The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

2013 Reprint of 1912 Edition. Full facsimile of the original text not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. 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. Johnsons text is an example of a roman à clef.