The experiment that led to writing Black Like Me was done at the very end of 1959, before the first “freedom rides” or any other manifestation of national concern about racial injustice. It was undertaken to discover if America was involved in the practice of racism against black Americans. Most white Americans denied any taint of racism and really believed that in this land we judged every man by his qualities as a human individual. In those days, any mention of racism brought to the public’s mind the Nazi suppression of Jewish people, the concentration camps, the gas chambers - and
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