The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored ManJohnson, James Weldon
General
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Johnson, James Weldon
African American men -- Fiction; Racially mixed people -- Fiction
A great deal of money was spent here, so many of the patrons were men
who earned large sums. I remember one night a dapper little brown-skin
fellow was pointed out to me and I was told that he was the most
popular jockey of the day, and that he earned $12,000 a year. This
latter statement I couldn't doubt, for with my own eyes I saw him
spending at about thirty times that rate. For his friends and those
who were introduced to him he bought nothing but wine--in sporting
circles, "wine" means champagne--and paid for it at five dollars
a quart. He sent a quart to every table in the place with his
compliments; and on the table at which he and his party were seated
there were more than a dozen bottles. It was the custom at the "Club"
for the waiter not to remove the bottles when champagne was being
drunk until the party had finished. There were reasons for this;
it advertised the brand of wine, it advertised that the party was
drinking wine, and advertised how much they had bought. This jockey
had won a great race that day, and he was rewarding his admirers for
the homage they paid him, all of which he accepted with a fine air of
condescension.
Besides the people I have just been describing, there was at the place
almost every night one or two parties of white people, men and women,
who were out sight-seeing, or slumming. They generally came in cabs;
some of them would stay only for a few minutes, while others sometimes
stayed until morning. 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 imitations first
hand from the Negro entertainers they saw there.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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