Set with the challenge of humanizing his race for white readers,
James Weldon Johnson realized that it was not enough to create a
hero who was shrewd, intelligent, and valiant. His hero also had
to be a conceited ass. The anonymous narrator of The
Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man has never encountered a
skill or trade that he cannot instantly master. As a 12-year-old
he discovers, after several piano lessons, that he is not merely
an “infant prodigy,” but “a true artist.” Later, thanks to this
“natural talent,” he becomes “a remarkable player of rag-time,”
“indeed…the best rag-time player in New York”—a distinction that
would place him ahead of Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton.
Language comes to him as easily as music. After spending a year
at a cigar factory, he can speak Spanish “like a native”—“In
fact, it was my pride that I spoke better Spanish than many of
the Cuban workmen.” In Paris, after “an astonishingly short
time,” he acquires “a more than ordinary command of French”; a
few months in Berlin