 The autobiography of an ex-colored man by James Weldon Johnson Narrated by Alan Beaumar Jones This unabridged audiobook was produced in the year 2010 by Tantor Media Incorporated which holds the copyright there, too preface This vivid and startling new picture of conditions brought about by the race question in the United States makes no special plea for the Negro But shows in a dispassionate though sympathetic manner Conditions as they actually exist between the whites and blacks today Special pleas have already been made for and against the Negro in hundreds of books But in these books either his virtues or his vices have been exaggerated This is because writers in nearly every instance have treated the colored American as a whole Each has taken some one group of the race to prove his case Not before has a composite and proportionate presentation of the entire race Embracing all of its various groups and elements showing their relations with each other and to the whites been made It is very likely that the Negroes of the United States have a fairly correct idea of what the white people of the country think of them For that opinion has for a long time been and is still being constantly stated But they are themselves more or less a sphinx to the whites It is curiously interesting and even vitally important to know what are the thoughts of ten millions of them concerning the people among whom They live in These pages it is as though a veil had been drawn aside The reader is given a view of the inner life of the Negro in America is Initiated into the free masonry as it were of the race These pages also reveal the unsuspected fact that prejudice against the Negro is exerting a pressure Which in New York and other large cities where the opportunity is open is actually and constantly Forcing an unassertainable number of fair complexion colored people over into the white race In this book the reader is given a glimpse behind the scenes of this race drama Which is being here enacted he is taken upon an elevation where he can catch a bird's eye view of the conflict Which is being waged the publishers chapter 1 I Know that in writing the following pages I am divulging the great secret of my life the secret which for some years I have got it far more carefully than any of my earthly possessions And it is a curious study to me to analyze the motives which prompt me to do it I feel that I am led by the same impulse which forces the unfound outcriminal to take somebody into his confidence Although he knows that the act is liable even almost certain Sample complete ready to continue