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John Howard Griffin was a journalist and a specialist on race issues. After publication, he became a leading advocate in the Civil Rights Movement and did much to promote awareness of the racial situations and pass legislature. He was middle aged and living in Mansfield, Texas at the time of publication in 1960. His desire to know if Southern whites were racist against the Negro population of the Deep South, or if they really judged people …

…access because they did not have the mental capacities to appreciate it. It became apparent to Griffin that because the black population was widely uneducated, they would never be able to succeed in life. One of the things inhibiting their education was the inferior quality of schools and the inability to enter establishments such as libraries and museums. The whites, usually knew this and used it to their advantage to keep the black population subordinate.