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THE
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF AN
EX-COLORED MAN
James Weldon Johnson
1912
PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF 1912
This vivid and startlingly new picture of conditions brought about bythe race question in the United States makes no special plea forthe Negro, but shows in a dispassionate, though sympathetic, mannerconditions as they actually exist between the whites and blacksto-day. Special pleas have already been made for and against the Negroin hundreds of books, but in these books either his virtues or hisvices have been exaggerated. This is because writers, in nearly everyinstance, have treated the colored American as a whole; each hastaken some one group of the race to prove his case. Not before has acomposite and proportionate presentation of the entire race, embracingall of its various groups and elements, showing their relations witheach other and to the whites, been made.
It is very likely that the Negroes of the United States have a fairlycorrect idea of what the white people of the country think ofthem, for that opinion has for a long time been and is still beingconstantly stated; but they are themselves more or less a sphinx tothe whites. It is curiously interesting and even vitally importantto know what are the thoughts of ten millions of them concerning thepeople among whom they live. In these pages it is as though a veil hadbeen drawn aside: the reader is given a view of the inner life of theNegro in America, is initiated into the "freemasonry," as it were, ofthe race.
These pages also reveal the unsuspected fact that prejudice againstthe Negro is exerting a pressure which, in New York and other largecities where the opportunity is open, is actually and constantlyforcing an unascertainable number of fair-complexioned colored peopleover into the white race.
In this book the reader is given a glimpse behind the scenes of thisrace-drama which is being here enacted,—he is taken upon an elevationwhere he can catch a bird's-eye view of the conflict which is beingwaged.
The Publishers
I
I know that in writing the following pages I am divulging the greatsecret of my life, the secret which for some years I have guarded farmore carefully than any of my earthly possessions; and it is a curiousstudy to me to analyze the motives which prompt me to do it. I feelthat I am led by the same impulse which forces the un-found-outcriminal to take somebody into his confidence, although he knows thatthe act is likely, even almost certain, to lead to his undoing. I knowthat I am playing with fire, and I feel the thrill which accompaniesthat most fascinating pastime; and, back of it all, I think I finda sort of savage and diabolical desire to gather up all the littletragedies of my life, and turn them into a practical joke on society.
And, too, I suffer a vague feeling of unsatisfaction, of regret, ofalmost remorse, from which I am seeking relief, and of which I shallspeak in the last paragraph of this account.
I was born in a little town of Georgia a few years after the close ofthe Civil War. I shall not mention the name of the town, becausethere are people still living there who could be connected with thisnarrative. I have only a faint recollection of the place of my birth.At times I can close my