The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
An unnamed light-skinned narrator, born in Georgia after the Civil War to a Black mother and an unnamed white Southern father he knows only through occasional, humiliating adult visits, grows up believing himself to be white until the moment in a Connecticut elementary school when a teacher corrects him in front of the class. What follows is a life spent crossing and recrossing the American color line, a childhood in New England, a season as a ragtime pianist in the Bohemian clubs of 1890s New York, a European tour as the protégé of a wealthy white patron, a return to the American South that ends with the narrator witnessing a lynching, and a final, quiet decision to pass as white permanently. James Weldon Johnson's 1912 novel, published anonymously, was long mistaken for memoir and remains a foundational work of African American literary modernism.
What you might want to know about The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An unnamed light-skinned Black narrator looks back over his life, from a Southern boyhood and a music education in Europe to a witnessed lynching in Georgia that pushes him to spend his adult life passing as a white man.
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was written by James Weldon Johnson and published anonymously in 1912, then under his name in 1927. Johnson was a poet, novelist, and civil rights activist who served as the head of the NAACP.
No, despite the title. The book is a novel structured as a fictional memoir. Some readers initially thought it was autobiographical, which was part of Johnson's intent.
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is 260 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
