The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Perhaps I ought not pass on in this narrative without mentioning that the duet was a great success, so great that we were obliged to respond with two encores.  It seemed to me that life could hold no greater joy than it contained when I took her hand and we stepped down to the front of the stage bowing to our enthusiastic audience.  When we reached the little dressing-room, where the other performers were applauding as wildly as the audience, she impulsively threw both her arms round me and kissed me, while I struggled to get away.

One day a couple of weeks after my father had been to see us, a wagon drove up to our cottage loaded with a big box.  I was about to tell the men on the wagon that they had made a mistake, when my mother, acting darkly wise, told them to bring their load in; she had them unpack the box, and quickly there was evolved from the boards, paper, and other packing material a beautiful, brand-new, upright piano.  Then she informed me that it was a present to me from my father.  I at once sat down and ran my fingers over the keys; the full, mellow tone of the instrument was ravishing.  I thought, almost remorsefully, of how I had left my father; but, even so, there momentarily crossed my mind a feeling of disappointment that the piano was not a grand.  The new instrument greatly increased the pleasure of my hours of study and practice at home.

Shortly after this I was made a member of the boys’ choir, it being found that I possessed a clear, strong soprano voice.  I enjoyed the singing very much.  About a year later I began the study of the pipe organ and the theory of music; and before I finished the grammar school, I had written out several simple preludes for organ which won the admiration of my teacher, and which he did me the honor to play at services.

The older I grew, the more thought I gave to the question of my mother’s and my position, and what was our exact relation to the world in general.  My idea of the whole matter was rather hazy.  My study of United States history had been confined to those periods which were designated in my book as “Discovery,” “Colonial,” “Revolutionary,” and “Constitutional.”  I now began to study about the Civil War, but the story was told in such a condensed and skipping style that I gained from it very little real information.  It is a marvel how children ever learn any history out of books of that sort.  And, too, I began now to read the newspapers; I often saw articles which aroused my curiosity, but did not enlighten me.  But one day I drew from the circulating library a book that cleared the whole mystery, a book that I read with the same feverish intensity with which I had read the old Bible stories, a book that gave me my first perspective of the life I was entering; that book was Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

This work of Harriet Beecher Stowe has been the object of much unfavorable criticism.  It has been assailed, not only as fiction of the most imaginative sort, but as being a direct misrepresentation.  Several successful attempts have lately been made to displace the book from Northern school libraries.  Its critics would brush it aside with the remark that there never was a Negro as good as Uncle Tom, nor a slave-holder as bad as Legree.  For my part, I was never an admirer of Uncle Tom, nor of his type of goodness; but I believe that there were lots of old Negroes as foolishly good as he; the proof of which is that they knowingly stayed and worked the plantations that furnished sinews for the army which was fighting to keep them enslaved.  But in these later years several cases have come to my personal knowledge in which old Negroes have died and left what was a considerable fortune to the descendants of their former masters.  I do not think it takes any great stretch of the imagination to believe there was a fairly large class of slave-holders typified in Legree.  And we must also remember that the author depicted a number of worthless if not vicious Negroes, and a slave-holder who was as much of a Christian and a gentleman as it was possible for one in his position to be; that she pictured the happy, singing, shuffling “darky” as well as the mother wailing for her child sold “down river.”

I do not think it is claiming too much to say that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a fair and truthful panorama of slavery; however that may be, it opened my eyes as to who and what I was and what my country considered me; in fact, it gave me my bearing.  But there was no shock; I took the whole revelation in a kind of stoical way.  One of the greatest benefits I derived from reading the book was that I could afterwards talk frankly with my mother on all the questions which had been vaguely troubling my mind.  As a result, she was entirely freed from reserve, and often herself brought up the subject, talking of things directly touching her life and mine and of things which had come down to her through the “old folks.”  What she told me interested and even fascinated me, and, what may seem strange, kindled in me a strong desire to see the South.  She spoke to me quite frankly about herself, my father, and myself:  she, the sewing girl of my father’s mother; he, an impetuous young man home from college; I, the child of this unsanctioned love.  She told me even the principal reason for our coming north.  My father was about to be married to a young lady of another great Southern family; She did not neglect to add that another reason for our being in Connecticut was that he intended to give me an education and make a man of me.  In none of her talks did she ever utter one word of complaint against my father.  She always endeavored to impress upon me how good he had been and still was, and that he was all to us that custom and the law would allow.  She loved him; more, she worshiped him, and she died firmly believing that he loved her more than any other woman in the world.  Perhaps she was right.  Who knows?

All of these newly awakened ideas and thoughts took the form of a definite aspiration on the day I graduated from the grammar school.  And what a day that was!  The girls in white dresses, with fresh ribbons in their hair; the boys in new suits and creaky shoes; the great crowd of parents and friends; the flowers, the prizes and congratulations, made the day seem to me one of the greatest importance.  I was on the program, and played a piano solo which was received by the audience with that amount of applause which I had come to look upon as being only the just due of my talent.

But the real enthusiasm was aroused by “Shiny.”  He was the principal speaker of the day, and well did he measure up to the honor.  He made a striking picture, that thin little black boy standing on the platform, dressed in clothes that did not fit him any too well, his eyes burning with excitement, his shrill, musical voice vibrating in tones of appealing defiance, and his black face alight with such great intelligence and earnestness as to be positively handsome.  What were his thoughts when he stepped forward and looked into that crowd of faces, all white with the exception of a score or so that were lost to view?  I do not know, but I fancy he felt his loneliness.  I think there must have rushed over him a feeling akin to that of a gladiator tossed into the arena and bade to fight for his life.  I think that solitary little black figure standing there felt that for the particular time and place he bore the weight and responsibility of his race; that for him to fail meant general defeat; but he won, and nobly.  His oration was Wendell Phillips’s “Toussaint L’Ouverture,” a speech which may now be classed as rhetorical—­even, perhaps, bombastic; but as the words fell from “Shiny’s” lips their effect was magical.  How so young an orator could stir so great enthusiasm was to be wondered at.  When, in the famous peroration, his voice, trembling with suppressed emotion, rose higher and higher and then rested on the name “Toussaint L’Ouverture,” it was like touching an electric button which loosed the pent-up feelings of his listeners.  They actually rose to him.

I have since known of colored men who have been chosen as class orators in our leading universities, of others who have played on the varsity football and baseball teams, of colored speakers who have addressed great white audiences.  In each of these instances I believe the men were stirred by the same emotions which actuated “Shiny” on the day of his graduation; and, too, in each case where the efforts have reached any high standard of excellence they have been followed by the same phenomenon of enthusiasm.  I think the explanation of the latter lies in what is a basic, though often dormant, principle of the Anglo-Saxon heart, love of fair play.  “Shiny,” it is true, was what is so common in his race, a natural orator; but I doubt that any white boy of equal talent could have wrought the same effect.  The sight of that boy gallantly waging with puny, black arms so unequal a battle touched the deep springs in the hearts of his audience, and they were swept by a wave of sympathy and admiration.

But the effect upon me of “Shiny’s” speech was double; I not only shared the enthusiasm of his audience, but he imparted to me some of his own enthusiasm.  I felt leap within me pride that I was colored; and I began to form wild dreams of bringing glory and honor to the Negro race.  For days I could talk of nothing else with my mother except my ambitions to be a great man, a great colored man, to reflect credit on the race and gain fame for myself.  It was not until years after that I formulated a definite and feasible plan for realizing my dreams.

I entered the high school with my class, and still continued my study of the piano, the pipe organ, and the theory of music.  I had to drop out of the boys’ choir on account of a changing voice; this I regretted very much.  As I grew older, my love for reading grew stronger.  I read with studious interest everything I could find relating to colored men who had gained prominence.  My heroes had been King David, then Robert the Bruce; now Frederick Douglass was enshrined in the place of honor.  When I learned that Alexandre Dumas was a colored man, I re-read Monte Cristo and The Three Guardsmen with magnified pleasure.  I lived between my music and books, on the whole a rather unwholesome life for a boy to lead.  I dwelt in a world of imagination, of dreams and air castles—­the kind of atmosphere that sometimes nourishes a genius, more often men unfitted for the practical struggles of life.  I never played a game of ball, never went fishing or learned to swim; in fact, the only outdoor exercise in which I took any interest was skating.  Nevertheless, though slender, I grew well formed and in perfect health.  After I entered the high school, I began to notice the change in my mother’s health, which I suppose had been going on for some years.  She began to complain a little and to cough a great deal; she tried several remedies, and finally went to see a doctor; but though she was failing in health, she kept her spirits up.  She still did a great deal of sewing, and in the busy seasons hired two women to help her.  The purpose she had formed of having me go through college without financial worries kept her at work when she was not fit for it.  I was so fortunate as to be able to organize a class of eight or ten beginners on the piano, and so start a separate little fund of my own.  As the time for my graduation from the high school grew nearer, the plans for my college career became the chief subject of our talks.  I sent for catalogues of all the prominent schools in the East and eagerly gathered all the information I could concerning them from different sources.  My mother told me that my father wanted me to go to Harvard or Yale; she herself had a half desire for me to go to Atlanta University, and even had me write for a catalogue of that school.  There were two reasons, however, that inclined her to my father’s choice; the first, that at Harvard or Yale I should be near her; the second, that my father had promised to pay for a part of my college education.

Both “Shiny” and “Red” came to my house quite often of evenings, and we used to talk over our plans and prospects for the future.  Sometimes I would play for them, and they seemed to enjoy the music very much.  My mother often prepared sundry Southern dishes for them, which I am not sure but that they enjoyed more.  “Shiny” had an uncle in Amherst, Mass., and he expected to live with him and work his way through Amherst College.  “Red” declared that he had enough of school and that after he got his high school diploma, he would get a position in a bank.  It was his ambition to become a banker and he felt sure of getting the opportunity through certain members of his family.

My mother barely had strength to attend the closing exercises of the high school when I graduated, and after that day she was seldom out of bed.  She could no longer direct her work, and under the expense of medicines, doctors, and someone to look after her our college fund began to diminish rapidly.  Many of her customers and some of the neighbors were very kind, and frequently brought her nourishment of one kind or another.  My mother realized what I did not, that she was mortally ill, and she had me write a long letter to my father.  For some time past she had heard from him only at irregular intervals; we never received an answer.  In those last days I often sat at her bedside and read to her until she fell asleep.  Sometimes I would leave the parlor door open and play on the piano, just loud enough for the music to reach her.  This she always enjoyed.

One night, near the end of July, after I had been watching beside her for some hours, I went into the parlor and, throwing myself into the big arm chair, dozed off into a fitful sleep.  I was suddenly aroused by one of the neighbors, who had come in to sit with her that night.  She said:  “Come to your mother at once.”  I hurried upstairs, and at the bedroom door met the woman who was acting as nurse.  I noted with a dissolving heart the strange look of awe on her face.  From my first glance at my mother I discerned the light of death upon her countenance.  I fell upon my knees beside the bed and, burying my face in the sheets, sobbed convulsively.  She died with the fingers of her left hand entwined in my hair.

I will not rake over this, one of the two sacred sorrows of my life; nor could I describe the feeling of unutterable loneliness that fell upon me.  After the funeral I went to the house of my music teacher; he had kindly offered me the hospitality of his home for so long as I might need it.  A few days later I moved my trunk, piano, my music, and most of my books to his home; the rest of my books I divided between “Shiny” and “Red.”  Some of the household effects I gave to “Shiny’s” mother and to two or three of the neighbors who had been kind to us during my mother’s illness; the others I sold.  After settling up my little estate I found that, besides a good supply of clothes, a piano, some books and trinkets, I had about two hundred dollars in cash.

The question of what I was to do now confronted me.  My teacher suggested a concert tour; but both of us realized that I was too old to be exploited as an infant prodigy and too young and inexperienced to go before the public as a finished artist.  He, however, insisted that the people of the town would generously patronize a benefit concert; so he took up the matter and made arrangements for such an entertainment.  A more than sufficient number of people with musical and elocutionary talent volunteered their services to make a program.  Among these was my brown-eyed violinist.  But our relations were not the same as they were when we had played our first duet together.  A year or so after that time she had dealt me a crushing blow by getting married.  I was partially avenged, however, by the fact that, though she was growing more beautiful, she was losing her ability to play the violin.

I was down on the program for one number.  My selection might have appeared at that particular time as a bit of affectation, but I considered it deeply appropriate; I played Beethoven’s “Sonata Pathétique.”  When I sat down at the piano and glanced into the faces of the several hundreds of people who were there solely on account of love or sympathy for me, emotions swelled in my heart which enabled me to play the “Pathétique” as I could never again play it.  When the last tone died away, the few who began to applaud were hushed by the silence of the others; and for once I played without receiving an encore.

The benefit yielded me a little more than two hundred dollars, thus raising my cash capital to about four hundred dollars.  I still held to my determination of going to college; so it was now a question of trying to squeeze through a year at Harvard or going to Atlanta, where the money I had would pay my actual expenses for at least two years.  The peculiar fascination which the South held over my imagination and my limited capital decided me in favor of Atlanta University; so about the last of September I bade farewell to the friends and scenes of my boyhood and boarded a train for the South.