Cinema: Masquerade in Dixie

Black Like Me is a deep-dyed message fHm about a white man who passes for black. In it, James Whitmore conscientiously re-enacts the real life odyssey of John Howard Griffin, a Texas journalist who darkened his skin through the use of drugs, sun-lamp treatments and vegetable coloring, traveled through the South for a month or so, then summed up his experiences in a 1960 book that posed the question: "How else except by becoming a Negro could a white man hope to learn the truth?"

From that dubious starting point, Whitmore's journey runs a predictable...

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