other side.
    The whites seemed far away, out there in their parts of the city. The distance between them and me was far more than themiles that physically separated us. It was an area of unknowing. I wondered if it could really be bridged.

November 10-12
    T wo days of incessant walking, mostly looking for jobs. I wanted to discover what sort of work an educated Negro, nicely dressed, could find. I met no rebuffs, only gentleness when they informed me they could not use my services as typist, bookkeeper, etc.
    The patterns became the same. Each day at the shine stand we had the same kind of customers; each day we cooked food and ate on the sidewalk; each day we fed the beggar and the pigeons.
    The widow woman dropped by both days. I gently let her know that I was married. Sterling said she asked him about me, proposing to invite me to her house for Sunday dinner. I stayed at the stand less and less.
    Among Negroes I was treated with the most incredible courtesies, even by strangers.
    One night I decided to go to a Negro movie house. I walked up Dryades and asked a young man if he could tell me the way.
    “If you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll show you the way,” he said.
    I stood on the corner and in a moment he returned.
    We began walking. He was a first-year student at Dillard University, hoping to become a sociologist, to “do something for our people.” The walk appeared to be endless. We must have gone at least two miles when I asked: “Do you live over in this direction?”
    “No, I live back there where you saw me.”
    “But this is taking you way out of your way.”
    “I don’t mind. I enjoy the talk.”
    When we reached the movie, he asked, “Do you think you can find the way back?”
    “Oh, yes … I won’t have any trouble.”
    “If you aren’t sure, I can find out what time the feature endsand come back for you.”
    Stupefied that he would walk these miles as a courtesy to a stranger, I suggested he let me buy him a ticket for the show and we could walk back together.
    “No, thanks - I have to get some studying done. But I’ll be glad to come back for you.”
    “I wouldn’t think of it. At least let me pay you something. This has been a great favor.”
    He refused the money.
    The next morning I went to the Y café next door for a breakfast of grits and eggs. The elderly gentleman who ran the café soon had me talking - or rather listening. He foresaw a new day for the race. Great strides had been made, but greater ones were to be made still. I told him of my unsuccessful job-hunting. He said it was all part of the pattern of economics - economic injustice.
    “You take a young white boy. He can go through school and college with a real incentive. He knows he can make good money in any profession when he gets out. But can a Negro - in the South? No, I’ve seen many make brilliant grades in college. And yet when they come home in the summers to earn a little money, they have to do the most menial work. And even when they graduate it’s a long hard pull. Most take postal jobs, or preaching and teaching jobs.
This is the cream
. What about the others, Mr. Griffin? A man knows no matter how hard he works, he’s never going to
quite
manage … taxes and prices eat up