The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Since I have grown older I have often gone back and tried to analyze the change that came into my life after that fateful day in school.  There did come a radical change, and, young as I was, I felt fully conscious of it, though I did not fully comprehend it.  Like my first spanking, it is one of the few incidents in my life that I can remember clearly.  In the life of everyone there is a limited number of unhappy experiences which are not written upon the memory, but stamped there with a die; and in long years after, they can be called up in detail, and every emotion that was stirred by them can be lived through anew; these are the tragedies of life.  We may grow to include some of them among the trivial incidents of childhood—­a broken toy, a promise made to us which was not kept, a harsh, heart-piercing word—­but these, too, as well as the bitter experiences and disappointments of mature years, are the tragedies of life.

And so I have often lived through that hour, that day, that week, in which was wrought the miracle of my transition from one world into another; for I did indeed pass into another world.  From that time I looked out through other eyes, my thoughts were colored, my words dictated, my actions limited by one dominating, all-pervading idea which constantly increased in force and weight until I finally realized in it a great, tangible fact.

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.

And it is this, too, which makes the colored people of this country, in reality, a mystery to the whites.  It is a difficult thing for a white man to learn what a colored man really thinks; because, generally, with the latter an additional and different light must be brought to bear on what he thinks; and his thoughts are often influenced by considerations so delicate and subtle that it would be impossible for him to confess or explain them to one of the opposite race.  This gives to every colored man, in proportion to his intellectuality, a sort of dual personality; there is one phase of him which is disclosed only in the freemasonry of his own race.  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 grew constantly more and more afraid of laying myself open to some injury to my feelings or my pride.  I frequently saw or fancied some slight where, I am sure, none was intended.  On the other hand, my friends and teachers were, if anything different, more considerate of me; but I can remember that it was against this very attitude in particular that my sensitiveness revolted.  “Red” was the only one who did not so wound me; up to this day I recall with a swelling heart his clumsy efforts to make me understand that nothing could change his love for me.

I am sure that at this time the majority of my white schoolmates did not understand or appreciate any differences between me and themselves; but there were a few who had evidently received instructions at home on the matter, and more than once they displayed their knowledge in word and action.  As the years passed, I noticed that the most innocent and ignorant among the others grew in wisdom.

I myself would not have so clearly understood this difference had it not been for the presence of the other colored children at school; I had learned what their status was, and now I learned that theirs was mine.  I had had no particular like or dislike for these black and brown boys and girls; in fact, with the exception of “Shiny,” they had occupied very little of my thought; but I do know that when the blow fell, I had a very strong aversion to being classed with them.  So I became something of a solitary.  “Red” and I remained inseparable, and there was between “Shiny” and me a sort of sympathetic bond, but my intercourse with the others was never entirely free from a feeling of constraint.  I must add, however, that this feeling was confined almost entirely to my intercourse with boys and girls of about my own age; I did not experience it with my seniors.  And when I grew to manhood, I found myself freer with elderly white people than with those near my own age.

I was now about eleven years old, but these emotions and impressions which I have just described could not have been stronger or more distinct at an older age.  There were two immediate results of my forced loneliness:  I began to find company in books, and greater pleasure in music.  I made the former discovery through a big, gilt-bound, illustrated copy of the Bible, which used to lie in splendid neglect on the center table in our little parlor.  On top of the Bible lay a photograph album.  I had often looked at the pictures in the album, and one day, after taking the larger book down and opening it on the floor, I was overjoyed to find that it contained what seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of pictures.  I looked at these pictures many times; in fact, so often that I knew the story of each one without having to read the subject, and then, somehow, I picked up the thread of history on which are strung the trials and tribulations of the Hebrew children; this I followed with feverish interest and excitement.  For a long time King David, with Samson a close second, stood at the head of my list of heroes; he was not displaced until I came to know Robert the Bruce.  I read a good portion of the Old Testament, all that part treating of wars and rumors of wars, and then started in on the New.  I became interested in the life of Christ, but became impatient and disappointed when I found that, notwithstanding the great power he possessed, he did not make use of it when, in my judgment, he most needed to do so.  And so my first general impression of the Bible was what my later impression has been of a number of modern books, that the authors put their best work in the first part, and grew either exhausted or careless toward the end.

After reading the Bible, or those parts which held my attention, I began to explore the glass-doored bookcase which I have already mentioned.  I found there Pilgrim’s Progress, Peter Parley’s History of the United States, Grimm’s Household Stories, Tales of a Grandfather, a bound volume of an old English publication (I think it was called The Mirror), a little volume called Familiar Science, and somebody’s Natural Theology, which last, of course, I could not read, but which, nevertheless, I tackled, with the result of gaining a permanent dislike for all kinds of theology.  There were several other books of no particular name or merit, such as agents sell to people who know nothing of buying books.  How my mother came by this little library which, considering all things, was so well suited to me I never sought to know.  But she was far from being an ignorant woman and had herself, very likely, read the majority of these books, though I do not remember ever seeing her with a book in her hand, with the exception of the Episcopal Prayer book.  At any rate she encouraged in me the habit of reading, and when I had about exhausted those books in the little library which interested me, she began to buy books for me.  She also regularly gave me money to buy a weekly paper which was then very popular for boys.

At this time I went in for music with an earnestness worthy of maturer years; a change of teachers was largely responsible for this.  I began now to take lessons of the organist of the church which I attended with my mother; he was a good teacher and quite a thorough musician.  He was so skillful in his instruction and filled me with such enthusiasm that my progress—­these are his words—­was marvelous.  I remember that when I was barely twelve years old I appeared on a program with a number of adults at an entertainment given for some charitable purpose, and carried off the honors.  I did more, I brought upon myself through the local newspapers the handicapping title of “infant prodigy.”

I can believe that I did astonish my audience, for I never played the piano like a child; that is, in the “one-two-three” style with accelerated motion.  Neither did I depend upon mere brilliancy of technique, a trick by which children often surprise their listeners; but I always tried to interpret a piece of music; I always played with feeling.  Very early I acquired that knack of using the pedals, which makes the piano a sympathetic, singing instrument, quite a different thing from the source of hard or blurred sounds it so generally is.  I think this was due not entirely to natural artistic temperament, but largely to the fact that I did not begin to learn the piano by counting out exercises, but by trying to reproduce the quaint songs which my mother used to sing, with all their pathetic turns and cadences.

Even at a tender age, in playing I helped to express what I felt by some of the mannerisms which I afterwards observed in great performers; I had not copied them.  I have often heard people speak of the mannerisms of musicians as affectations adopted for mere effect; in some cases they may be so; but a true artist can no more play upon the piano or violin without putting his whole body in accord with the emotions he is striving to express than a swallow can fly without being graceful.  Often when playing I could not keep the tears which formed in my eyes from rolling down my cheeks.  Sometimes at the end or even in the midst of a composition, as big a boy as I was, I would jump from the piano, and throw myself sobbing into my mother’s arms.  She, by her caresses and often her tears, only encouraged these fits of sentimental hysteria.  Of course, to counteract this tendency to temperamental excesses I should have been out playing ball or in swimming with other boys of my age; but my mother didn’t know that.  There was only once when she was really firm with me, making me do what she considered was best; I did not want to return to school after the unpleasant episode which I have related, and she was inflexible.

I began my third term, and the days ran along as I have already indicated.  I had been promoted twice, and had managed each time to pull “Red” along with me.  I think the teachers came to consider me the only hope of his ever getting through school, and I believe they secretly conspired with me to bring about the desired end.  At any rate, I know it became easier in each succeeding examination for me not only to assist “Red,” but absolutely to do his work.  It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.  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 street-car 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.  The reason of this was I had been asked to play the accompaniment for a young lady who was to play a violin solo at a concert given by the young people of the church, and on this afternoon we were to have our first rehearsal.  At that time playing accompaniments was the only thing in music I did not enjoy; later this feeling grew into positive dislike.  I have never been a really good accompanist because my ideas of interpretation were always too strongly individual.  I constantly forced my accelerandos and rubatos upon the soloist, often throwing the duet entirely out of gear.

Perhaps the reader has already guessed why I was so willing and anxious to play the accompaniment to this violin solo; if not—­the violinist was a girl of seventeen or eighteen whom I had first heard play a short time before on a Sunday afternoon at a special service of some kind, and who had moved me to a degree which now I can hardly think of as possible.  At present I do not think it was due to her wonderful playing, though I judge she must have been a very fair performer, but there was just the proper setting to produce the effect upon a boy such as I was; the half-dim church, the air of devotion on the part of the listeners, the heaving tremor of the organ under the clear wail of the violin, and she, her eyes almost closing, the escaping strands of her dark hair wildly framing her pale face, and her slender body swaying to the tones she called forth, all combined to fire my imagination and my heart with a passion, though boyish, yet strong and, somehow, lasting.  I have tried to describe the scene; if I have succeeded, it is only half success, for words can only partially express what I wish to convey.  Always in recalling that Sunday afternoon I am sub-conscious of a faint but distinct fragrance which, like some old memory-awakening perfume, rises and suffuses my whole imagination, inducing a state of reverie so airy as just to evade the powers of expression.

She was my first love, and I loved her as only a boy loves.  I dreamed of her, I built air castles for her, she was the incarnation of each beautiful heroine I knew; when I played the piano, it was to her, not even music furnished an adequate outlet for my passion; I bought a new note-book and, to sing her praises, made my first and last attempts at poetry.  I remember one day at school, after we had given in our notebooks to have some exercises corrected, the teacher called me to her desk and said:  “I couldn’t correct your exercises because I found nothing in your book but a rhapsody on somebody’s brown eyes.”  I had passed in the wrong note-book.  I don’t think I have felt greater embarrassment in my whole life than I did at that moment.  I was ashamed not only that my teacher should see this nakedness of my heart, but that she should find out that I had any knowledge of such affairs.  It did not then occur to me to be ashamed of the kind of poetry I had written.

Of course, the reader must know that all of this adoration was in secret; next to my great love for this young lady was the dread that in some way she would find it out.  I did not know what some men never find out, that the woman who cannot discern when she is loved has never lived.  It makes me laugh to think how successful I was in concealing it all; within a short time after our duet all of the friends of my dear one were referring to me as her “little sweetheart,” or her “little beau,” and she laughingly encouraged it.  This did not entirely satisfy me; I wanted to be taken seriously.  I had definitely made up my mind that I should never love another woman, and that if she deceived me I should do something desperate—­the great difficulty was to think of something sufficiently desperate—­and the heartless jade, how she led me on!

So I hurried home that afternoon, humming snatches of the violin part of the duet, my heart beating with pleasurable excitement over the fact that I was going to be near her, to have her attention placed directly upon me; that I was going to be of service to her, and in a way in which I could show myself to advantage—­this last consideration has much to do with cheerful service——.  The anticipation produced in me a sensation somewhat between bliss and fear.  I rushed through the gate, took the three steps to the house at one bound, threw open the door, and was about to hang my cap on its accustomed peg of the hall rack when I noticed that that particular peg was occupied by a black derby hat.  I stopped suddenly and gazed at this hat as though I had never seen an object of its description.  I was still looking at it in open-eyed wonder when my mother, coming out of the parlor into the hallway, called me and said there was someone inside who wanted to see me.  Feeling that I was being made a party to some kind of mystery, I went in with her, and there I saw a man standing leaning with one elbow on the mantel, his back partly turned toward the door.  As I entered, he turned and I saw a tall, handsome, well-dressed gentleman of perhaps thirty-five; he advanced a step toward me with a smile on his face.  I stopped and looked at him with the same feelings with which I had looked at the derby hat, except that they were greatly magnified.  I looked at him from head to foot, but he was an absolute blank to me until my eyes rested on his slender, elegant polished shoes; then it seemed that indistinct and partly obliterated films of memory began, at first slowly, then rapidly, to unroll, forming a vague panorama of my childhood days in Georgia.

My mother broke the spell by calling me by name and saying:  “This is your father.”

“Father, father,” that was the word which had been to me a source of doubt and perplexity ever since the interview with my mother on the subject.  How often I had wondered about my father, who he was, what he was like, whether alive or dead, and, above all, why she would not tell me about him.  More than once I had been on the point of recalling to her the promise she had made me, but I instinctively felt that she was happier for not telling me and that I was happier for not being told; yet I had not the slightest idea what the real truth was.  And here he stood before me, just the kind of looking father I had wishfully pictured him to be; but I made no advance toward him; I stood there feeling embarrassed and foolish, not knowing what to say or do.  I am not sure but that he felt pretty much the same.  My mother stood at my side with one hand on my shoulder, almost pushing me forward, but I did not move.  I can well remember the look of disappointment, even pain, on her face; and I can now understand that she could expect nothing else but that at the name “father” I should throw myself into his arms.  But I could not rise to this dramatic, or, better, melodramatic, climax.  Somehow I could not arouse any considerable feeling of need for a father.  He broke the awkward tableau by saying:  “Well, boy, aren’t you glad to see me?” He evidently meant the words kindly enough, but I don’t know what he could have said that would have had a worse effect; however, my good breeding came to my rescue, and I answered:  “Yes, sir,” and went to him and offered him my hand.  He took my hand into one of his, and, with the other, stroked my head, saying that I had grown into a fine youngster.  He asked me how old I was; which, of course, he must have done merely to say something more, or perhaps he did so as a test of my intelligence.  I replied:  “Twelve, sir.”  He then made the trite observation about the flight of time, and we lapsed into another awkward pause.

My mother was all in smiles; I believe that was one of the happiest moments of her life.  Either to put me more at ease or to show me off, she asked me to play something for my father.  There is only one thing in the world that can make music, at all times and under all circumstances, up to its general standard; that is a hand-organ, or one of its variations.  I went to the piano and played something in a listless, half-hearted way.  I simply was not in the mood.  I was wondering, while playing, when my mother would dismiss me and let me go; but my father was so enthusiastic in his praise that he touched my vanity—­which was great—­and more than that; he displayed that sincere appreciation which always arouses an artist to his best effort, and, too, in an unexplainable manner, makes him feel like shedding tears.  I showed my gratitude by playing for him a Chopin waltz with all the feeling that was in me.  When I had finished, my mother’s eyes were glistening with tears; my father stepped across the room, seized me in his arms, and squeezed me to his breast.  I am certain that for that moment he was proud to be my father.  He sat and held me standing between his knees while he talked to my mother.  I, in the mean time, examined him with more curiosity, perhaps, than politeness.  I interrupted the conversation by asking:  “Mother, is he going to stay with us now?” I found it impossible to frame the word “father”; it was too new to me; so I asked the question through my mother.  Without waiting for her to speak, my father answered:  “I’ve got to go back to New York this afternoon, but I’m coming to see you again.”  I turned abruptly and went over to my mother, and almost in a whisper reminded her that I had an appointment which I should not miss; to my pleasant surprise she said that she would give me something to eat at once so that I might go.  She went out of the room and I began to gather from off the piano the music I needed.  When I had finished, my father, who had been watching me, asked:  “Are you going?” I replied:  “Yes, sir, I’ve got to go to practice for a concert.”  He spoke some words of advice to me about being a good boy and taking care of my mother when I grew up, and added that he was going to send me something nice from New York.  My mother called, and I said good-bye to him and went out.  I saw him only once after that.

I quickly swallowed down what my mother had put on the table for me, seized my cap and music, and hurried off to my teacher’s house.  On the way I could think of nothing but this new father, where he came from, where he had been, why he was here, and why he would not stay.  In my mind I ran over the whole list of fathers I had become acquainted with in my reading, but I could not classify him.  The thought did not cross my mind that he was different from me, and even if it had, the mystery would not thereby have been explained; for, notwithstanding my changed relations with most of my schoolmates, I had only a faint knowledge of prejudice and no idea at all how it ramified and affected our entire social organism.  I felt, however, that there was something about the whole affair which had to be hid.

When I arrived, I found that she of the brown eyes had been rehearsing with my teacher and was on the point of leaving.  My teacher, with some expressions of surprise, asked why I was late, and I stammered out the first deliberate lie of which I have any recollection.  I told him that when I reached home from school, I found my mother quite sick, and that I had stayed with her awhile before coming.  Then unnecessarily and gratuitously—­to give my words force of conviction, I suppose—­I added:  “I don’t think she’ll be with us very long.”  In speaking these words I must have been comical; for I noticed that my teacher, instead of showing signs of anxiety or sorrow, half hid a smile.  But how little did I know that in that lie I was speaking a prophecy!

She of the brown eyes unpacked her violin, and we went through the duet several times.  I was soon lost to all other thoughts in the delights of music and love.  I saw delights of love without reservation; for at no time of life is love so pure, so delicious, so poetic, so romantic, as it is in boyhood.  A great deal has been said about the heart of a girl when she’ stands “where the brook and river meet,” but what she feels is negative; more interesting is the heart of a boy when just at the budding dawn of manhood he stands looking wide-eyed into the long vistas opening before him; when he first becomes conscious of the awakening and quickening of strange desires and unknown powers; when what he sees and feels is still shadowy and mystical enough to be intangible, and, so, more beautiful; when his imagination is unsullied, and his faith new and whole—­then it is that love wears a halo.  The man who has not loved before he was fourteen has missed a foretaste of Elysium.

When I reached home, it was quite dark and I found my mother without a light, sitting rocking in a chair, as she so often used to do in my childhood days, looking into the fire and singing softly to herself.  I nestled close to her, and, with her arms round me, she haltingly told me who my father was—­a great man, a fine gentleman—­he loved me and loved her very much; he was going to make a great man of me:  All she said was so limited by reserve and so colored by her feelings that it was but half truth; and so I did not yet fully understand.