The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson

The day after he arrives, his college savings are stolen and, out of shame, the young man leaves for Jacksonville, Florida, where he can make his last few dollars stretch and find a job.

He also hopes to learn about Southern Black culture there.

Because his college fund is used to pay for her medical bills, he decides to go to affordable Atlanta University. While the boy is in high school, his mother gets sick and dies. The boy sees his father only once more in his lifetime. The boy learns that while his father loved his mother, he chose to marry a White woman, feeling constrained by social pressures of the time. He is the same gentleman visitor from the boy’s childhood in Georgia. “Red” stays his best friend, unconcerned about race.Įven though his mother confirms the narrator’s mixed race, she doesn’t mention who his father is until his father visits them in Connecticut a few years later. This makes it more difficult for him to make friends because now he is unsure with whom he should associate.

The narrator is shocked by the realization he is part Black, even though other students said they already knew. When the narrator stands, the principal tells him to sit down and stand when the Black students are asked to. One fateful day in school, the principal comes in to his classroom and asks the White students to stand. At school the boy excels in his studies but doesn’t have many friends other than his best friend “Red,” nicknamed for his red hair. For reasons unknown to him until years later, his mom moves them to Connecticut where he lives a comfortable existence, attending school and reading and playing music in his spare time. The narrator starts his story during his childhood with his mom and occasional visits by a White gentleman in Georgia. The novel remains one of Johnson’s most influential works. While the unnamed narrator, the ex-colored man, shares some characteristics with Johnson, it is not representative of the author’s life. The novel was published again in 1927 under the author’s own name. It is, in fact, a fictitious work by James Weldon Johnson, a writer, musician, and activist. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was first published anonymously in 1912, which made it appear an authentic autobiography.

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson