In 1959 John Howard Griffin began an experiment to test his novel theory, that a white man can never experience what life is like as a black man. He expected prejudice, which he got, but he also got something completely unexpected. He found a new identity.
             John Howard Griffin had spent his whole life as a white, well-off man. He had no idea what a black man went through in daily life. As he experienced these daily trials, he lost his own identity. He became just like a black man, in all ways.
             Griffin was a white journalist. He had a wife, and several kids. He was well educated. He decided to use medication and exposure to ultraviolet rays to darken his skin. Griffin spent four days holed up in his room, waiting for his skin to become dark enough to pass as a black man. He shaved his head, so his hair would not give him away, and went to sleep.
             Then Griffin applied stain to his body. Finishing, he went to look in the mirror. There, he saw a stranger. "In the flood of the light against the white tile, the face and shoulders of a stranger- a fierce, bald, very dark Negro- glared at me from the glass. He in no way resembled me." (15). Here, Griffin panics. Griffin had expected to be disguised – but he felt that his mind was in a stranger's body.
             Griffin had lost his identity as a prominent white male the second he dyed his skin. He was a black man with no more experience of the world to a black man than a young black boy. He wasn't sure where to find food, water, or even a place to sleep.
             Then Griffin discovered the "hate stare." This terrible look helped Griffin become more like other black men. Some white people hated blacks, regardless of their sex, education, or politeness. They gave them a stare filled with so much loathing that blacks had come to know it as the hate stare.
             After a long train ride on which G
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