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
The recollection of my stay in Washington is a pleasure to me now.
In company with the doctor I visited Howard University, the public
schools, the excellent colored hospital, with which he was in some
way connected, if I remember correctly, and many comfortable and even
elegant homes. It was with some reluctance that I continued my journey
south. The doctor was very kind in giving me letters to people in
Richmond and Nashville when I told him that I intended to stop in
both of these cities. In Richmond a man who was then editing a very
creditable colored newspaper gave me a great deal of his time and made
my stay there of three or four days very pleasant. In Nashville
I spent a whole day at Fisk University, the home of the "Jubilee
Singers," and was more than repaid for my time. Among my letters of
introduction was one to a very prosperous physician. He drove me about
the city and introduced me to a number of people. From Nashville I
went to Atlanta, where I stayed long enough to gratify an old desire
to see Atlanta University again. I then continued my journey to Macon.
During the trip from Nashville to Atlanta I went into the
smoking-compartment of the car to smoke a cigar. I was traveling in a
Pullman, not because of an abundance of funds, but because through my
experience with my millionaire a certain amount of comfort and luxury
had become a necessity to me whenever it was obtainable. When I
entered the car, I found only a couple of men there; but in a
half-hour there were half a dozen or more. From the general
conversation I learned that a fat Jewish-looking man was a cigar
manufacturer, and was experimenting in growing Havana tobacco in
Florida; that a slender bespectacled young man was from Ohio and
a professor in some State institution in Alabama; that a
white-mustached, well-dressed man was an old Union soldier who had
fought through the Civil War; and that a tall, raw-boned, red-faced
man, who seemed bent on leaving nobody in ignorance of the fact that
he was from Texas, was a cotton planter.
In the North men may ride together for hours in a "smoker" and unless
they are acquainted with each other never exchange a word; in the
South men thrown together in such manner are friends in fifteen
minutes. There is always present a warm-hearted cordiality which will
melt down the most frigid reserve. It may be because Southerners are
very much like Frenchmen in that they must talk; and not only must
they talk, but they must express their opinions.
The talk in the car was for a while miscellaneous--on the weather,
crops, business prospects; the old Union soldier had invested capital
in Atlanta, and he predicted that that city would soon be one of the
greatest in the country. Finally the conversation drifted to politics;
then, as a natural sequence, turned upon the Negro question.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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