"Soul Sister" by Grace Halsell

Book Review and Commentary

What is it like being black in the United States of America? It was January, 1968 at a Plans for Progress reception at the State House that caused Grace Halsell to seriously ponder that question. The reception was held for roughly 2,000 executives "who had 'pledged' to treat Negro employees as fairly as whites". Ms. Halsell briefly mentions her history of world travels, growing up in Texas, "a descendant of slave-holders and Civil War Veterans". She did not regard "Negroes as a part" of her "society", had "no particular feelings about them" and considered them as "a part of the landscape." Published in 1969, "Soul Sister" by Gloria Halsell is "The Journal of a white woman who turned herself black and went to live and work in Harlem and Mississippi."

When Ms. Halsell asked one of those executives what caused him to become interested in Plans for Progress, he told her it was after he read, "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin. Halsell got a copy of the book and became intrigued with the idea of doing what Griffin did. His story was the process of turning his skin black using medication to walk in the shoes of a black man in the USA. She contacted Griffin and he encouraged her to pursue her idea to do likewise to experience life through the eyes of a black woman as Civil Rights protesters were making strides for fair treatment of the desendants of slaves in the USA. At the end of her experiment she says:

"...And why do I say I couldn't do it again? Because now I know what it cost me, psychologically, to bear, for one minute in time, what every black American bears all his life: discrimination, segregation, injustice."