The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
Study Guide
(Note: this guide is also available on line at www.jlc.net/~rwright/pages/exmanguide, if you want to copy and paste it into a
WP document and have spaces for your answers.)
1. Describe the narrator’s childhood, schooling, and relationship with his parents.
His father was a white southerner, his mother African American. They of course did not marry, and the father moved the mother
and child north to CT. He saw his father only once after they moved and before he became an adult
His mother took in sewing and provided him with a good education.
2. How does the narrator differ from most other people of color?
He is much lighter-skinned and better educated.
3. Growing up, what experiences did the narrator have with racial issues?
At school, he at first didn’t know he wasn’t considered white. He saw how poorly children of color were treated by their peers, and
was dismayed to finally know that he was one. However, the smartest boy in his class was black. Once he finds out that he, too, is
black, he is “forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, nor even a human being, but
from the viewpoint of a colored man.”
4. Describe the narrator's impressions of other people of color whom he meets throughout the first eight chapters of the book, both
in the South and in New York City.
For the most part he sees them as embarrassing and inferior. There are the “desperate” class (the men who work in the lumber and
turpentine camps, the ex-convicts, the bar-room loafers), the class that works for whites ( servants, the washer-women, the waiters,
the cooks, the coachmen, etc.), and “the independent workmen and tradesmen, and of the well-to-do and educated colored people;
and, strange to say, for a directly opposite reason they are as far removed from the whites as the members of the first class I
mentioned. These people live in a little world of their own.” Among the latter are those in Jacksonville, FL, whom he describes as
of the best class of blacks.
5. Describe the three types of white Americans the narrator sees at “the Club.”
1. “Parties of white people, men and women, who were out sight-seeing, or slumming”
2. “There was also another set of white people who came frequently; it was made up of variety performers and others
who delineated darky characters; they came to get their imitatations first hand from the Negro entertainers they saw
there.”
3. White women in the company of colored men
6. How does the narrator end up in Europe?
A white millionaire hires him as a exclusive pianist and companion.
7. Describe the three most pivotal moments for the narrator in Europe (the first at Faust, the second in Paris with the young man
from Luxembourg, and the third in Berlin).
At “Faust,” he sees his father and a woman he assumes is his father’s daughter. He does nothing. The young man from Luxembourg
brings up the subject of American lynching of blacks. “He expected an authoritative denial of an ugly rumor, ‘Did they really burn
a man alive in the United States?’” The narrator doesn’t know what to say and feels ashamed to be an American. In Berlin, he hears
ragtime played really well for the first time, and it makes him decide to pursue a career related to this art form.
8. What is the narrator’s goal in coming back to the States, and what are some of the obstacles he will face according to his
millionaire friend?
He wants to study American Negro music forms: “I made up my mind to go back into the very heart of the South, to live among
the people, and drink in my inspiration first-hand. I gloated over the immense amount of material I had to work with, not only
modern ragtime, but also the old slave songs,—material which no one had yet touched.”
The millionaire cannot imagine that the narrator will be at all happy living the life of an African American, especially in the South.
He has essentially been living the life of a first-class white man and is used to this now. As a Negro, he will never be able to get full
recognition of his work. He counsels him not to throw his “life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle of
the black people of the United States.”
9. The millionaire tells the narrator:
My philosophy of life is this: make yourself as happy as possible, and try to make those happy whose lives come into
touch with yours; but to attempt to right the wrongs and ease the sufferings of the world in general, is a waste of effort.
You had just as well try to bale the Atlantic by pouring the water into the Pacific.
Discuss whether or not you agree with this philosophy, and why.
It is true that no one can do everything, and that we must choose our “causes” wisely. The ones we will be most motivated to work
on are the ones personally connected to us. However, we must see beyond ourselves and those whom we know personally,
especially when a whole group of people is being oppressed! If everyone thought like the narrator, there would never be organized
movements to create change.
10. What are some of the viewpoints on race that the narrator encounters on the way back to the states and after his arrival?
He encounters whites who don’t want blacks to sit near them, and people who claim not to be racists but who wouldn’t let/want
their daughters to marry black men. He also notices how there is prejudice based on skin color within the black community—the
lighter skin, the better.
He comes to the conclusion that, “the main difficulty of the race question does not lie so much in the actual condition of the
blacks as it does in the mental attitude of the whites; and a mental attitude, especially one not based on truth, can be changed more
easily than actual conditions.” He comments as well that portrayals of blacks in literature usually reinforce negative stereotypes.
11. The narrator encounters rural Southern African Americans for the first time upon his return to the States. What are his
impressions of them?
He finds their standard of living deplorable, though there are some exceptions.
12.What does the narrator say about Southern versus Northern views on African-Americans? (p. 80)
Southerners have much, much more intimate contact with individual blacks. To northern whites, blacks are seen in the abstract, as a
race. Southern whites live in close contact with blacks and are on close terms with certain individuals. “With these individual
members of the race they live on terms of the greatest intimacy; they entrust to them their children, their family treasures and their
family secrets; in trouble they often go to them for comfort and counsel; in sickness they often rely upon their care.”
13. What sometimes happens when the narrator arrives at a new small town? (p. 81)
People think he’s white. Then, he says, “when it was learned that I was stopping at the house of the colored preacher or school
teacher, to note the attitude of the whole town change.”
14. What does the narrator witness when he stays overnight with the young schoolteacher? How does he feel about this? Why?
What does he ultimately decide to do (or not do)?
He witnesses a lynching, and thinks, “a great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that
could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only
civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.”
15. In the end, how does the narrator end up living? Why is the book entitled “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”?
He ends up living as a white man, and marrying a white woman who does know the truth; she dies after they have 2 children. He
deals in real estate and becomes quite wealthy. He does not tell his children about his past because he does not want them to be
“branded” as inferior.
16. What is your final judgment of the narrator? For example, do you think he is dishonest, has a right to do what he’s doing, or
what?
Americans have always remade themselves, and since “white” is a part of his heritage, he has every right to claim it. But to deny his
mother (who sacrificed a great deal for him) seems disrespectful.