17. Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Now, whenever I think of James Weldon Johnson I will recall the benediction of Rev. Joseph Lowery at President Barack Obama's inauguration. Johnson is best known for his poem "Lift Every Voice and Sing", which when combined with the musical composition of his brother John (J. Roseamond) has come be revered as the Black National Anthem.

Well regarded as a fine poet of the Harlem Renaissance, James Weldon Johnson also penned a novel entitled The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man. Critics may or may not agree; I find Johnson's Autobiography to be the first complete, well-structured novel by an African American. I am struggling to find the phrasing that would adequately display my sentiments. In short, I think that Johnson wrote the best Black novel of the early writers. Published in 1912, I find it to be the greatest of the early novels before Nella Larson and Zora Neale Hurston began publishing in the late 1920s through 1930s.

While many scholars have wondered about the influence of Dostoevsky's The Underground on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I must wonder if he also read Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored man before he began his monumental text.

I enjoyed reading the novel for a second time, and I would encourage other to venture into James Weldon Johnson's prose as well.