There’s a long tradition of white people trying to understand what it would be like to step into black people’s shoes. But the journalist Grace Halsell went one step further: She attempted to step into black people’s skin.

Using vitiligo treatment pills to help darken her complexion, Halsell traveled and worked in Harlem and Mississippi in 1968, passing as a black woman. She documented her experiences in her 1969 book Soul Sister, which she said she hoped would help white people to understand what it was like to be black. (She was inspired by John Howard Griffin, whose 1961 book Black Like Me took a similar approach.)

As you might imagine, Halsell’s foray into blackness was controversial. But it also struck a chord. Lyndon Johnson provided a blurb for the book, and it sold more than a million copies.

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