James Weldon Johnson Publishes 'Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man'

James Weldon Johnson published 'The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man' anonymously in 1912, a pioneering novel exploring racial identity and the experience of a mixed-race man who chooses to pass as white. The novel introduced new complexity to American literary treatments of race and anticipated many themes of the Harlem Renaissance. It was reissued under Johnson's name in 1927 to wide acclaim.