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In late 1959 John Howard Griffin, a white novelist from Texas, took a skin-darkening drug prescribed by a New Orleans dermatologist, spent hours under a sunlamp, shaved his head and travelled through the Deep South by bus and on foot as a Black man, keeping his own name. Sepia magazine paid for the trip and ran his articles from April 1960; that same month he was hanged in effigy in Mansfield, Texas, and his family soon left for Mexico. The book, Black Like Me (1961), has sold millions of copies. Before it, Griffin had written two novels while blind; after it, he wrote about race, faith and his friend Thomas Merton until his death in 1980. This guide covers his nine key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 9 key books · 1952–2011 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
John Howard Griffin’s best-known book is Black Like Me (1961), his account of travelling through the segregated South with his skin darkened. Before it came the novels The Devil Rides Outside (1952) and Nuni (1956); after it, books on Thomas Merton and his own memoir of blindness, Scattered Shadows (2004). Start with Black Like Me, then read on for the books that explain how he came to write it.
Where to Start with John Howard Griffin
If you want his defining book
→ Black Like Me (1961) — the 1959 journey through the segregated South.
If you want his fiction
→ The Devil Rides Outside (1952) — the novel that ended up before the Supreme Court.
If you want his own life story
→ Scattered Shadows (2004) — his memoir of ten years without sight.
If you want his writing on Thomas Merton
→ Follow the Ecstasy (1983) — Merton’s last years, from the biography he could not finish.
9 John Howard Griffin Books, in Order
The Devil Rides Outside
Griffin’s first novel, written while he was blind: he dictated it in French into a tape recorder, then transcribed and translated it into English on a typewriter. A young musicologist studying Gregorian chant at a Benedictine monastery in France is drawn to the monks but has not converted by the end. A Detroit bookseller sold a copy to a police officer to test Michigan’s obscenity law, and in Butler v. Michigan (1957) the US Supreme Court struck the law down.
Nuni
His second novel, drawn on the year he spent during the Second World War as the only American on an island in the Solomons. An American literature professor in his fifties is stranded in an isolated village where his learning and status count for nothing, and has to find a new reason to live.
Black Like Me
Griffin’s diary of the weeks in late 1959 he spent living as a Black man in New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, travelling by bus and hitchhiking and answering truthfully anyone who asked who he was. It first ran in Sepia magazine as “Journey into Shame” from April 1960 and appeared as a book in October 1961. A film version starring James Whitmore followed in 1964. Smithsonian puts its sales at about ten million copies, in fourteen languages.
A Hidden Wholeness
A portrait of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, Griffin’s friend since 1962, through photographs taken by Merton and by Griffin, published two years after Merton’s death. Griffin had taken up photography after regaining his sight in 1957, and this is his main photographic book.
Follow the Ecstasy
After Merton died in 1968, his estate chose Griffin to write the authorised biography, but illness stopped him from finishing it. This posthumous book is the part he concentrated on: Merton’s last three years, living alone in a hermitage near his monastery in Kentucky.
Street of the Seven Angels
A satirical novel against censorship, unpublished in Griffin’s lifetime. It was edited, with an introduction, by his biographer Robert Bonazzi and published by Wings Press in San Antonio, the small press that has kept his work in print.
Scattered Shadows
Griffin’s memoir of the decade he spent blind, edited by Robert Bonazzi and published by Orbis Books. He lost his sight gradually after a bomb concussion in the South Pacific, was totally blind by 1947, and saw again, without medical explanation, in January 1957.
Available Light
Photographs and journal excerpts from 1960–61, when Griffin and his family lived in a village near Morelia, Michoacán, after the threats that followed the Sepia articles. Robert Bonazzi supplies the commentary.
Prison of Culture
A companion to the fiftieth-anniversary edition of Black Like Me, collecting his later writing on racism and spirituality: his commitment to nonviolence, his Catholic and monastic grounding, and essays on suffering, justice and dying.
In What Order to Read John Howard Griffin
None of Griffin’s books continues from another, so read by interest. Most readers come to him through Black Like Me, and it is the right place to begin: the rest of his work makes more sense once you know it.
From there, Prison of Culture shows how his thinking on race moved on in the years after, and Scattered Shadows explains the man who wrote it: the blindness, the faith, the war. The two novels and the Merton books are for readers who want the whole of him.
A reading path
1. Black Like Me (1961)
2. Prison of Culture (2011)
3. Scattered Shadows (2004)
4. The Devil Rides Outside (1952)
5. Follow the Ecstasy (1983)
Everything Else John Howard Griffin Published
Beyond the 9 key books: 6 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Other books in his lifetime
5
5 books · 1959–1977
- 1959Land of the High Skypublished in Midland, Texas
- 1969The Church and the Black Manpublished by Pflaum Press, Dayton
- 1973Twelve Photographic Portraitshis portrait photography
- 1974Jacques Maritain: Homage in Words and Pictureson his friend the French philosopher
- 1977A Time to Be Humanhis last book published in his lifetime
Published after his death
1
1 book · 1981
- 1981The Hermitage Journalsthe diary he kept while working on the Merton biography
The years · 1920–1980
Quick facts about John Howard Griffin
- Known for
- He darkened his skin in 1959 to travel through the segregated American South as a Black man and wrote about it in Black Like Me.
- 1920
- Born in Dallas, Texas
- 1947
- Totally blind after a wartime injury
- 1957
- His sight returns
- 1961
- Black Like Me
- 1980
- Dies in Fort Worth, aged 60
- Born
- 16 June 1920, Dallas, Texas
- Education
- The Lycée Descartes in Tours, France, from his teens; then music and medicine in France
- War
- Medic with the French Resistance, then 39 months with the US Army Air Forces in the South Pacific
- Blindness
- About ten years, from the late 1940s until January 1957
- Faith
- Converted to Catholicism in 1952; friend of Thomas Merton and Jacques Maritain
- Family
- Married Elizabeth Ann Holland in 1953; four children
- Died
- 9 September 1980, Fort Worth, Texas
The red mark is 1961: Black Like Me, the book that made him a national figure.
How John Howard Griffin Writes: The Witness Who Kept His Name
Black Like Me is written as a dated diary, entry by entry, from the night he decided to do it to the day he stopped taking the drug. Griffin changed only his skin: he kept his name and answered truthfully when asked, so the book records how people treated him, not a story he built. Its force is in small, repeated details — where he was allowed to eat, sit or use a toilet.
He came to journalism from fiction and music. His first two novels, written while blind, are about men stripped of their place in the world, a monastery guest and a professor marooned on an island, and he trained as a musicologist in Gregorian chant. That habit of listening shows in his reporting, which gives as much space to what people said to him as to what he felt.
He was also clear-eyed about his book’s limits. In later years he cut back his lectures, saying it was absurd for a white man to speak for Black people “when they have superlative voices of their own”. For the writers he meant, start with James Baldwin.
Frequently asked questions about John Howard Griffin’s books
How many books has John Howard Griffin written?
About fifteen under his name. Nine are the key books on this page, from The Devil Rides Outside (1952) to Prison of Culture (2011); the other six are listed below them, including Land of the High Sky (1959) and A Time to Be Human (1977). Several were published after his death in 1980.
What are John Howard Griffin’s books in order?
The Devil Rides Outside (1952), Nuni (1956), Black Like Me (1961), A Hidden Wholeness (1970), Follow the Ecstasy (1983), Street of the Seven Angels (2003), Scattered Shadows (2004), Available Light (2008) and Prison of Culture (2011).
Where should I start with John Howard Griffin?
With Black Like Me (1961). Everything else he wrote either leads up to it or looks back on it. If you want his life before the book, read Scattered Shadows next.
What is John Howard Griffin’s most famous book?
Black Like Me (1961), his diary of living as a Black man in the Deep South in late 1959. Smithsonian puts its sales at about ten million copies, in fourteen languages, and it has long been taught in American schools.
Is Black Like Me a true story?
Yes. Griffin darkened his skin with an oral drug, sunlamp treatments and stain under a New Orleans dermatologist’s guidance, and travelled through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia in late 1959. The book is based on the diary he kept and first appeared as articles in Sepia magazine in 1960.
Was Black Like Me made into a film?
Yes. The film Black Like Me (1964) starred James Whitmore as Griffin, with Roscoe Lee Browne and Will Geer.
Why was The Devil Rides Outside banned?
A Detroit bookseller, Alfred Butler, deliberately sold a copy to a police officer to challenge Michigan’s law against selling books that might corrupt minors. In Butler v. Michigan (25 February 1957) the US Supreme Court unanimously struck the law down; Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote that banning such books for adults was “to burn the house to roast the pig.”
What happened to John Howard Griffin after Black Like Me?
He was hanged in effigy in Mansfield, Texas, in April 1960, and his family moved to Mexico for about nine months. He went on to give more than a thousand lectures on race, and Smithsonian reports that he was beaten by Ku Klux Klansmen in 1964.
Is Black Like Me controversial?
It has been criticised as a white man’s account of Black life; Stokely Carmichael called it “an excellent book — for whites”, and Griffin later said much the same himself. Separately, his ten years of blindness have long been questioned because his sight returned so suddenly, and some 2024 French-language studies suggest he may have feigned it.
When did John Howard Griffin die?
On 9 September 1980 in Fort Worth, Texas, aged 60, after years of illness, including diabetes. A popular story that he died of skin cancer caused by the skin-darkening treatment is false.
Footnotes
- John Howard Griffin — Wikipedia
- John Howard Griffin — Britannica
- Black Like Me 50 years later — Smithsonian
- The man who changed his skin — American Heritage
- Butler v. Michigan — Wikipedia
- John Howard Griffin exhibit — Baylor University
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“How else except by becoming a Negro could a white man hope to learn the truth?”
— John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me (1961)
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