Black Like Me (1964)

Black Like Me: Directed by Carl Lerner. With James Whitmore, Sorrell Booke, Roscoe Lee Browne, Al Freeman Jr.. Based on the true story of a white reporter who, at the height of the civil-rights movement, temporarily darkened his skin to experience the realities of a black man’s life in the segregated South.

“This is the sleepy South as it really was. The pace is deliberate but necessarily so. The direction and acting is gritty and real.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThe anger was real. The prejudice was real. The hate was real. The fear was real. The pain was real. It really happened this way.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eThis movie shows us all that. We walk in the shoes of a white man who looks like a black man…but we will never know. We can only imagine like James Whitmoreu0026#39;s character, John Horton. We can only imagine what a man or woman had to endure in the unilluminated history of the United States.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eSeeing this, we know, though we have come quite some distance, that we have still a long way to go before the reality is but a memory.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eI salute all of those involved in this film and Mr. John Howard Griffin who endured it all and let us know the cruelty of man and helped us open our eyes.”