The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (Twentieth-Century Classics) [Paperback]

James Weldon Johnson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: February 1, 1990 | ISBN-10: 0140184023 | ISBN-13: 978-0140184020 | Edition: Reprint

Johnson, the first black executive of the NAACP and an active civil-rights campaigner, provides an autobiographical account of living as a white man, although by heritage and experience he is an African American. He is also the author of "God's Trombones" and "Along This Way".

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

With the possible exceptions of Dr. Alain Locke and W.E.B. Du Bois, no African American excelled on as many different levels as James Weldon Johnson. Along This Way--the first autobiography by a person of color to be reviewed in The New York Times--not only chronicles his life as an educator, lawyer, diplomat, newspaper editor, lyricist, poet, essayist, and political activist but also outlines the trials and triumphs of African Americans from post-Reconstruction to the rise and fall of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Florida in 1871 to middle-class West Indian parents, Johnson recognized the challenges and absurdities of segregated America early on. But it was his experience as a tutor to rural blacks while a student at Atlanta University that was to alter the course of his life: "It was this period that marked the beginning of psychological change from boyhood to manhood," he writes. "It was this period that marked also the beginning of my knowledge of my own people as a race."

With a rare blend of pride and humility, Johnson recounts how he, among other accomplishments, became Florida's first black lawyer in 1898, a diplomat in Venezuela and Nicaragua, and lyricist for his brother Rosamond Johnson's famous song, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Johnson's commentary on his epochal novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, as well as writings on his works of poetry--The Creation, God's Trombones, and Fifty Years and Other Poems--is priceless. Equally important are the logical and even-tempered opinions on race that he wrote for The New York Age, which offered comprehensive critiques of Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, and Marcus Garvey, along with his analysis of the racial climate while serving as head of the NAACP. This remarkable man left a mark on the 20th century that goes beyond the boundary of race. --Eugene Holley Jr. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Library Journal

Johnson's theme of moral cowardice sets his tragic story of a mulatto in the United States above other sentimental narratives. The unnamed narrator, the offspring of a black mother and white father, tells of his coming-of-age at the beginning of the 20th century. Light-skinned enough to pass for white but emotionally tied to his mother's heritage, he ends up a failure in his own eyes after he chooses to follow the easier path while witnessing a white mob set fire to a black man. Reader Allen Gilmore contributes a fine reading. Recommended, with hopes for an unabridged edition in the future.?Sandy Glover, West Linn P.L., Ore.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (February 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140184023
• ISBN-13: 978-0140184020
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.3 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #203,644 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

62 of 66 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Unknown classic September 19, 2000

By Orrin C. Judd VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Perhaps best known for writing the Black National Anthem, Lift Every Voice and Sing , James Weldon Johnson wrote one of the first novels to probe the ambiguities of race, the novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man. As a boy, the fictional title character is sent North with his Mother to be raised in Connecticut. He does extremely well in school and is even something of a musical prodigy.

But, he is stunned when one day in school a teacher asks the white students to stand, and scolds him when he joins them. He confronts his fair skinned mother and she reveals that she is indeed black and his father is a white Southern gentleman. His father later comes to visit, and even buys him a piano, but the child is unable to approach and deal with him.

As a young man, the death of his mother & sale of their house leaves him with a small stake & he determines to attend college. Though qualified, he rules out Harvard for financial reasons & heads back down South to attend Atlanta University. However, his stake is stolen from his boarding house room before he can register & he ends up with a job in a cigar factory.

When the factory closes, he heads North again, this time to New York City and discovers Ragtime music and shooting craps, excelling at the one & nearing ruin in the other. A white gentleman who has heard him play enters into an exclusive agreement to have him play at parties & subsequently takes him along on a tour of Europe.

Inevitably, he is drawn back to America and to music. He tours the South collecting musical knowledge so that he will be able to compose a uniquely American and Black music. But his idyll is shattered when he sees a white lynch mob burn a black man. In the wake of this experience, he decides to "pass" for white--not due to fear or discouragement, but due to "Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals."

Abandoning his musical ambitions, he takes a job as a clerk, does well investing in real estate & meets a white woman who he wishes to marry. After examining his conscience he decides to tell her that he is black. After taking some time to confront this fact, she consents to marriage.

As the novel closes, the "ex-colored man" tells us: "My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."

And the reader can't help but feel profoundly ashamed of a system of racial oppression that forced a man to make these choices--a wonderful novel.

GRADE: B+

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A True Classic!!! November 30, 2002

By Hugh Pearson

Format:Paperback

I purchased this book several years back, as part of the research for my second book. I cannot recommend any book more highly. Anyone interested at all in African American life from the 1880s to the 1930s (particularly as it was lived in New York City from about 1899 to the Harlem Renaissance) should buy it. There is not a more fascinating autobiography in print anywhere! And the life of this man! He was the founder of the first high school for African Americans in the state of Florida, located in Jacksonville (the high school my own mother would attend); the first African American to pass the bar exam in the state of Florida; part of the first successful African American Broadway composing team (after he left Jacksonville and moved to New York City); composer of the lyrics to, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," the song long considered the African American national anthem (his brother Rosamond composed the music); a consulate in Nicaragua and Venezuela; the first executive secretary of the NAACP, in which capacity he pioneered anti-lynching legislation (though he was unsuccessful in seeing it pass, the effort is described in the book, and is a fascinating lesson in the machinations of Congressional politics in the 1920s); author of groundbreaking fiction such as, "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man"; author of the nonfiction classic, "Black Manhattan." The list goes on... His accomplishments, his dignity and intelligence were stunning, simply awe inspiring. And it is a real shame, an indication of how troubled our culture is, that Hollywood has never made a movie about his life, and he is barely mentioned as a key figure who shaped American culture (notice I didn't say African American culture, I said AMERICAN CULTURE). To everyone reading this review, BUY THIS BOOK. You are in for an experience so delicious it will shame you if you never before knew it existed. It will make you want to call for the resignation of all college professors who do not have "Along This Way" as REQUIRED READING for any course designed to examine the history of American culture.

70 of 84 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fictional book that serves to tell a lesson and a story that is powerful. February 20, 2010

By Lorrie

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This fictional book is very powerful! Great freebie. And no, this is not the author's "tale". I am sure some of the struggles faced are based on the author's vast knowledge but this is not James Weldon Johnson's word-for-word life story, though it obviously is based on details from his personal life.

from Wikipedia:

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson is the fictional telling of the story of a young biracial man, referred to only as the "Ex-Colored Man", living in post Reconstruction era America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The Ex-Colored Man was forced to choose between embracing his black heritage and culture by expressing himself through the African-American musical genre ragtime, or by "passing" and living obscurely as a mediocre middle-class white man.

Though the title suggests otherwise, the book is not an autobiography but a novel. However, the book is based on the lives of people Johnson knew and from events in his own life. Weldon's text is an example of a roman à clef. (Roman à clef is a term used for a novel describing real life, behind a façade of fiction)