I know that in writing the following pages I am divulging the great
secret of my life, the secret which for some years I have guarded far
more carefully than any of my earthly possessions; and it is a curious
study to me to analyze the motives which prompt me to do it. I feel
that I am led by the same impulse which forces the un-found-out
criminal to take somebody into his confidence, although he knows that
the act is likely, even almost certain, to lead to his undoing. I know
that I am playing with fire, and I feel the thrill which accompanies
that most fascinating pastime; and, back of it all, I think I find
a sort of savage and diabolical desire to gather up all the little
tragedies of my life, and turn them into a practical joke on society.

And, too, I suffer a vague feeling of unsatisfaction, of regret, of
almost remorse, from which I am seeking relief, and of which I shall
speak in the last paragraph of this account.

I was born in a little town of Georgia a few years after the close of
the Civil War. I shall not mention the name of the town, because
there are people still living there who could be connected with this
narrative. I have only a faint recollection of the place of my birth.
At times I can close my eyes and call up in a dreamlike way things
that seem to have happened ages ago in some other world. I can see in
this half vision a little house--I am quite sure it was not a large
one--I can remember that flowers grew in the front yard, and that
around each bed of flowers was a hedge of vari-colored glass bottles
stuck in the ground neck down. I remember that once, while playing
around in the sand, I became curious to know whether or not the
bottles grew as the flowers did, and I proceeded to dig them up to
find out; the investigation brought me a terrific spanking, which
indelibly fixed the incident in my mind. I can remember, too, that
behind the house was a shed under which stood two or three wooden
wash-tubs. These tubs were the earliest aversion of my life, for
regularly on certain evenings I was plunged into one of them and
scrubbed until my skin ached. I can remember to this day the pain
caused by the strong, rank soap's getting into my eyes.

Back from the house a vegetable garden ran, perhaps seventy-five
or one hundred feet; but to my childish fancy it was an endless
territory. I can still recall the thrill of joy, excitement, and
wonder it gave me to go on an exploring expedition through it, to find
the blackberries, both ripe and green, that grew along the edge of the
fence.

I remember with what pleasure I used to arrive at, and stand before, a
little enclosure in which stood a patient cow chewing her cud, how I
would occasionally offer her through the bars a piece of my bread and
molasses, and how I would jerk back my hand in half fright if she made
any motion to accept my offer.

I have a dim recollection of several people who moved in and about
this little house, but I have a distinct mental image of only two:
one, my mother; and the other, a tall man with a small, dark mustache.
I remember that his shoes or boots were always shiny, and that he wore
a gold chain and a great gold watch with which he was always willing
to let me play. My admiration was almost equally divided between the
watch and chain and the shoes. He used to come to the house evenings,
perhaps two or three times a week; and it became my appointed duty
whenever he came to bring him a pair of slippers and to put the shiny
shoes in a particular corner; he often gave me in return for this
service a bright coin, which my mother taught me to promptly drop in
a little tin bank. I remember distinctly the last time this tall man
came to the little house in Georgia; that evening before I went to
bed he took me up in his arms and squeezed me very tightly; my mother
stood behind his chair wiping tears from her eyes. I remember how I
sat upon his knee and watched him laboriously drill a hole through a
ten-dollar gold piece, and then tie the coin around my neck with a
string. I have worn that gold piece around my neck the greater part of
my life, and still possess it, but more than once I have wished that
some other way had been found of attaching it to me besides putting a
hole through it.

On the day after the coin was put around my neck my mother and I
started on what seemed to me an endless journey. I knelt on the seat
and watched through the train window the corn and cotton fields pass
swiftly by until I fell asleep. When I fully awoke, we were being
driven through the streets of a large city--Savannah. I sat up and
blinked at the bright lights. At Savannah we boarded a steamer which
finally landed us in New York. From New York we went to a town in
Connecticut, which became the home of my boyhood.

My mother and I lived together in a little cottage which seemed to
me to be fitted up almost luxuriously; there were horse-hair-covered
chairs in the parlor, and a little square piano; there was a stairway
with red carpet on it leading to a half second story; there were
pictures on the walls, and a few books in a glass-doored case. My
mother dressed me very neatly, and I developed that pride which
well-dressed boys generally have. She was careful about my associates,
and I myself was quite particular. As I look back now I can see that I
was a perfect little aristocrat. My mother rarely went to anyone's
house, but she did sewing, and there were a great many ladies coming
to our cottage. If I was around they would generally call me, and ask
me my name and age and tell my mother what a pretty boy I was. Some of
them would pat me on the head and kiss me.

My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have
another woman helping her. I think she must have derived a fair income
from her work. I know, too, that at least once each month she received
a letter; I used to watch for the postman, get the letter, and run
to her with it; whether she was busy or not, she would take it and
instantly thrust it into her bosom. I never saw her read one of these
letters. I knew later that they contained money and what was to
her more than money. As busy as she generally was, she found time,
however, to teach me my letters and figures and how to spell a number
of easy words. Always on Sunday evenings she opened the little square
piano and picked out hymns. I can recall now that whenever she
played hymns from the book her _tempo_ was always decidedly _largo_.
Sometimes on other evenings, when she was not sewing, she would play
simple accompaniments to some old Southern songs which she sang. In
these songs she was freer, because she played them by ear. Those
evenings on which she opened the little piano were the happiest hours
of my childhood. Whenever she started toward the instrument, I used to
follow her with all the interest and irrepressible joy that a pampered
pet dog shows when a package is opened in which he knows there is a
sweet bit for him. I used to stand by her side and often interrupt and
annoy her by chiming in with strange harmonies which I found on either
the high keys of the treble or the low keys of the bass. I remember
that I had a particular fondness for the black keys. Always on such
evenings, when the music was over, my mother would sit with me in her
arms, often for a very long time. She would hold me close, softly
crooning some old melody without words, all the while gently stroking
her face against my head; many and many a night I thus fell asleep. I
can see her now, her great dark eyes looking into the fire, to where?
No one knew but her. The memory of that picture has more than once
kept me from straying too far from the place of purity and safety in
which her arms held me.

At a very early age I began to thump on the piano alone, and it was
not long before I was able to pick out a few tunes. When I was seven
years old, I could play by ear all of the hymns and songs that my
mother knew. I had also learned the names of the notes in both clefs,
but I preferred not to be hampered by notes. About this time several
ladies for whom my mother sewed heard me play and they persuaded her
that I should at once be put under a teacher; so arrangements were
made for me to study the piano with a lady who was a fairly good
musician; at the same time arrangements were made for me to study
my books with this lady's daughter. My music teacher had no small
difficulty at first in pinning me down to the notes. If she played my
lesson over for me, I invariably attempted to reproduce the required
sounds without the slightest recourse to the written characters. Her
daughter, my other teacher, also had her worries. She found that, in
reading, whenever I came to words that were difficult or unfamiliar,
I was prone to bring my imagination to the rescue and read from
the picture. She has laughingly told me, since then, that I would
sometimes substitute whole sentences and even paragraphs from what
meaning I thought the illustrations conveyed. She said she not only
was sometimes amused at the fresh treatment I would give an author's
subject, but, when I gave some new and sudden turn to the plot of the
story, often grew interested and even excited in listening to hear
what kind of a denouement I would bring about. But I am sure this was
not due to dullness, for I made rapid progress in both my music and my
books.

And so for a couple of years my life was divided between my music and
my school books. Music took up the greater part of my time. I had
no playmates, but amused myself with games--some of them my own
invention--which could be played alone. I knew a few boys whom I had
met at the church which I attended with my mother, but I had formed no
close friendships with any of them. Then, when I was nine years old,
my mother decided to enter me in the public school, so all at once I
found myself thrown among a crowd of boys of all sizes and kinds;
some of them seemed to me like savages. I shall never forget the
bewilderment, the pain, the heart-sickness, of that first day at
school. I seemed to be the only stranger in the place; every other boy
seemed to know every other boy. I was fortunate enough, however, to be
assigned to a teacher who knew me; my mother made her dresses. She was
one of the ladies who used to pat me on the head and kiss me. She had
the tact to address a few words directly to me; this gave me a certain
sort of standing in the class and put me somewhat at ease.

Within a few days I had made one staunch friend and was on fairly good
terms with most of the boys. I was shy of the girls, and remained so;
even now a word or look from a pretty woman sets me all a-tremble.
This friend I bound to me with hooks of steel in a very simple way. He
was a big awkward boy with a face full of freckles and a head full of
very red hair. He was perhaps fourteen years of age; that is, four or
five years older than any other boy in the class. This seniority was
due to the fact that he had spent twice the required amount of time in
several of the preceding classes. I had not been at school many hours
before I felt that "Red Head"--as I involuntarily called him--and I
were to be friends. I do not doubt that this feeling was strengthened
by the fact that I had been quick enough to see that a big, strong boy
was a friend to be desired at a public school; and, perhaps, in spite
of his dullness, "Red Head" had been able to discern that I could
be of service to him. At any rate there was a simultaneous mutual
attraction.

The teacher had strung the class promiscuously around the walls of the
room for a sort of trial heat for places of rank; when the line was
straightened out, I found that by skillful maneuvering I had placed
myself third and had piloted "Red Head" to the place next to me. The
teacher began by giving us to spell the words corresponding to our
order in the line. "Spell _first_." "Spell _second_." "Spell _third_."
I rattled off: "T-h-i-r-d, third," in a way which said: "Why don't you
give us something hard?" As the words went down the line, I could see
how lucky I had been to get a good place together with an easy word.
As young as I was, I felt impressed with the unfairness of the whole
proceeding when I saw the tailenders going down before _twelfth_ and
_twentieth_, and I felt sorry for those who had to spell such words in
order to hold a low position. "Spell _fourth_." "Red Head," with his
hands clutched tightly behind his back, began bravely: "F-o-r-t-h."
Like a flash a score of hands went up, and the teacher began saying:
"No snapping of fingers, no snapping of fingers." This was the first
word missed, and it seemed to me that some of the scholars were about
to lose their senses; some were dancing up and down on one foot with a
hand above their heads, the fingers working furiously, and joy beaming
all over their faces; others stood still, their hands raised not so
high, their fingers working less rapidly, and their faces expressing
not quite so much happiness; there were still others who did not
move or raise their hands, but stood with great wrinkles on their
foreheads, looking very thoughtful.

The whole thing was new to me, and I did not raise my hand, but slyly
whispered the letter "u" to "Red Head" several times. "Second chance,"
said the teacher. The hands went down and the class became quiet. "Red
Head," his face now red, after looking beseechingly at the ceiling,
then pitiably at the floor, began very haltingly: "F-u--" Immediately
an impulse to raise hands went through the class, but the teacher
checked it, and poor "Red Head," though he knew that each letter he
added only took him farther out of the way, went doggedly on and
finished: "--r-t-h." The hand-raising was now repeated with more
hubbub and excitement than at first. Those who before had not moved a
finger were now waving their hands above their heads. "Red Head" felt
that he was lost. He looked very big and foolish, and some of the
scholars began to snicker. His helpless condition went straight to my
heart, and gripped my sympathies. I felt that if he failed, it would
in some way be my failure. I raised my hand, and, under cover of the
excitement and the teacher's attempts to regain order, I hurriedly
shot up into his ear twice, quite distinctly: "F-o-u-r-t-h,
f-o-u-r-t-h." The teacher tapped on her desk and said: "Third and last
chance." The hands came down, the silence became oppressive. "Red
Head" began: "F--" Since that day I have waited anxiously for many a
turn of the wheel of fortune, but never under greater tension than
when I watched for the order in which those letters would fall from
"Red's" lips--"o-u-r-t-h." A sigh of relief and disappointment went up
from the class. Afterwards, through all our school days, "Red Head"
shared my wit and quickness and I benefited by his strength and dogged
faithfulness.

There were some black and brown boys and girls in the school, and
several of them were in my class. One of the boys strongly attracted
my attention from the first day I saw him. His face was as black as
night, but shone as though it were polished; he had sparkling eyes,
and when he opened his mouth, he displayed glistening white teeth. It
struck me at once as appropriate to call him "Shiny Face," or "Shiny
Eyes," or "Shiny Teeth," and I spoke of him often by one of these
names to the other boys. These terms were finally merged into "Shiny,"
and to that name he answered good-naturedly during the balance of his
public school days.

"Shiny" was considered without question to be the best speller, the
best reader, the best penman--in a word, the best scholar, in the
class. He was very quick to catch anything, but, nevertheless, studied
hard; thus he possessed two powers very rarely combined in one boy. I
saw him year after year, on up into the high school, win the majority
of the prizes for punctuality, deportment, essay writing, and
declamation. Yet it did not take me long to discover that, in spite of
his standing as a scholar, he was in some way looked down upon.

The other black boys and girls were still more looked down upon. Some
of the boys often spoke of them as "niggers." Sometimes on the way
home from school a crowd would walk behind them repeating:

  "_Nigger, nigger, never die,
  Black face and shiny eye_."

On one such afternoon one of the black boys turned suddenly on his
tormentors and hurled a slate; it struck one of the white boys in the
mouth, cutting a slight gash in his lip. At sight of the blood the boy
who had thrown the slate ran, and his companions quickly followed.
We ran after them pelting them with stones until they separated in
several directions. I was very much wrought up over the affair, and
went home and told my mother how one of the "niggers" had struck a boy
with a slate. I shall never forget how she turned on me. "Don't you
ever use that word again," she said, "and don't you ever bother the
colored children at school. You ought to be ashamed of yourself." I
did hang my head in shame, not because she had convinced me that I had
done wrong, but because I was hurt by the first sharp word she had
ever given me.

My school days ran along very pleasantly. I stood well in my studies,
not always so well with regard to my behavior. I was never guilty
of any serious misconduct, but my love of fun sometimes got me into
trouble. I remember, however, that my sense of humor was so sly that
most of the trouble usually fell on the head of the other fellow. My
ability to play on the piano at school exercises was looked upon as
little short of marvelous in a boy of my age. I was not chummy with
many of my mates, but, on the whole, was about as popular as it is
good for a boy to be.

One day near the end of my second term at school the principal came
into our room and, after talking to the teacher, for some reason said:
"I wish all of the white scholars to stand for a moment." I rose with
the others. The teacher looked at me and, calling my name, said: "You
sit down for the present, and rise with the others." I did not quite
understand her, and questioned: "Ma'm?" She repeated, with a softer
tone in her voice: "You sit down now, and rise with the others." I sat
down dazed. I saw and heard nothing. When the others were asked to
rise, I did not know it. When school was dismissed, I went out in a
kind of stupor. A few of the white boys jeered me, saying: "Oh, you're
a nigger too." I heard some black children say: "We knew he was
colored." "Shiny" said to them: "Come along, don't tease him," and
thereby won my undying gratitude. I hurried on as fast as I could, and
had gone some distance before I perceived that "Red Head" was walking
by my side. After a while he said to me: "Le' me carry your books."
I gave him my strap without being able to answer. When we got to my
gate, he said as he handed me my books: "Say, you know my big red
agate? I can't shoot with it any more. I'm going to bring it to school
for you tomorrow." I took my books and ran into the house. As I passed
through the hallway, I saw that my mother was busy with one of her
customers; I rushed up into my own little room, shut the door, and
went quickly to where my looking-glass hung on the wall. For an
instant I was afraid to look, but when I did, I looked long and
earnestly. I had often heard people say to my mother: "What a pretty
boy you have!" I was accustomed to hear remarks about my beauty; but
now, for the first time, I became conscious of it and recognized it.
I noticed the ivory whiteness of my skin, the beauty of my mouth, the
size and liquid darkness of my eyes, and how the long, black lashes
that fringed and shaded them produced an effect that was strangely
fascinating even to me. I noticed the softness and glossiness of my
dark hair that fell in waves over my temples, making my forehead
appear whiter than it really was. How long I stood there gazing at
my image I do not know. When I came out and reached the head of the
stairs, I heard the lady who had been with my mother going out. I ran
downstairs and rushed to where my mother was sitting, with a piece
of work in her hands. I buried my head in her lap and blurted out:
"Mother, mother, tell me, am I a nigger?" I could not see her face,
but I knew the piece of work dropped to the floor and I felt her hands
on my head. I looked up into her face and repeated: "Tell me, mother,
am I a nigger?" There were tears in her eyes and I could see that she
was suffering for me. And then it was that I looked at her critically
for the first time. I had thought of her in a childish way only as the
most beautiful woman in the world; now I looked at her searching for
defects. I could see that her skin was almost brown, that her hair
was not so soft as mine, and that she did differ in some way from the
other ladies who came to the house; yet, even so, I could see that she
was very beautiful, more beautiful than any of them. She must have
felt that I was examining her, for she hid her face in my hair and
said with difficulty: "No, my darling, you are not a nigger." She went
on: "You are as good as anybody; if anyone calls you a nigger, don't
notice them." But the more she talked, the less was I reassured, and I
stopped her by asking: "Well, mother, am I white? Are you white?" She
answered tremblingly: "No, I am not white, but you--your father is one
of the greatest men in the country--the best blood of the South is in
you--" This suddenly opened up in my heart a fresh chasm of misgiving
and fear, and I almost fiercely demanded: "Who is my father? Where is
he?" She stroked my hair and said: "I'll tell you about him some day."
I sobbed: "I want to know now." She answered: "No, not now."

Perhaps it had to be done, but I have never forgiven the woman who
did it so cruelly. It may be that she never knew that she gave me a
sword-thrust that day in school which was years in healing.

Since I have grown older I have often gone back and tried to analyze
the change that came into my life after that fateful day in school.
There did come a radical change, and, young as I was, I felt fully
conscious of it, though I did not fully comprehend it. Like my first
spanking, it is one of the few incidents in my life that I can
remember clearly. In the life of everyone there is a limited number of
unhappy experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped
there with a die; and in long years after, they can be called up
in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived
through anew; these are the tragedies of life. We may grow to include
some of them among the trivial incidents of childhood--a broken toy,
a promise made to us which was not kept, a harsh, heart-piercing
word--but these, too, as well as the bitter experiences and
disappointments of mature years, are the tragedies of life.

And so I have often lived through that hour, that day, that week, in
which was wrought the miracle of my transition from one world into
another; for I did indeed pass into another world. From that time I
looked out through other eyes, my thoughts were colored, my words
dictated, my actions limited by one dominating, all-pervading idea
which constantly increased in force and weight until I finally
realized in it a great, tangible fact.

And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates
upon each and every colored man in the United States. He is forced to
take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen,
or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a _colored_
man. It is wonderful to me that the race has progressed so broadly as
it has, since most of its thought and all of its activity must run
through the narrow neck of this one funnel.

And it is this, too, which makes the colored people of this country,
in reality, a mystery to the whites. It is a difficult thing for
a white man to learn what a colored man really thinks; because,
generally, with the latter an additional and different light must
be brought to bear on what he thinks; and his thoughts are often
influenced by considerations so delicate and subtle that it would be
impossible for him to confess or explain them to one of the opposite
race. This gives to every colored man, in proportion to his
intellectuality, a sort of dual personality; there is one phase of him
which is disclosed only in the freemasonry of his own race. I have
often watched with interest and sometimes with amazement even ignorant
colored men under cover of broad grins and minstrel antics maintain
this dualism in the presence of white men.

I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know
and understand the white people better than the white people know and
understand them.

I now think that this change which came into my life was at first more
subjective than objective. I do not think my friends at school changed
so much toward me as I did toward them. I grew reserved, I might say
suspicious. I grew constantly more and more afraid of laying myself
open to some injury to my feelings or my pride. I frequently saw or
fancied some slight where, I am sure, none was intended. On the other
hand, my friends and teachers were, if anything different, more
considerate of me; but I can remember that it was against this very
attitude in particular that my sensitiveness revolted. "Red" was the
only one who did not so wound me; up to this day I recall with a
swelling heart his clumsy efforts to make me understand that nothing
could change his love for me.

I am sure that at this time the majority of my white schoolmates
did not understand or appreciate any differences between me and
themselves; but there were a few who had evidently received
instructions at home on the matter, and more than once they displayed
their knowledge in word and action. As the years passed, I noticed
that the most innocent and ignorant among the others grew in wisdom.

I myself would not have so clearly understood this difference had it
not been for the presence of the other colored children at school; I
had learned what their status was, and now I learned that theirs was
mine. I had had no particular like or dislike for these black and
brown boys and girls; in fact, with the exception of "Shiny," they had
occupied very little of my thought; but I do know that when the blow
fell, I had a very strong aversion to being classed with them. So I
became something of a solitary. "Red" and I remained inseparable, and
there was between "Shiny" and me a sort of sympathetic bond, but my
intercourse with the others was never entirely free from a feeling of
constraint. I must add, however, that this feeling was confined almost
entirely to my intercourse with boys and girls of about my own age; I
did not experience it with my seniors. And when I grew to manhood, I
found myself freer with elderly white people than with those near my
own age.

I was now about eleven years old, but these emotions and impressions
which I have just described could not have been stronger or more
distinct at an older age. There were two immediate results of my
forced loneliness: I began to find company in books, and greater
pleasure in music. I made the former discovery through a big,
gilt-bound, illustrated copy of the Bible, which used to lie in
splendid neglect on the center table in our little parlor. On top of
the Bible lay a photograph album. I had often looked at the pictures
in the album, and one day, after taking the larger book down and
opening it on the floor, I was overjoyed to find that it contained
what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of pictures. I looked at
these pictures many times; in fact, so often that I knew the story
of each one without having to read the subject, and then, somehow, I
picked up the thread of history on which are strung the trials and
tribulations of the Hebrew children; this I followed with feverish
interest and excitement. For a long time King David, with Samson a
close second, stood at the head of my list of heroes; he was not
displaced until I came to know Robert the Bruce. I read a good portion
of the Old Testament, all that part treating of wars and rumors of
wars, and then started in on the New. I became interested in the life
of Christ, but became impatient and disappointed when I found that,
notwithstanding the great power he possessed, he did not make use of
it when, in my judgment, he most needed to do so. And so my first
general impression of the Bible was what my later impression has been
of a number of modern books, that the authors put their best work in
the first part, and grew either exhausted or careless toward the end.

After reading the Bible, or those parts which held my attention,
I began to explore the glass-doored bookcase which I have already
mentioned. I found there _Pilgrim's Progress_, Peter Parley's _History
of the United States_, Grimm's _Household Stories, Tales of a
Grandfather_, a bound volume of an old English publication (I think it
was called _The Mirror_), a little volume called _Familiar Science_,
and somebody's _Natural Theology_, which last, of course, I could not
read, but which, nevertheless, I tackled, with the result of gaining a
permanent dislike for all kinds of theology. There were several other
books of no particular name or merit, such as agents sell to people
who know nothing of buying books. How my mother came by this little
library which, considering all things, was so well suited to me I
never sought to know. But she was far from being an ignorant woman and
had herself, very likely, read the majority of these books, though
I do not remember ever seeing her with a book in her hand, with the
exception of the Episcopal Prayer book. At any rate she encouraged in
me the habit of reading, and when I had about exhausted those books in
the little library which interested me, she began to buy books for me.
She also regularly gave me money to buy a weekly paper which was then
very popular for boys.

At this time I went in for music with an earnestness worthy of maturer
years; a change of teachers was largely responsible for this. I began
now to take lessons of the organist of the church which I attended
with my mother; he was a good teacher and quite a thorough musician.
He was so skillful in his instruction and filled me with such
enthusiasm that my progress--these are his words--was marvelous. I
remember that when I was barely twelve years old I appeared on a
program with a number of adults at an entertainment given for some
charitable purpose, and carried off the honors. I did more, I brought
upon myself through the local newspapers the handicapping title of
"infant prodigy."

I can believe that I did astonish my audience, for I never played
the piano like a child; that is, in the "one-two-three" style with
accelerated motion. Neither did I depend upon mere brilliancy of
technique, a trick by which children often surprise their listeners;
but I always tried to interpret a piece of music; I always played with
feeling. Very early I acquired that knack of using the pedals, which
makes the piano a sympathetic, singing instrument, quite a different
thing from the source of hard or blurred sounds it so generally is. I
think this was due not entirely to natural artistic temperament,
but largely to the fact that I did not begin to learn the piano by
counting out exercises, but by trying to reproduce the quaint songs
which my mother used to sing, with all their pathetic turns and
cadences.

Even at a tender age, in playing I helped to express what I felt
by some of the mannerisms which I afterwards observed in great
performers; I had not copied them. I have often heard people speak of
the mannerisms of musicians as affectations adopted for mere effect;
in some cases they may be so; but a true artist can no more play upon
the piano or violin without putting his whole body in accord with the
emotions he is striving to express than a swallow can fly without
being graceful. Often when playing I could not keep the tears which
formed in my eyes from rolling down my cheeks. Sometimes at the end
or even in the midst of a composition, as big a boy as I was, I would
jump from the piano, and throw myself sobbing into my mother's arms.
She, by her caresses and often her tears, only encouraged these fits
of sentimental hysteria. Of course, to counteract this tendency to
temperamental excesses I should have been out playing ball or in
swimming with other boys of my age; but my mother didn't know that.
There was only once when she was really firm with me, making me do
what she considered was best; I did not want to return to school after
the unpleasant episode which I have related, and she was inflexible.

I began my third term, and the days ran along as I have already
indicated. I had been promoted twice, and had managed each time to
pull "Red" along with me. I think the teachers came to consider me
the only hope of his ever getting through school, and I believe they
secretly conspired with me to bring about the desired end. At any
rate, I know it became easier in each succeeding examination for me
not only to assist "Red," but absolutely to do his work. It is
strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the
slightest compunction. I knew boys at school who were too honorable
to tell a fib even when one would have been just the right thing, but
could not resist the temptation to assist or receive assistance in an
examination. I have long considered it the highest proof of honesty in
a man to hand his street-car fare to the conductor who had overlooked
it.

One afternoon after school, during my third term, I rushed home in a
great hurry to get my dinner and go to my music teacher's. I was never
reluctant about going there, but on this particular afternoon I
was impetuous. The reason of this was I had been asked to play the
accompaniment for a young lady who was to play a violin solo at a
concert given by the young people of the church, and on this
afternoon we were to have our first rehearsal. At that time playing
accompaniments was the only thing in music I did not enjoy; later this
feeling grew into positive dislike. I have never been a really good
accompanist because my ideas of interpretation were always too
strongly individual. I constantly forced my _accelerandos_ and
_rubatos_ upon the soloist, often throwing the duet entirely out of
gear.

Perhaps the reader has already guessed why I was so willing and
anxious to play the accompaniment to this violin solo; if not--the
violinist was a girl of seventeen or eighteen whom I had first heard
play a short time before on a Sunday afternoon at a special service
of some kind, and who had moved me to a degree which now I can hardly
think of as possible. At present I do not think it was due to her
wonderful playing, though I judge she must have been a very fair
performer, but there was just the proper setting to produce the effect
upon a boy such as I was; the half-dim church, the air of devotion on
the part of the listeners, the heaving tremor of the organ under
the clear wail of the violin, and she, her eyes almost closing, the
escaping strands of her dark hair wildly framing her pale face, and
her slender body swaying to the tones she called forth, all combined
to fire my imagination and my heart with a passion, though boyish, yet
strong and, somehow, lasting. I have tried to describe the scene; if I
have succeeded, it is only half success, for words can only partially
express what I wish to convey. Always in recalling that Sunday
afternoon I am sub-conscious of a faint but distinct fragrance which,
like some old memory-awakening perfume, rises and suffuses my whole
imagination, inducing a state of reverie so airy as just to evade the
powers of expression.

She was my first love, and I loved her as only a boy loves. I dreamed
of her, I built air castles for her, she was the incarnation of each
beautiful heroine I knew; when I played the piano, it was to her, not
even music furnished an adequate outlet for my passion; I bought a new
note-book and, to sing her praises, made my first and last attempts
at poetry. I remember one day at school, after we had given in our
notebooks to have some exercises corrected, the teacher called me to
her desk and said: "I couldn't correct your exercises because I found
nothing in your book but a rhapsody on somebody's brown eyes." I had
passed in the wrong note-book. I don't think I have felt greater
embarrassment in my whole life than I did at that moment. I was
ashamed not only that my teacher should see this nakedness of my
heart, but that she should find out that I had any knowledge of such
affairs. It did not then occur to me to be ashamed of the kind of
poetry I had written.

Of course, the reader must know that all of this adoration was in
secret; next to my great love for this young lady was the dread that
in some way she would find it out. I did not know what some men never
find out, that the woman who cannot discern when she is loved has
never lived. It makes me laugh to think how successful I was in
concealing it all; within a short time after our duet all of
the friends of my dear one were referring to me as her "little
sweetheart," or her "little beau," and she laughingly encouraged it.
This did not entirely satisfy me; I wanted to be taken seriously. I
had definitely made up my mind that I should never love another woman,
and that if she deceived me I should do something desperate--the great
difficulty was to think of something sufficiently desperate--and the
heartless jade, how she led me on!

So I hurried home that afternoon, humming snatches of the violin part
of the duet, my heart beating with pleasurable excitement over the
fact that I was going to be near her, to have her attention placed
directly upon me; that I was going to be of service to her, and in a
way in which I could show myself to advantage--this last consideration
has much to do with cheerful service----. The anticipation produced in
me a sensation somewhat between bliss and fear. I rushed through the
gate, took the three steps to the house at one bound, threw open the
door, and was about to hang my cap on its accustomed peg of the hall
rack when I noticed that that particular peg was occupied by a black
derby hat. I stopped suddenly and gazed at this hat as though I had
never seen an object of its description. I was still looking at it in
open-eyed wonder when my mother, coming out of the parlor into the
hallway, called me and said there was someone inside who wanted to see
me. Feeling that I was being made a party to some kind of mystery,
I went in with her, and there I saw a man standing leaning with one
elbow on the mantel, his back partly turned toward the door. As I
entered, he turned and I saw a tall, handsome, well-dressed gentleman
of perhaps thirty-five; he advanced a step toward me with a smile on
his face. I stopped and looked at him with the same feelings with
which I had looked at the derby hat, except that they were greatly
magnified. I looked at him from head to foot, but he was an absolute
blank to me until my eyes rested on his slender, elegant polished
shoes; then it seemed that indistinct and partly obliterated films
of memory began, at first slowly, then rapidly, to unroll, forming a
vague panorama of my childhood days in Georgia.

My mother broke the spell by calling me by name and saying: "This is
your father."

"Father, father," that was the word which had been to me a source of
doubt and perplexity ever since the interview with my mother on the
subject. How often I had wondered about my father, who he was, what
he was like, whether alive or dead, and, above all, why she would not
tell me about him. More than once I had been on the point of recalling
to her the promise she had made me, but I instinctively felt that she
was happier for not telling me and that I was happier for not being
told; yet I had not the slightest idea what the real truth was.
And here he stood before me, just the kind of looking father I had
wishfully pictured him to be; but I made no advance toward him; I
stood there feeling embarrassed and foolish, not knowing what to say
or do. I am not sure but that he felt pretty much the same. My mother
stood at my side with one hand on my shoulder, almost pushing
me forward, but I did not move. I can well remember the look of
disappointment, even pain, on her face; and I can now understand that
she could expect nothing else but that at the name "father" I should
throw myself into his arms. But I could not rise to this dramatic,
or, better, melodramatic, climax. Somehow I could not arouse any
considerable feeling of need for a father. He broke the awkward
tableau by saying: "Well, boy, aren't you glad to see me?" He
evidently meant the words kindly enough, but I don't know what he
could have said that would have had a worse effect; however, my good
breeding came to my rescue, and I answered: "Yes, sir," and went to
him and offered him my hand. He took my hand into one of his, and,
with the other, stroked my head, saying that I had grown into a fine
youngster. He asked me how old I was; which, of course, he must have
done merely to say something more, or perhaps he did so as a test of
my intelligence. I replied: "Twelve, sir." He then made the trite
observation about the flight of time, and we lapsed into another
awkward pause.

My mother was all in smiles; I believe that was one of the happiest
moments of her life. Either to put me more at ease or to show me off,
she asked me to play something for my father. There is only one
thing in the world that can make music, at all times and under all
circumstances, up to its general standard; that is a hand-organ, or
one of its variations. I went to the piano and played something in
a listless, half-hearted way. I simply was not in the mood. I was
wondering, while playing, when my mother would dismiss me and let me
go; but my father was so enthusiastic in his praise that he touched my
vanity--which was great--and more than that; he displayed that sincere
appreciation which always arouses an artist to his best effort, and,
too, in an unexplainable manner, makes him feel like shedding tears.
I showed my gratitude by playing for him a Chopin waltz with all the
feeling that was in me. When I had finished, my mother's eyes were
glistening with tears; my father stepped across the room, seized me in
his arms, and squeezed me to his breast. I am certain that for that
moment he was proud to be my father. He sat and held me standing
between his knees while he talked to my mother. I, in the mean
time, examined him with more curiosity, perhaps, than politeness. I
interrupted the conversation by asking: "Mother, is he going to stay
with us now?" I found it impossible to frame the word "father"; it
was too new to me; so I asked the question through my mother. Without
waiting for her to speak, my father answered: "I've got to go back to
New York this afternoon, but I'm coming to see you again." I turned
abruptly and went over to my mother, and almost in a whisper reminded
her that I had an appointment which I should not miss; to my pleasant
surprise she said that she would give me something to eat at once so
that I might go. She went out of the room and I began to gather from
off the piano the music I needed. When I had finished, my father, who
had been watching me, asked: "Are you going?" I replied: "Yes, sir,
I've got to go to practice for a concert." He spoke some words of
advice to me about being a good boy and taking care of my mother when
I grew up, and added that he was going to send me something nice from
New York. My mother called, and I said good-bye to him and went out. I
saw him only once after that.

I quickly swallowed down what my mother had put on the table for me,
seized my cap and music, and hurried off to my teacher's house. On the
way I could think of nothing but this new father, where he came from,
where he had been, why he was here, and why he would not stay. In my
mind I ran over the whole list of fathers I had become acquainted with
in my reading, but I could not classify him. The thought did not cross
my mind that he was different from me, and even if it had, the mystery
would not thereby have been explained; for, notwithstanding my changed
relations with most of my schoolmates, I had only a faint knowledge of
prejudice and no idea at all how it ramified and affected our entire
social organism. I felt, however, that there was something about the
whole affair which had to be hid.

When I arrived, I found that she of the brown eyes had been rehearsing
with my teacher and was on the point of leaving. My teacher, with some
expressions of surprise, asked why I was late, and I stammered out the
first deliberate lie of which I have any recollection. I told him that
when I reached home from school, I found my mother quite sick, and
that I had stayed with her awhile before coming. Then unnecessarily
and gratuitously--to give my words force of conviction, I suppose--I
added: "I don't think she'll be with us very long." In speaking these
words I must have been comical; for I noticed that my teacher, instead
of showing signs of anxiety or sorrow, half hid a smile. But how
little did I know that in that lie I was speaking a prophecy!

She of the brown eyes unpacked her violin, and we went through the
duet several times. I was soon lost to all other thoughts in
the delights of music and love. I saw delights of love without
reservation; for at no time of life is love so pure, so delicious, so
poetic, so romantic, as it is in boyhood. A great deal has been said
about the heart of a girl when she' stands "where the brook and river
meet," but what she feels is negative; more interesting is the heart
of a boy when just at the budding dawn of manhood he stands looking
wide-eyed into the long vistas opening before him; when he first
becomes conscious of the awakening and quickening of strange desires
and unknown powers; when what he sees and feels is still shadowy and
mystical enough to be intangible, and, so, more beautiful; when his
imagination is unsullied, and his faith new and whole--then it is that
love wears a halo. The man who has not loved before he was fourteen
has missed a foretaste of Elysium.

When I reached home, it was quite dark and I found my mother without
a light, sitting rocking in a chair, as she so often used to do in my
childhood days, looking into the fire and singing softly to herself. I
nestled close to her, and, with her arms round me, she haltingly told
me who my father was--a great man, a fine gentleman--he loved me and
loved her very much; he was going to make a great man of me: All she
said was so limited by reserve and so colored by her feelings that it
was but half truth; and so I did not yet fully understand.

The first-person narrator, whose name the reader does not know , begins by explaining that he Is going to divulge his greatest secret, a painful and fascinating secret that he has kept for years. He describes his early childhood growing up in a small town in Georgia right after the Civil War. His earliest memories are punctuated by his father's infrequent visits. He remembers that his father once gave him a small coin with a hole bored through it that he still wears around his neck. One day, the narrator's mother takes him to Connecticut, where she proceeds to raise him as a "perfect little aristocrat". She earns money by sewing. Early on, the narrator takes up the piano, imitating the songs his mother plays. He finds much joy in music, soon surpassing his mother and impressing his first teacher with his natural gift. He also embraces his school books and loves learning as much as he loves playing the piano. After a few pleasant years at a private school, the narrator's mother enrolls him in a public school. There, he makes a strong friend in "Red Head", or as he later calls him, "Red", an older and larger boy who has been held back from advancing in grades. Their friendship is cemented when the narrator saves Red from embarrassing himself during a spelling competition. The narrator feels that he "benefit" from Red's "strength and faithfulness" and Red, meanwhile, sees the mutual advantage of the narrator's "wit and quickness". The narrator mentions that he there are a few "colored" boys and girls in his school and class; one of them, nicknamed "Shiny" for his polished black skin and sparkling eyes, is the top pupil in the school. However, the white students taunt the African American students by calling them "nigger". One day, the narrator uses the word in his home and he is stunned at his mother's stinging rebuke. One day the principal of the school comes into the narrator's classroom and instructs the white students to stand. The narrator stands along with the rest of his white classmates, but is surprised when the principal tells him to sit down. The narrator is confused and shocked, overhearing other students saying they always knew he was "colored". When he is back at home, he studies his features in the mirror, understanding why his mother's friends always call him a "pretty" boy. Tormented, he implores his mother to tell him if he is a "nigger". Her eyes well with tears, but she tells him that he is not a "nigger". The narrator keeps pressing his mother and asks her if she is white and if he is white. She finally says no, but quickly adds that his father is a great man. The narrator wants to know more about his father and meet him but his mother says it is not the right time. The narrator later muses about the reveal of this great secret, "perhaps it had to be done, but I have never forgiven the woman who did it so cruelly". After that day, the narrator becomes keenly aware of the way people at school perceive him. He mentions that even decades later, he has never forgotten how it felt to experience the knowledge of his blackness. He believes he has passed into another world where the fact of his being "colored" permeates every thought and every experience of his life in the United States. His view is no longer that of "a...citizen, or a man, not even a human being" but of a "colored man". The narrator concludes that this division is what makes the "colored" people more mysterious to white Americans, while "colored" people understand whites, their oppressors, in a much deeper way. The narrator explains how this new awareness of his race changes his behavior towards other people, and not the other way around. He becomes "reserved...suspicious" and considers faithful Red as his only friend. He does not want to be grouped with the other students of color, even though he feels a sympathetic bond with Shiny. The narrator instead turns inward to his books and music, reading the Bible rigorously but not being impressed overall with books of theology. He takes lessons with the organist of the church he attends with his mother, and, at twelve, begins his lifelong career of impressing older listeners with his musical skill. He is praised for his ability to playing a piece of music with feeling and verve, and not in a rote or artificial manner. His affectations are pure and his ear is mature. The narrator continues through school, helping Red along with his studies so that they can remain together. During his third term, he falls in love with a young violinist, and even though he hates playing as an accompanist, he agrees to work with her. This brown-eyed girl is his first love "and love her as only a boy loves". One day, the narrator arrives home, in a hurry to get his music and get to his duet practice with the brown-eyed girl, when he realizes that something is different. An elegant, well-dressed visitor is there, smiling at the young narrator and leaning on the mantel. His mother tells her bewildered son that the elegant man is his father. The narrator is stunned, and although this man is who he pictured his father to be, he is nervous and tongue-tied. He feels like he cannot rise to the occasion and act as he should. After a bit of polite conversation, the narrator's mother, who is blissfully happy and full of smiles, asks her son to play something for his father. He plays Chopin passionately for his rapturous parents, but admits to the reader that his efforts are half-hearted. He asks if his father is staying, but the man replies that he is going to New York and will see him again soon. The narrator reveals that he only met his father once more after that. On his way to the rehearsal, the narrator's young mind races over the encounter. As an older man, the narrator understands that at the time his younger self could not conceive of his white father as truly different from him because "he had only a faint knowledge of prejudice and had no idea at all how it ramified and affected our entire social organism." After the rehearsal, which is nearly cancelled because the brown-eyed girl is annoyed at his tardiness, he returns home to his darkened house and finds his mother singing softly to herself. She tells the narrator about his father: "a great man, a fine gentleman" who will make a great man out of him as well. Looking back years later, the narrator wonders if his mother was aware that she was speaking in half-truths. As this novel is structured as an autobiography, the narrator begins by describing his childhood, setting up the context that he grows up in and that develops his identity. Identity is one of the central themes of the text and will be discussed in later analyses, but it is clear that the narrator's childhood experiences are crucial to his later development. He grows up not knowing that he is "colored" and comes by this knowledge in a humiliating way. He does not know his father and spends his adult life consequently grappling with the notion of manhood and how it impacts his racial identity. Johnson also establishes that the narrator is brilliant and a gifted musician, which will later facilitate his forays into both sides of the racial divide as he attempts to reconcile the two. These early chapters also introduce one of the few characters with a name -Shiny- and present him as a foil for the narrator as a man who embodies a different, more authentic form of blackness. The novel's reissue during the the heyday of the Harlem Renaissance is not surprising given James Weldon Johnson's stature in the 1920s. He had made his name in music, arts and letters, diplomacy, and became a political leader as head of the NAACP. Even though The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was first published in 1912, it contains themes of self-actualization, "passing", the cultural contributions of African-Americans, and common consciousness, all of which were ubiquitous features of Harlem Renaissance fiction. Like Johnson's narrator, Harlem Renaissance writers viewed their language as performative speech and strove to prove that they were worthy of equal stature in American society. In this novel, Johnson describes stereotypes and early characterizations of African Americans that Harlem Renaissance writers would later categorize within the "Old Negro" archetype. These literary tropes were largely negative and could be read as semiotic signs, which imparted meaning to readers. The "Old Negro" characters included: the tom, a docile servant named after Uncle Tom; the coon, a backward country type; the buck, a sexualized and savage man; the tragic mulatta, a mixed-race and sexually attractive female character; and the mammy, a large, loyal, female domestic servant. Other less common "Old Negro" characters included the concubine and the conjure woman. Harlem Renaissance writers directly counteracted these popular images and endeavored to replace them with positive and nuanced depictions of African Americans. This was not only to change white readers' opinion about African Americans but also to counteract the deleterious affect such representations had on African Americans themselves, who were wont to internalize the stereotypes. In contrast, the "New Negro", as touted by Renaissance writers, was characterized by self-respect, self-dependence, and racial pride. The Harlem Renaissance writers, a group which includes Johnson even though he wrote Autobiography a decade earlier, grappled with certain common questions. Since their artistic abilities possessed performative potential, they wondered what level of responsibility they must take for portraying the positive aspects of African American characters. Should they defend and glorify their characters or present an honest portrayal of their people, even if it was negative and sometimes verged into the territory of stereotypes? Should they appeal to an African American audience, even though the majority of book-readers were white? W.E.B. Du Bois famously noted that "all art is propaganda and ever must be", and Johnson was very much aware of this. In The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the relationship between Johnson and the character of the narrator is unclear. Literary critics have long debated which ideas and sentiments are actually the author's and which are the character's, trying to negotiate the degree to which Johnson himself ever felt the narrator's brand of self-hatred, racism, and naivete. The title of the novel further complicates the matter, since it is not really an autobiography, but is written as if it were, and was originally published anonymously. Meanwhile, the character of the narrator makes a point of keeping his racial identity a secret and refusing to divulge certain identifiable details about his life. In terms of structure and style, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is a veritable pastiche. It is structured as an autobiography but contains elements of the picaresque, psychological realism, social protest, parody, and the slave narrative. The novel's relationship to slave narratives, hitherto the primary literary mode utilized by African American writers, is noteworthy. Slave narratives, like those written by Frederick Douglass, Olaudah Equiano, and Harriet Jacobs, were all factual, written in the first person, and depicted the struggles of their protagonists using autobiographical terms. These narratives revealed their authors' dignity and resilience in the face of abject despair at the hands of their white masters in an overwhelmingly racist society. Slave narratives usually began with a recounting of the author's time in slavery followed by a description of his or her escape to freedom. Through this journey, each of the former slaves describes a transition to selfhood and enlightenment. Johnson's novel is similar in that it is told by a first-person narrator who is on a journey of realization, although it is fictional. The critic Donald C. Goellnicht pays particular attention to the scene where the narrator's father says goodbye to him and gives him the coin necklace. He reads this scene as a parallel to "the auctioning off of the slave-owner's bastard children that is a common trope in the slave narratives. Having been auctioned off as a child, the narrator still maintains a misplaced desire for the coin that establishes his value -or, rather, his lack of value -as a human being." The coin represents the shackles of slavery and the narrator's enslavement to "the system of private property ownership that was the basis of chattel slavery". Some critics, however, describe The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man as a reverse slave narrative, in which the narrator actually cancels his selfhood. He is, critic Zoe Trodd writes, an "unreliable narrator, with a void past and numerous shifting identities" who "narrates himself out of existence." Goellnicht offers arguments for this perspective as well, noting that in Johnson's novel, the reader " a narrative in which the construction of a non-self...involv perverse blindness, voluntary invisibility, and self-enslavement".