Advantages And Disadvantages Of Black Like Me

If you wanted to communicate to the world about an experience you had, would you use film or print? The personal narrative Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin and the documentary Freedom Summer were both created to represent the struggles of black citizens during the Civil Rights Movement as well as the struggles of getting all races equal rights. Black Like Me is about a white man who changes his skin black to figure out what life was like for the black citizens during the 1960s. Freedom Summer is about some black and white college kids going to Mississippi to get black people voting rights. Both of the mediums are effective in portraying these struggles, but they both have their benefits and shortcomings. Film and print both have advantages and disadvantages when it comes to portraying information. Film has many advantages for portraying information to …show more content…
One advantage is a person who is viewing the film can see actual photos or videos from the time when this was happening. When the people in Mississippi found out the college kids’ arrival was impending, and they were planning to get black people voting rights, many of the white supremacists were livid. A watcher could see how distraught the Klan was when the film presented the Klan burning many crosses. When the three kids who went down to Mississippi early got killed and then were discovered, we saw dead bodies in a hole, their car being towed out of a ditch, and a little boy weeping at one of the college kid’s funerals. All of these examples assisted in my understanding of how grim the situation was at the time, and it also helped me get a better idea of how people acted during this time. The documentary Freedom Summer had a lot of tangible photos and videos from the summer,