The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson

Originally published in 1912, this novel was one of the first to present a frank picture of being black in America.

Masked in the tradition of the literary confession practiced by such writers as St. Augustine and Rousseau, this "Autobiography" purports to be a candid account of its narrator's private views and feelings as well as an acknowledgement of the central secret of his life: that though he lives as a white man, he is, by heritage and experience, an African-American. Written by the first black executive secretary of the NAACP,The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, in its depiction of turn-of-the-century New York, anticipates the social realism of the Harlem Renaissance writers. In its unprecedented analysis of the social causes of a black man's denial of the best within himself, it is perhaps James Weldon Johnson's greatest service to his race.

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in…