The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man

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Powerful and unflinching, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is a stark portrait of black experience in late nineteenth-century America and remains relevant to this day.

This edition is introduced by Dr. Sam Halliday.

James Weldon Johnson’s fictional narrator first learns about his black heritage from a schoolteacher, a discovery which sparks a lifelong search for his place in the world. After his beloved mother dies, he embarks on a journey across America and beyond, first finding refuge in Georgia’s all-black church community. There, his passion and skill for music flourishes and takes him from New York to Europe, playing ragtime for a rich white gentleman. Back in America’s South, he witnesses an event so terrifying that it drives him to turn his back on his own heritage.

Frederick Douglass was born into slavery in Maryland, 1818. He was separated from his mother as a baby and lived with his grandmother up to the age of eight, when he was sent to live as a house servant, a field hand, and then a ship caulker. He escaped to New York in 1938 and seven years later published Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an autobiography of his life as a slave, which became an instant bestseller. Douglass rose to fame as a powerful orator and spent the rest of his life campaigning for equality. He became a national leader of the abolitionist movement, a consultant to Abraham Lincoln in the civil rights movement and a passionate supporter of the women’s rights movement. He died in 1895.