I was a math and chemistry major, so the sociology course was one of my few electives. During the first semester of my junior year (fall semester of 1963) I took a sociology course that used Black Like Me as the textbook and which had John Howard Griffin for three guest lectures. I first read Black Like Me late in 1961 as a freshman in college in Chapel Hill NC. I was born and raised in the very racially segregated rural US South, and I am white. Finally, it brings back memories of the KKK burning a cross in our yard 30 feet from our house in June of 1955 just before my 12th birthday to warn us to stop associating with our closest neighbors and friends who happened to be black. And memories of losing my signed copy from the original run of this beautiful book years later during a move. It brings back memories of this wonderful book.and memories of meeting and talking with John Howard Griffin. oject to the Dean and his beautiful wife.Memories of the growing up in the very racially segregated rural South with Jim Crow laws that would not allow my black friends/neighbors to go to the same school, use the same public restrooms, drink from the same public drinking fountains, and eat in the same restaurants as me. “But you told me you were simply too busy,” Gandy laughed. launched into bitter complaints, wanting to know why Dean Gandy had not insisted he give the lecture today. The Dean, a handsome, cultivated man of great wit, had just returned from a trip. He stopped deep in the campus at the cottages provided for the faculty and we went in to meet Dean Sam Gandy. cursed these richly and made the typical “Southern white” remarks about “Did you ever see such a damn beautiful campus for a bunch of nigras.
We drove through slowly, of necessity, since the campus drives have cement ridges every forty or fifty feet that would cause your car to bump badly if any speed were attempted. A green, spacious campus with white buildings, great trees streaming Spanish moss. took me to Dillard University, one of the two Negro universities in New Orleans.
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