The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
By James Weldon Johnson
The novel begins with a frame tale in which the unnamed narrator describes the following narrative as “the great secret of my life.” The narrator notes that he is taking a substantial risk by composing the narrative but that it is one he feels compelled to record, regardless. The narrator also chooses to withhold the name of the small Georgia town where his narrative begins, as there are still living residents of the city who might be able to connect him to the narrative.
Throughout the novel, the adult narrator from the frame interjects into the text to offer reflective commentary on the narrative’s events. The narrator describes learning to love music at a young age and attending an integrated school. It is while attending this school that the narrator first realizes he is African-American and thus subject to ridicule and mistreatment for his racial heritage. This “discovery” occurs when he is publicly corrected by his teacher and the headmaster when he stands when “the white scholars” (schoolchildren) are asked to stand. Returning home from school, the troubled narrator confronts his mother, asking her if he is a “nigger.”
His mother reassures him, however, noting that while she is not white, “your father is one of the greatest men in the country—the best blood of the South is in you.” The narrator notes that this event became a racial awakening and loss of innocence that caused him to begin searching for—and finding suddenly—faults in himself and his mother, setting the stage for his eventual decision (though far in the future) to “pass” as a white man. While in school, the narrator also grows to admire and befriend “Shiny,” an unmistakably African-American boy described as one of the brightest and best-spoken children in the class.
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James Weldon Johnson
James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) was an American writer and civil rights activist.
Biography
He was married to civil rights activist Grace Nail Johnson. Johnson was a leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920, he was chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer. He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies, which collected both poems and spirituals of black culture. He wrote the lyrics for “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, which later became known as the Negro National Anthem, the music being written by his younger brother, composer J. Rosamond Johnson.
Johnson was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as U.S. consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. 1934, he was the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University. Later in life, he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University, a historically black university.
James Weldon Johnson
