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    A Study Guide for James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man"
    A Study Guide for James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man"
    A Study Guide for James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man"
    Ebook42 pages33 minutes

    A Study Guide for James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 14, 2016
    ISBN9781535835169
    A Study Guide for James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for James Weldon Johnson's "The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man" - Gale

      1

      The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man

      James Weldon Johnson

      1912

      Introduction

      The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, by James Weldon Johnson, was published anonymously by a small New York publisher, Sherman, French and Company, in 1912. The work is a novel, but the author hoped that by remaining anonymous he could persuade readers that it was an actual autobiography. The novel, told in the first person, is the story of a man whose parents were a wealthy white Southern gentleman and the coloured seamstress employed by the gentleman’s family. The narrator travels around the United States and through Europe, observing how white and black people behave within separate enclaves and with each other. In the end, he decides to pass, or to live as a white man, and abandon his African American heritage. The story includes many short scenes and didactic digressions, told in a rather flat style with little description or dialogue. When the book was published, only two or three books by African Americans had attracted large audiences, and The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man did not sell many copies. Its publisher went out of business, and the book all but disappeared.

      With the blooming of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, Johnson became widely known as a writer and an intellectual. His book was re-issued by Knopf, an influential firm that published many of the Harlem Renaissance writers, and for the first time Johnson acknowledged that he was the author. This time, the book was widely sold and discussed, and it has remained in print ever since.

      Author Biography

      James William Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 17, 1871. His father was headwaiter at an expensive restaurant, and his mother was an elementary school teacher and a gifted pianist; neither had been slaves. They saw to it that their children received a good education and lived a secure middle-class life—relatively unusual for African Americans during the nineteenth century. As a teenager, Johnson worked as a secretary to a white physician who took him to New York City and Washington, D.C., tutored him in upper-class manners, gave him books to read, and encouraged him to write.

      Johnson attended Atlanta University, created to provide African Americans an education based on the classics and on the idea of public service. Johnson took to heart the call to serve his community, as he demonstrated through a long and varied career in public life. After graduating in 1894, he returned to Florida, where he was principal for the state’s first high school for black students. In 1895, he began publishing the nation’s first black daily newspaper, the Jacksonville Daily American. The paper ran out of money after several months, and Johnson turned to the study of law,

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