riffin in effigy from the town's stop light one morning. This prompted him and his family to leave the area until the situation considerably calmed down. Griffin was interviewed by various television and radio hosts as well as magazine and newspapermen after the book was made public. His main objective was to educate the public of the situation in the South and people couldn't help but hear about it. Wether or not they accepted the information was not up to Griffin, but he did his best to make the knowledge available. This book relates to American history because it takes the reader into the Deep South before the Civil Rights Movements took hold and shows what it was like to be black. In the Preface, the author states "I could have been a Jew in Germany, a Mexican in a number of states, or a member of any 'inferior' group. Only the details would have differed. The story would be the same." The details he mentioned were he being black and in the South, and the story is of hatred and racism directed toward him and others like him on account of those details. The account he related showed America and the world that race relations in the South was not the pretty picture it was painted as. Instead, he showed the daily struggle of the blacks to survive. Griffin's bias is that white Southern Americans of that period were racist toward the African American population. The only thing altered from before he entered New Orleans to after was his appearance. He dyed his skin a very dark brown and shaved his head, his clothing, speech patterns, and references had not changed and every question was answered truthfully. If people did judge others by their qualities and qualifications, his time in the Deep South should have been fairly uneventful. Instead, there were daily quests to find rest-room facilities, restaurants, stores, and various other 'conveniences' that he took advantage of before he crossed the color li...
