James Weldon Johnson
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Since the end of the Civil War, African Americans have been involved in an attempt to strategically present their race in way that would foster equality. In class, we have seen this done through many art forms, two of which are manuscript and song. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson and The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois use both of these two art forms. Each author uses their stories and the music that goes along with them in very different ways. While DuBois makes frequent use of the Sorrow Songs, which are serious and straightforward pieces, James Weldon Johnson utilizes ragtime music, a lighter and more secularized form of the Sorrow Songs themselves. The actual text of the two works differs much in the same way as the accompanying music does. While Souls uses dramatic, poetic, and heroic characters to tell its story, James Weldon Johnson constructs a more complex and imperfect protagonist through which he transmit his message to the reader. I think the differences between the authors’ methods and their resulting themes may be a function of the time at which the books were written.
In The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois offers the reader a simple and romantic version of the struggle of black people in the United States at the outset of the 20th century. In 1903 when this book was first published, DuBois would have had a mostly white readership, since black people were only just starting to recover from the hardships they bore as a result of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Henry Louis Gates proposed that at this time black people were involved in trying to construct the “New Negro.” DuBois work fell at the beginning of this “negro image construction” period which Gates says lasted from 1895 to 1925 (131). Therefore, DuBois had a monumental task of establishing in the white reader an ideal view of a black person in America. He did this by presenting simple and highly emotional material which created the notion of the pride and the respectability of black people.
The style of the text alone reveals that DuBois wanted to evoke from the reader a very clear emotional response. For example, he introduces the chapter about the rural town in Tennessee in which he teaches by saying, “Once upon a timeвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ DuBois goes on to characterize the place in a poetic way; “Sprinkled over hill and dale lay cabins and farmhouses, shut out from the world by the forests and the rolling hills toward the east” (61). This seemingly “imaginary land” he introduces prepares the reader for a fairy tale-like story, with simple characters and a simple message. DuBois uses Josie as his principle character. He says that she “had about her a certain fineness, the shadow of an unconscious moral heroism that would willingly give all of life to make life broader, deeper, and fuller for her and hers” (62). DuBois presents Josie as the ideal black female character, who is earnest and loyal to her people. She sacrifices her schooling and her happiness to provide for the family that she loves. In the end, he romanticizes her death with the euphemism that “she slept- and sleeps” (70). In this Chapter, DuBois elicits a clear emotional response from his readers, which is sympathy for the plight of black people, by describing the destruction of the hero Josie, who represents an ideal black person who is loyal and heroic.
DuBois’ straightforward and idealistic construction of black people in The Souls of Black Folk continues with the inclusion of the Sorrow Songs at the end of the novel. In this Chapter, he highlights the pride of black folk and their rightful place in American history. He says, “the Negro folk song- the rhythmic cry of the slave-stands today not simply as the sole American music, but as the most beautiful expression of human experience born this side of the seas” (251). He goes on to describe the Sorrow Songs, and says that although their meaning can be veilied, for his purposes of including them in his story, the music is all “Distinctly sorrowful. The ten master songs I have mentioned tell in word and music of trouble and exile, of strife and hiding” (257). In short, the Sorrow Songs that DuBois chooses to utilize in The Souls of Black Folk display a straightforward and idealistic message about the hardships of being a black man in America to his mostly white readership in 1903.
James Weldon Johnson’s work The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was published in 1912. This means the book appeared nearly a decade after The Souls of Black Folk was first read. I believe the Autobiography characterizes the evolution of black people’s attempts at creating the image of the Negro. While DuBois’ readership was almost exclusively white, Johnson’s readership probably included a significant number of blacks as well as whites. Since others, like Dubois, had already planted a firm version of the Negro and their predicament in the heads of Americans, new authors had a little room to experiment with the presentation of blackness. James Weldon Johnson is able to play a little more with the ideas of the times, and appeal to different modes of black and white thinking.
The idea of a less-straightforward notion of blackness is embodied in Johnson’s work by the narrator’s experiences. The narrator has a complex function in Johnson’s piece. In fact, one of the main mysteries about the work can be summarized in the question, “How is the reader supposed to feel about the protagonist and his decision to be white in the end of the novel?” In The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, there are questions involving the lesson that the reader is supposed to learn, which is not the case in The Souls of Black Folk (where the themes were clearly laid out). Johnson sets up the overall interpretation of the character and the relevant lessons about blackness in the end by establishing a multi-faceted narrator throughout the novel.
The narrator can be characterized as a weak and hypocritical black person. There are several obvious instances where Johnson makes the narrator seem to be a weak member of the race, unlike the narrator’s counterpart of Josie who is heroic, idealistic, and earnest in The Souls of Black Folk. One clear example takes place after the narrator witnesses the argument between the Texan and the Union Soldier in the smoking car. After the Texan says, “We don’t believe the nigger is or will ever be the equal of the white man, and we aint going to treat him as an equal,” the narrator expresses