The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1912

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface and Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-11

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Symbols & Motifs

The Club

The Club, likely located in Harlem, New York City, is a symbol of Black excellence. The narrator sees several important aspects of Black culture there in the form of pictures of Black men who have been successful in the domains of sports, arts, and politics. In addition, he encounters patrons who are Black celebrities. These chance encounters allow him to feel a sense of pride as he watches such men overcome some racial constraints; that overcoming consumes much energy that the narrator comes to see as lost potential as he watches the angst of these models of Black excellence.

Another center of Black excellence in the club is the piano player, a man who has mastered ragtime. Because of the piano player’s presence, the club is an important symbol of the burgeoning musical culture that began to unfold in Northern cities. This music, along with the blues and band music, eventually gave rise to the jazz music that became the soundtrack for the Harlem Renaissance. The club is thus the ultimate symbol of the significant role music plays in the narrator’s life and self-identity.

Finally, the club and places like it (including the gambling parlor the narrator visits on his first night in New York) are symbols of the limits of migration to the North for Black migrants who fled Jim Crow to start over in the city. The narrator sees and experiences for himself how life in the gambling parlor becomes a trap because of debt. For example, it takes access granted by the white millionaire and the threat of death for the narrator to escape Harlem. The reality that the club and social spaces like it exemplify both freedom and constraint reflects the contradictory nature of New York City as a whole for Black migrants.

The Smoker Car

During his trip down South to research ragtime, the narrator, who is passively passing as white, overhears several white men discuss race in the United States. These men represent the positions on racial integration that are held by racial outsiders, well-intentioned (but ineffectual) Northerners, pro-civil rights Northerners who nevertheless reject social integration of the races, and unrepentant Southerners who embrace white supremacy. The conversation among the men eventually devolves to a debate between a Civil War veteran and a Texan, revealing that the ideas about race that animate most people are mostly irrational and cruel in the case of Southerners and hypocritical in the case of Northerners, whose interest in equality does not extend to social contacts with Black people. The white supremacist ideas of the Texan, especially his belief that violence is acceptable as a means of enforcing his racial beliefs, foreshadows the lynching the narrator witnesses later in Georgia.

Ragtime

In the novel, ragtime serves as a symbol of the artistic genius of Black people. The music, which shows the influence of African, European, and American musical traditions, illustrates the ability of Black people to innovate with whatever music and instruments are available. From its early roots in the rural South, this music morphed as Black migrants made their way to cities during the waves of migration called “the Great Migration.” Recognized and prized not only in the United States but also abroad, ragtime places Black American artistic productions at the center of global popular culture.

For the narrator, the popularity of ragtime serves as evidence of the right of Black Americans to be recognized as full citizens; they are far more than the white supremacist stereotypes that see them as less than. His obsession with ragtime grows as the narrator becomes more comfortable with claiming the music as his own, but his interest in it ends once he begins passing. Ragtime is thus a symbol for Black identity in the novel.

The Golden Coin

The narrator’s white father gives him a ten-dollar gold piece before sending the narrator and his mother away to live in New York. The coin, which the narrator wears around his neck on a string after his father drills a hole in it, serves as a symbol for the connection between the narrator and his father. That connection is primarily a financial one because the major way the father makes his presence felt in his son’s life is through financial support rather than forming a relationship with the boy. The coin is also a symbol of whiteness, the other thing that the narrator’s father gives him. The narrator’s later understanding of whiteness as being mostly about financial success reflects the powerful influence that the narrator’s distant white father has on the narrator’s white racial identity.