The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man quotes

I feel that I am led by the same impulse which forces the un-found-out criminal to take somebody into his confidence, although he knows that the act is likely, even almost certain, to lead to his undoing.

I know that I am playing with fire, and I feel the thrill which accompanies that most fascinating pastime; and, back of it all, I think I find a sort of savage and diabolical desire to gather up all the little tragedies of my life, and turn them into a practical joke on society.

And, too, I suffer a vague feeling of unsatisfaction, of regret, of almost remorse, from which I am seeking relief, and of which I shall speak in the last paragraph of this account.

“Who is my father? Where is he?” She stroked my hair and said: “I’ll tell you about him some day.” I sobbed: “I want to know now.” She answered: “No, not now.”

Perhaps it had to be done, but I have never forgiven the woman who did it so cruelly. It may be that she never knew that she gave me a sword-thrust that day in school which was years in healing.

And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence which operates upon each and every colored man in the United States.

He is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man.

It is wonderful to me that the race has progressed so broadly as it has, since most of its thought and all of its activity must run through the narrow neck of this one funnel.

I have often watched with interest and sometimes with amazement even ignorant colored men under cover of broad grins and minstrel antics maintain this dualism in the presence of white men.

I believe it to be a fact that the colored people of this country know and understand the white people better than the white people know and understand them.

I now think that this change which came into my life was at first more subjective than objective. I do not think my friends at school changed so much toward me as I did toward them. I grew reserved, I might say suspicious.

I knew boys at school who were too honorable to tell a fib even when one would have been just the right thing, but could not resist the temptation to assist or receive assistance in an examination.

I have long considered it the highest proof of honesty in a man to hand his streetcar fare to the conductor who had overlooked it.

One afternoon after school, during my third term, I rushed home in a great hurry to get my dinner and go to my music teacher’s. I was never reluctant about going there, but on this particular afternoon I was impetuous.

I became acutely conscious of the fact that I had not eaten for hours. Then nausea took possession of me, and at one time I had grave doubts about reaching my destination alive.

If I had the trip to make again, I should prefer to walk.

… came to me then I have realized the full import only within the past few years, since I have had a broader knowledge of men and history, and a fuller comprehension of the tremendous struggle which is going on between the races in the South.

It is a struggle; for though the black man fights passively, he nevertheless fights; and his passive resistance is more effective at present than active resistance could possibly be. He bears the fury of the storm as does the willow tree.

It is a struggle; for though the white man of the South may be too proud to admit it, he is, nevertheless, using in the contest his best energies; he is devoting to it the greater part of his thought and much of his endeavor.

the green islands on either side, in spite of their warlike mountings, looked calm and peaceful; the buildings of the town shone out in a reflected light which gave the city an air of enchantment; and, truly, it is an enchanted spot.

New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America.

She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments—constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas …

How well he read I do not know, but he greatly impressed me; and I can say that at least he had a voice which strangely stirred those who heard it.

Here was a man who made people laugh at the size of his mouth, while he carried in his heart a burning ambition to be a tragedian; and so after all he did play a part in a tragedy.

These notables of the ring, the turf, and the stage drew to the place crowds of admirers, both white and colored.

two were for going home at once and getting to bed. They gave as a reason that we were to get up early and look for jobs. I think the real reason was that they had each lost several dollars in the game.

I lived to learn that in the world of sport all men win alike, but lose differently; and so gamblers are rated, not by the way in which they win, but by the way in which they lose.

Some men lose with a careless smile, recognizing that losing is a part of the game; others curse their luck and rail at fortune; and others, still, lose sadly; after each such experience they are swept by a wave of reform;

One night he asked me in a tone of voice which indicated that he expected an authoritative denial of an ugly rumor: “Did they really burn a man alive in the United States?” I never knew what I stammered out to him as an answer.

I should have felt relieved if I could even have said to him: “Well, only one.”

When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make.

London will do whatever Paris does, provided exterior morals are not shocked. As a result, Paris has the appearance only of being the more immoral city. The difference may be summed up in this:

Paris practices its sins as lightly as it does its religion, while London practices both very seriously.

I should not neglect to mention what impressed me most forcibly during my stay in London. It was not St. Paul’s nor the British Museum nor Westminster Abbey.

Get up!” He seated himself at the piano, and, taking the theme of my ragtime, played it through first in straight chords; then varied and developed it through every known musical form. I sat amazed.

I had been turning classic music into ragtime, a comparatively easy task; and this man had taken ragtime and made it classic.

The thought came across me like a flash: It can be done, why can’t I do it? From that moment my mind was made up. I clearly saw the way of carrying out the ambition I had formed when a boy.

… more a sacrifice of self-respect that a black man should give to his children every advantage he can which complexion of the skin carries than that the new or vulgar rich should purchase for their children the advantages which ancestry, aristocracy, and social position carry.

I once heard a colored man sum it up in these words: “It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient.”

Washington shows the Negro not only at his best, but also at his worst. As I drove around with the doctor, he commented rather harshly on those of the latter class which we saw. He remarked: “You see those lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies;

But they ought not to represent the race. We are the race, and the race ought to be judged by us, not by them.

Every race and every nation should be judged by the best it has been able to produce, not by the worst.

”

We are a great race, the greatest in the world today, but we ought to remember that we are standing on a pile of past races, and enjoy our position with a little less show of arrogance.

We are simply having our turn at the game, and we were a long time getting to it. After all, racial supremacy is merely a matter of dates in history.

The man here who belongs to what is, all in all, the greatest race the world ever produced, is almost ashamed to own it.

In addition, he had the intuition of a born theatrical manager. Night after night this man held me fascinated.

He convinced me that, after all, eloquence consists more in the manner of saying than in what is said.

It is largely a matter of tone pictures.

In my opinion, it is more graphic and, for us, far more expressive than St. Paul’s “It is hard to kick against the pricks.” He struck the attitude of a pugilist and thundered out:

“Young man, yo’ arm’s too short to box wid God!”

As interesting as was John Brown to me, the other man, “Singing Johnson,” was more so.

Congregation— “Coming for to carry me home.” etc., etc., etc.

The solitary and plaintive voice of the leader is answered by a sound like the roll of the sea, producing a most curious effect.

In only a few of these songs do the leader and the congregation start off together. Such a song is the well-known “Steal Away to Jesus.”

In a few of these songs, however, the leading part is sung in unison by the whole congregation, down to the last line, which is harmonized. The effect of this is intensely thrilling. Such a hymn is “Go Down, Moses.”

It stirs the heart like a trumpet call.

“Singing Johnson” was an ideal leader, and his services were in great demand. He spent his time going about the country from one church to another. He received his support in much the same way as the preachers—part of a collection, food and lodging.

They assume and carry so much that their progress is at times impeded, and they are unable to see things in their proper proportions.

In many instances a slight exercise of the sense of humor would save much anxiety of soul.

Anyone who marks the general tone of editorials in colored newspapers is apt to be impressed with this idea.

If the mass of Negroes took their present and future as seriously as do the most of their leaders, the race would be in no mental condition to sustain the terrible pressure which it undergoes; it would sink of its own weight.

Yet it must be acknowledged that in the making of a race overseriousness is a far lesser failing than its reverse, and even the faults resulting from it lean toward the right.

We drove into the town just before dark. As we passed a large, unpainted church, my companion pointed it out as the place where he held his school. I promised that I would go there with him the next morning and stay a while.

A space was quickly cleared in the crowd, and a rope placed about his neck, when from somewhere came the suggestion, “Burn him!” It ran like an electric current.

Have you ever witnessed the transformation of human beings into savage beasts?

Nothing can be more terrible. A railroad tie was sunk into the ground, the rope was removed, and a chain brought and securely coiled around the victim and the stake.

This is the way in which we gratify the old, underlying animal instincts and passions; but we should shudder with horror at the mere idea of such practices being realities in this day of enlightened and humanitarianized thought.

The Southern whites are not yet living quite in the present age; many of their general ideas hark back to a former century, some of them to the Dark Ages.

In the light of other days they are sometimes magnificent. Today they are often ludicrous and cruel.

The Southern whites are not yet living quite in the present age; many of their general ideas hark back to a former century, some of them to the Dark Ages.

In the light of other days they are sometimes magnificent. Today they are often ludicrous and cruel.

How long I sat with bitter thoughts running through my mind I do not know; perhaps an hour or more. When I decided to get up and go back to the house, I found that I could hardly stand on my feet.

All the while I understood that it was not discouragement or fear or search for a larger field of action and opportunity that was driving me out of the Negro race.

I knew that it was shame, unbearable shame.

Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals. For certainly the law would restrain and punish the malicious burning alive of animals.

and it did more for me: it placed me where the other clerks were practically put out of competition with me. I was not slow in taking advantage of the opportunity to make myself indispensable to the firm.

What an interesting and absorbing game is moneymaking!

After each deposit at my savings-bank I used to sit and figure out, all over again, my principal and interest, and make calculations on what the increase would be in such and such time. Out of this I derived a great deal of pleasure.

Do I not disprove the theory that one drop of Negro blood renders a man unfit?” Many a night when I returned to my room after an enjoyable evening, I laughed heartily over what struck me as the capital joke I was playing.

Then I met her, and what I had regarded as a joke was gradually changed into the most serious question of my life.

I first saw her at a musical which was given one evening at a house to which I was frequently invited. I did not notice her among the other guests before she came forward and sang two sad little songs.

she was almost tall and quite slender, with lustrous yellow hair and eyes so blue as to appear almost black. She was as white as a lily, and she was dressed in white.

Indeed, she seemed to me the most dazzlingly white thing I had ever seen.

But it was not her delicate beauty which attracted me most; it was her voice, a voice which made one wonder how tones of such passionate color could come from so fragile a body.

The dread that I might lose her took possession of me each time I sought to speak, and rendered it impossible for me to do so.

That moral courage requires more than physical courage is no mere poetic fancy.

I am sure I should have found it easier to take the place of a gladiator, no matter how fierce the Numidian lion, than to tell that slender girl that I had Negro blood in my veins.

I am sure I should have found it easier to take the place of a gladiator, no matter how fierce the Numidian lion, than to tell that slender girl that I had Negro blood in my veins.

The fact which I had at times wished to cry out, I now wished to hide forever.

During this time we were drawn together a great deal by the mutual bond of music. She loved to hear me play Chopin and was herself far from being a poor performer of his compositions.

She had never been anything but innocent; but my innocence was a transformation wrought by my love for her, love which melted away my cynicism and whitened my sullied soul and gave me back the wholesome dreams of my boyhood.

There is nothing better in all the world that a man can do for his moral welfare than to love a good woman.

My artistic temperament also underwent an awakening. I spent many hours at my piano, playing over old and new composers. I also wrote several little pieces in a more or less Chopinesque style, which I dedicated to her.