The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Published anonymously in 1912, this novel is narrated by a light-skinned biracial man who moves through both Black and white America, gifted with music yet unsure where he belongs. He dreams of turning ragtime into serious art and honoring the culture he was born into, but after witnessing a lynching in the South he decides instead to pass permanently as white, trading his heritage for safety and comfort. James Weldon Johnson wrote it so convincingly that many early readers mistook it for a real memoir. Quiet, ironic, and unsettling, it examines the price of the color line and the meaning of racial identity in America. Free to download as a PDF and EPUB edition.