Story of White 'Negro' Fascinated the World

    If I sound like a numb, it's because I am.

    I devoted a pair of articles last week to John Howard Griffin, a man with an engrossing story to tell.

    An author and  a native Texan, Griffin — with the aid of special medication — temporarily changed the color of his skin from white to black and traveled for six weeks in the South.  He lived as a Southern Negro. 

    And when he completed his masquerade he had some grim experiences to relate, and some stark conclusions about the lot of the Negro in the Deep South.  These I reported.

    I did it with a reporter's awareness that while I had a good story, a story worth telling, I was going to offend a lot of people who think "Negro" is a six-letter word.

    This I did.  But there was another reaction I wasn't prepared for. 

    The story wasn't 24 hours old before I got  a phone call from Paris.  Paris Match.  France's No. 1 magazine, wanted copies of the article.  An Associated Press story quoting the interview with Griffin had reached their hands and they were interested in reprinting it.

     And their requests were followed by similar ones from a Swedish magazine and Italy's top news service.

    Before printing John Howard Griffin's story, I was obviously aware that it could be turned into a handy piece of propaganda by the communists.  But there are stories in the U.S. newspapers and magazines everyday which they can twist for their own purposes.

    I'm not about to start tailoring my reporting because of the Russians.  And I don't think anyone else is, either.

    But what surprised me is the international interest shown — by our allies — in the story of an American white man who posed as a Negro to "brave" the injustices and inequities of the Deep South.

    Now, in retrospect, I can see where I should have anticipated it.

    Two years ago I spent a few weeks in Europe.  And wherever I went the same question was always tossed at me.  Somewhere in the conversation they managed to work it in.

    Why, everybody from bellhops to government officials wanted to know, do Americans treat the Negro so badly?

    You try to answer it.  Go ahead.

    I tried, and it was a hopeless attempt.

    "It's just a minority of us," I'd explain.  "But a very vocal minority."

    This is one of the paradoxes about our country which baffles every citizen of every foreign nation.  They want to know how we can represent ourselves as a democracy,  with equality and justice and all the frills for everybody — and explain away our poll taxes, segregated schools, Jim Crow buses and Mack Parker lynchings.

    We can't.

    The only answer, the only way to counteract the international impressions, is obvious.

    Each of us, one by one, has to admit to himself that the color of his neighbor's skin — be it white, yellow, brown or black — is no guide-spot to his capabilities, intelligence or stature as a human being.

    If and when we do that, we'll answer 90% of the world's doubts about our sincerity.

    Someday, I'm sure, it will come.  I hope I'm around to see it, but if I'm not, I have a good feeling that my kids will be.