A review by sawdustcharlie
The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James Weldon Johnson, Arna Bontemps

5.0

I believe every child in the South should read this book as part of Southern history. We learned about the Civil War in school, and about Reconstruction. Depending upon the teacher you got, the middle of the nineteenth century was either required material, a glorious period in Southern history, or a terrible era of U.S. history. In either way, the symbolism of the period always seemed to overshadow its reality. What Johnson does so well is to make his main character real, while still presenting the debates (the color question, as he often puts it) of the time. Johnson's observations about Southerners, white and black, and the South are some of the most insightful observations I have ever read about my region. Several of these passages struck me, but the most presient observations occurred as the narrator rode a train to Georgia, and listened to a debate about race conducted by several men in the smoking car (it is in this passage that the narrator remarked that Southerners simply have to talk, and strangers put in any confined space will not be strangers for long). It is in this passage that Johnson's narrator admires Southerns "for the manner in which he defends not only his virtues, but his vices." I re-read that sentence over and over--how very well it described Southern history! I highly recommend this book to everyone, but I absolutely recommend it to anyone that has lived in the South and struggled to define that elusive entity that is the American South.