The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

“I remember how I sat upon his knee, and watched him laboriously drill a hole through a ten-dollar gold piece, and then tie the coin around my neck with a string. I have worn that gold piece around my neck the greater part of my life, and still possess it, but more than once I have wished that some other way had been found of attaching it to me besides putting a hole through it.”

The gold piece is an important symbol of what the narrator’s father gives him—money. It is also a symbol for whiteness in general, because what the father also gives the narrator is his skin color. The narrator’s sense that the coin has a hole in it might also reference the father’s absence or the fact that his whiteness is not quite whole because of his biracial heritage.

“Sometimes on other evenings when she was not sewing she would play simple accompaniments to some old southern songs which she sang. In these songs she was freer, because she played them by ear [….] Always on such evenings, when the music was over, my mother would sit with me in her arms often for a very long time. She would hold me close, softly crooning some old melody without words, all the while gently stroking her face against my head; many and many a night I thus fell asleep. I can see her now, her great dark eyes looking into the fire, to where? No one knew but she. The memory of that picture has more than once kept me from straying too far from the place of purity and safety in which her arms held me.”

The narrator also has a birthright from his mother. That heritage includes Black folk music and music in general. For the narrator, this vision of his mother singing is also a source of the part of him that is motivated by ethics and morality, in contrast to the material values he derives from his father. The contrast between the two reflects and previews the narrator’s conception of Black culture as a counterweight to the materialism that dominates white American culture.

“One day near the end of my second term at school the principal came into our room, and after talking to the teacher, for some reason said, “I wish all of the white scholars to stand for a moment.” I rose with the others. The teacher looked at me, and calling my name said, ‘You sit down for the present, and rise with the others.’ I did not quite understand her, and questioned, ‘Ma’m?’ She repeated with a softer tone in her voice, ‘You sit down now, and rise with the others.’ I sat down dazed. I saw and heard nothing.”

This moment represents one of the conventions of the passing narrative: the moment when the protagonist becomes aware that he or she is Black. That movement from innocence to knowledge is generally a negative one, as shown by the narrator’s reaction afterward.

“I rushed up into my own little room, shut the door, and went quickly to where my looking-glass hung on the wall. For an instant I was afraid to look, but when I did I looked long and earnestly. I had often heard people say to my mother, “What a pretty boy you have.” I was accustomed to hear remarks about my beauty; but, now, for the first time, I became conscious of it, and recognized it. I noticed the ivory whiteness of my skin, the beauty of my mouth, the size and liquid darkness of my eyes, and how the long black lashes that fringed and shaded them produced an effect that was strangely fascinating even to me.”

Johnson uses a mirror here to capture double-consciousness—the psychological reality of people of color who internalize both their individual identities as people of color and the identity assigned to them by white observers. The narrator finds that duality destabilizing, and he spends the remainder of the narrative attempting to resolve this duality. This moment is thus a key one in the development of the narrator’s character arc.

“And so I have often lived through that hour, that day, that week in which was wrought the miracle of my transition from one world into another; for I did indeed pass into another world.”

The description of how the narrator becomes Black shows the arbitrary nature of racial boundaries. However, the use of the word “miracle” shows that the arbitrary nature of those identities takes nothing away from how consequential the boundaries are.

“It is a difficult thing for a white man to learn what a colored man really thinks; because, generally, with the latter an additional and different light must be brought to bear on what he thinks; and his thoughts are often influenced by considerations so delicate and subtle that it would be impossible for him to confess or explain them to one of the opposite race. This gives to every colored man, in proportion to his intellectuality, a sort of dual personality; there is one phase of him which is disclosed only in the freemasonry of his own race. I have often watched with interest and sometimes with amazement even ignorant colored men under cover of broad grins and minstrel antics maintain this dualism in the presence of white men.”

The masking the narrator references here is a common figure for describing both double-consciousness and the impact it has on the ability of Black people to be their own authentic selves in the presence of white observers. The narrator inserts himself here as a cultural informant who peels back this mask, allowing the narrator to fulfill his promise that he will give white people the truth about the actual nature of Black identity.

“But the effect upon me of ‘Shiny’s’ speech was double; I not only shared the enthusiasm of his audience, but he imparted to me some of his own enthusiasm. I felt leap within me pride that I was colored; and I began to form wild dreams of bringing glory and honor to the Negro race. For days I could talk of nothing else with my mother except my ambitions to be a great man, a great colored man, to reflect credit on the race, and gain fame for myself. It was not until years after that I formulated a definite and feasible plan for realizing my dreams.”

After having first discovered that Black identity means suffering overt racism and racial slights, the narrator then shifts his conception of Black identity as one that offers opportunities to bring glory to that racial community by overcoming racism. Shiny, who embodies a tradition of Black excellence, inspires the narrator to pursue this more empowering Black identity.

“They were of all types and colors, the more intelligent types predominating. The colors ranged from jet black to pure white, with light hair and eyes. Among the girls especially there were many so fair that it was difficult to believe that they had Negro blood in them. And, too, I could not help but notice that many of the girls, particularly those of the delicate brown shades, with black eyes and wavy dark hair, were decidedly pretty. Among the boys, many of the blackest were fine specimens of young manhood, tall, straight, and muscular, with magnificent heads; these were the kind of boys who developed into the patriarchal “uncles” of the old slave régime.”

The narrator divides the students at Atlanta University into racial and intellectual archetypes. This typing reflects the sociological lens Johnson sometimes uses to explore truths about race for the white audience. In terms of character development, the narrator’s clinical description also shows that he still sees himself as a racial outsider.

“I became acquainted with the best class of colored people in Jacksonville. This was really my entrance into the race. It was my initiation into what I have termed the freemasonry of the race. I had formulated a theory of what it was to be colored, now I was getting the practice. The novelty of my position caused me to observe and consider things which, I think, entirely escaped the young men I associated with; or, at least, were so commonplace to them as not to attract their attention. And of many of the impressions which came to me then I have realized the full import only within the past few years, since I have had a broader knowledge of men and history, and a fuller comprehension of the tremendous struggle which is going on between the races in the South.”

The narrator continues in his sociological observations of Black racial communities by sorting Black people into types by class and relationship to the larger society. Here, he positions himself as a person who has more credibility because of his difference from the people he observes, a curious move that still reflects the narrator’s alienation. This passage also comes from one of the long sections that interrupts the flow of the narrative about the narrator’s life. Such passages account for why audiences reading in 1912 might well have assumed the work was nonfiction.

“It is my opinion that the colored people of this country have done four things which refute the oft advanced theory that they are an absolutely inferior race, which demonstrate that they have originality and artistic conception; and, what is more, the power of creating that which can influence and appeal universally. The first two of these are the Uncle Remus stories, collected by Joel Chandler Harris, and the Jubilee songs, to which the Fisk singers made the public and the skilled musicians of both America and Europe listen. The other two are ragtime music and the cake-walk. No one who has traveled can question the world-conquering influence of ragtime; and I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that in Europe the United States is popularly known better by ragtime than by anything else it has produced in a generation. In Paris they call it American music.”

Johnson, a literary critic and musician in his own right by the second time he published the novel, here articulates an argument associated with the Harlem Renaissance. The central premise of people like Johnson and W. E. B. Du Bois was that artistic creation could be one of the domains in which Black people could assert their right to full citizenship. Here, the narrator uses these folk and popular forms to argue that the artistic and cultural contributions of Black people are on par with anything Europe has produced.

“[T]he buildings of the town shone out in a reflected light which gave the city an air of enchantment; and, truly, it is an enchanted spot. New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face, and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments,—constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther. And all these become the victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet; others she condemns to a fate like that of galley slaves; a few she favors and fondles, riding them high on the bubbles of fortune; then with a sudden breath she blows the bubbles out and laughs mockingly as she watches them fall.”

The ambivalence about New York serves as foreshadowing about the difficulties the narrator later encounters there. The figurative language reflects an important part of the Black, urban experience that emerged as masses of Southern immigrants arrived in cities. The freedom they hoped to find there was frequently elusive because of the forces of economics and forms of racism they thought they left behind when they exited the South.

“No gambling was allowed, and the conduct of the place was surprisingly orderly. It was, in short, a center of colored bohemians and sports. Here the great prize fighters were wont to come, the famous jockeys, the noted minstrels, whose names and faces were familiar on every bill-board in the country; and these drew a multitude of those who love to dwell in the shadow of greatness. There were then no organizations giving performances of such order as are now given by several colored companies; that was because no manager could imagine that audiences would pay to see Negro performers in any other rôle than that of Mississippi River roustabouts; but there was lots of talent and ambition. I often heard the younger and brighter men discussing the time when they would compel the public to recognize that they could do something more than grin and cut pigeon wings.”

The narrator highlights another archetype—the Black artist or performer who embodies excellence but nevertheless is limited by the prejudice of primarily white audiences. The narrator points out that one source of the inability of such people to explore the full range of their talents is the racism built into the structure of the artistic economy. It took money and access to white audiences to make art a career, and white gatekeepers often stood between would-be Black artists and their chosen vocations. This problem is prophetic given the struggles Black artists experienced by 1927, the second time the novel was published. Johnson’s early recognition of this problem is one of the reasons why the novel is an important bridge between Post-Reconstruction Black literature and the literature of the Harlem Renaissance.

“My New York was limited to ten blocks; the boundaries were Sixth Avenue from Twenty-third to Thirty-third Streets, with the cross streets one block to the west. Central Park was a distant forest, and the lower part of the city a foreign land. I look back upon the life I then led with a shudder when I think what would have been had I not escaped it. But had I not escaped it, I would have been no more unfortunate than are many young colored men who come to New York. During that dark period I became acquainted with a score of bright, intelligent young fellows who had come up to the great city with high hopes and ambitions, and who had fallen under the spell of this under life, a spell they could not throw off.”

The narrator casts himself as a Black archetype, the young Black man trapped by the sinful city. This vision of the city as a trap reflects the reality that Harlem was a source of Black art and culture, but it could only go so far because it was bound by a larger American city and culture that maintained racial boundaries.

“These were people,—and they represented a large class,—who were ever expecting to find happiness in novelty, each day restlessly exploring and exhausting every resource of this great city that might possibly furnish a new sensation or awaken a fresh emotion, and who were always grateful to anyone who aided them in their quest. Several of the women left the table and gathered about the piano [….] When the guests arose I struck up my ragtime transcription of Mendelssohn’s “Wedding March,” playing it with terrific chromatic octave runs in the base. This raised everybody’s spirits to the highest point of gayety, and the whole company involuntarily and unconsciously did an impromptu cake-walk. From that time on until the time of leaving they kept me so busy that my arms ached.”

The narrator takes the racial boundaries between Black and white people as a challenge he believes he can overcome because of his dual membership in racial communities. In this scene, the means of overcoming that boundary is music, specifically traditional Western music revoiced through ragtime. In this passage, Johnson represents this music as a powerful force that acts directly on white consciousness. The implication is that the dissolving racial boundaries will not occur through reason or appeals to morality. In this scene, pleasure and an interest in novelty allow white people to connect to Black art. This connection via Black art does not necessarily extend to social contacts, however, because there are no visible Black presences in the room.

“This man of the world, who grew weary of everything, and was always searching for something new, appeared never to grow tired of my music; he seemed to take it as a drug. He fell into a habit which caused me no little annoyance; sometimes he would come in during the early hours of the morning, and finding me in bed asleep, would wake me up and ask me to play something. This, so far as I can remember, was my only hardship during my whole stay with him in Europe.”

The limits of art as the means by which racial boundaries can be dissolved also has to do with economics and the way that white consumers define their relationship to Black art. The relationship between the narrator and the millionaire is one of patronage. Because of the narrator’s reliance on the millionaire, he feels compelled to perform on demand. The sense of constraint the narrator feels during these episodes reflects some of the real-life problems Black artists encountered when they tried to assert their autonomy with people who funded their work.

“Slowly the desolate loneliness of my position became clear to me. I knew that I could not speak, but I would have given a part of my life to touch her hand with mine and call her sister. I sat through the opera until I could stand it no longer. I felt that I was suffocating. Valentine’s love seemed like mockery, and I felt an almost uncontrollable impulse to rise up and scream to the audience, ‘Here, here in your very midst, is a tragedy, a real tragedy!’”

In this arc-bending moment, the narrator discovers a crack in his sociological exploration of racial identity. Johnson uses this moment to show how much the narrator’s sense of alienation from the white side of his family motivates the decisions he makes about his life. This moment of alienation is also a convention of the passing narrative. The radical step the narrator takes—fully embracing his Black identity—is a frequent turn in character development in passing narratives.

“Beside London Paris becomes a toy, a pretty plaything. And I must own that before I left the world’s metropolis I discovered much there that was beautiful. The beauty in and about London is entirely different from that in and about Paris; and I could not but admit that the beauty of the French city seemed hand-made, artificial, as though set up for the photographer’s camera, everything nicely adjusted so as not to spoil the picture; while that of the English city was rugged, natural and fresh.”

The sophisticated voice of the cultural observer is on full display here. This time that eye is turned on important cities associated with Western and European culture. The narrator’s ability to speak so confidently about the differences between France and England reflects the impact of moving through a different geography in the narrator’s identity as a Black man. Like many Black travelers, including writers and artists of the early-20th century and the Harlem Renaissance, he develops a cosmopolitan Black identity that is very hard to achieve within the geography of the United States. 

“What use am I making of my gifts? What future have I before me following my present course? These thoughts made me feel remorseful, and put me in a fever to get to work, to begin to do something. Of course I know now that I was not wasting time; that there was nothing I could have done at that age which would have benefited me more than going to Europe as I did. The desire to begin work grew stronger each day. I could think of nothing else. I made up my mind to go back into the very heart of the South, to live among the people, and drink in my inspiration first-hand. I gloated over the immense amount of material I had to work with, not only modern ragtime, but also the old slave songs,—material which no one had yet touched.”

Despite the artistic and cultural education the narrator receives by leaving the United States, he longs to return to the United States. The implication is that an authentic Black identity will always in some way be dependent on maintaining a connection to the geography of the United States. The narrator believes that being authentically Black requires a return home.

“My boy, you are by blood, by appearance, by education and by tastes, a white man. Now why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle of the black people of the United States? […] you can never be able to get the hearing for your work which it might deserve. I doubt that even a white musician of recognized ability could succeed there by working on the theory that American music should be based on Negro themes. Music is a universal art; anybody’s music belongs to everybody; you can’t limit it to race or country.”

The millionaire’s perspective on race and identity is reflected in his sense that there is no such thing as Black art or Black music; in addition, he sees the narrator’s idealistic quest to transform Black music as a fool’s errand that ignores the realities of money and law in the United States. His perspective is a sharp contrast to the one the narrator holds at this point in the narrative, making him a foil to the narrator. Ironically, the narrator eventually embraces just this perspective; this moment is thus an example of foreshadowing.

“How did the men who originated them manage to do it? The sentiments are easily accounted for; they are mostly taken from the Bible; but the melodies, where did they come from? Some of them so weirdly sweet, and others so wonderfully strong [….] As yet, the Negroes themselves do not fully appreciate these old slave songs. The educated classes are rather ashamed of them, and prefer to sing hymns from books. This feeling is natural; they are still too close to the conditions under which the songs were produced; but the day will come when this slave music will be the most treasured heritage of the American Negro.”

This passage comes as the narrator is moved emotionally by listening to Black spirituals during a tent revival. His questions about the sources of this art show his willingness to learn from the tradition on display in that space and his belief that Black folk culture is the epitome of Black creative genius. Johnson’s focus on how respectable Black people see this art reflects a tension that came to the fore during the Harlem Renaissance, when Black folk and popular culture posed a challenge to Black elites’ sense that they were able to effectively speak for the race (they were not).

“Have you ever witnessed the transformation of human beings into savage beasts? Nothing can be more terrible. A railroad tie was sunk into the ground, the rope was removed, and a chain brought and securely coiled around the victim and the stake. There he stood, a man only in form and stature, every sign of degeneracy stamped upon his countenance. His eyes were dull and vacant, indicating not a single ray of thought. Evidently the realization of his fearful fate had robbed him of whatever reasoning power he had ever possessed [….] He squirmed, he writhed, strained at his chains, then gave out cries and groans that I shall always hear [….] Some of the crowd yelled and cheered, others seemed appalled at what they had done, and there were those who turned away sickened at the sight. I was fixed to the spot where I stood, powerless to take my eyes from what I did not want to see.”

This passage is a description of what the narrator observes during the lynching outside of Macon. The narrator’s terror and disgust over what he witnesses is the final piece of evidence in an argument the narrator makes elsewhere, which is that Southern culture cannot properly be called modern because of the existence of lynching. In addition, this brutal scene, which includes raw sensory detail, counters the high-flown idealism the narrator uses elsewhere as he describes his great mission to create Black art to counter racism.

“A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.”

The narrator’s self-identity in this passage reflects his identity as a Black man and an American, with the implication that these two identities do not completely overlap. The tension between being Black and being American is so great that the narrator cannot resolve it and still see himself as a whole person. This moment of recognition is a convention of passing narratives in which narrators chose to surrender claims to a Black identity for the sake of survival.

“I had made up my mind that since I was not going to be a Negro, I would avail myself of every possible opportunity to make a white man’s success; and that, if it can be summed up in any one word, means “money.”

The narrator associates white American identity with materialism, in contrast to his representation of Black identity as creative and spiritual. The cynicism in this passage reflects the narrator’s belief that there is nothing intrinsically superior about being white. The link between whiteness and materialism also connects to the narrator’s early beliefs about his white father, a man who was only present in his life as a bestower of cash and golden coins. The narrator’s decision to embark on moneymaking as his motivation shows his alienation from a Black racial community.