Author. Beginning at age nineteen, he worked as a medic in the French Resistance army, evacuating Austrian Jews to the port of St. Nazaire and to safety from the Nazis. He served thirty-nine months in the United States Army Air Corps in the South Seas. He was decorated for bravery and was disabled in the fighting during World War II. He lost his sight from 1946 until 1957. During his twelve years of blindness he wrote five novels (three unpublished) and began a journal in 1950 that had reached twenty volumes at the time of his death. He is best remembered for "Black Like Me" (1961), still in print translated into thirteen languages. For this book, Griffin assumed the identity of an itinerant black man by chemically altering his skin color and shaving his head, and visited several racially segregated states during a six-week period of 1959. He initially recounted his adventure in a series of installments printed in the magazine Sepia during 1960; a year later his book version became a best seller. After becoming the target of local protests against Black Like Me, Griffin moved with his family to Mexico, where he remained for about nine months before moving to Fort Worth. He received two honorary doctorates: LL.D. from Bellarmine University and Litt.D. from Marycrest College. Griffin married a woman from the island of Nuni while he was in the Pacific during World War II but received permission to marry from the Vatican before he married Elizabeth Ann Holland on June 2, 1953, in Mansfield. They had four children.
Author. Beginning at age nineteen, he worked as a medic in the French Resistance army, evacuating Austrian Jews to the port of St. Nazaire and to safety from the Nazis. He served thirty-nine months in the United States Army Air Corps in the South Seas. He was decorated for bravery and was disabled in the fighting during World War II. He lost his sight from 1946 until 1957. During his twelve years of blindness he wrote five novels (three unpublished) and began a journal in 1950 that had reached twenty volumes at the time of his death. He is best remembered for "Black Like Me" (1961), still in print translated into thirteen languages. For this book, Griffin assumed the identity of an itinerant black man by chemically altering his skin color and shaving his head, and visited several racially segregated states during a six-week period of 1959. He initially recounted his adventure in a series of installments printed in the magazine Sepia during 1960; a year later his book version became a best seller. After becoming the target of local protests against Black Like Me, Griffin moved with his family to Mexico, where he remained for about nine months before moving to Fort Worth. He received two honorary doctorates: LL.D. from Bellarmine University and Litt.D. from Marycrest College. Griffin married a woman from the island of Nuni while he was in the Pacific during World War II but received permission to marry from the Vatican before he married Elizabeth Ann Holland on June 2, 1953, in Mansfield. They had four children.
Bio by: Joe Walker
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