He lives through a variety of experiences, including witnessing a lynching, that convince him to "pass" as white to secure his safety and advancement, but he feels as if he has given up his dream of "glorifying" the black race by composing ragtime music.

[3] It was republished in 1927, with some minor changes of phraseology,[4] by Alfred A. Knopf,[5] an influential firm that published many Harlem Renaissance writers, and Johnson was credited as the author.

Born shortly after the Civil War in a small Georgia town, the narrator's African-American mother protected him as a child and teenager.

Because of that financial support, she had the means to raise her son in an environment more middle-class than many black people could enjoy at the time.

"[7] The narrator notes that this event became a racial awakening and loss of innocence that caused him to suddenly begin searching for—and finding—faults in himself and his mother, setting the stage for his eventual decision (though far in the future) to "pass" as a white man.

While in school, the narrator also grows to admire and befriends "Shiny," an unmistakably African-American boy, who is described as one of the brightest and best-spoken children in the class.

The Ex-Colored Man believed the desperate class consists of lower-class black people who loathe the whites.

[citation needed] While playing ragtime at a late night hotspot in New York, the Ex-Colored Man caught the attention of a wealthy white gentleman.

The Ex-Colored man would tire after the long hours but would continue playing as he saw the joy and serenity he brought the white gentleman.

The gentleman was not "loaning" him out as a piece of property, but simply giving the narrator a broader palette to display his talents.

Even though life was pleasant, it was void of substance; using his music to aid poor African Americans he felt would be a better use of his talents.

After playing for the white gentleman while touring Europe, the Ex-Colored Man decided to leave him and return to the South to study Negro spirituals.

][citation needed] The narrator's time in Paris, however, is cut short when he goes to see a performance of Faust, during which he sits next to a beautiful young woman for whom he initially expresses great admiration.

The Ex-Colored Man narrates in detail what he saw, "He squirmed, he withered, strained at his chains, then gave out cries and groans that I shall always hear."

Michael Berube writes, "there is no question that Johnson wrote the book, in large part, to try to stem the tide of lynchings sweeping the nation.

The narrator eventually begins a courtship with a white woman, causing an internal dilemma as to whether or not to reveal his African-American heritage, and he asks her to marry him.

At the end of the book, the Ex-colored Man says: My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.

This is one portrayal of the social strains due to racial discrimination; he felt that society forced him to choose between his love of African-American music and the safety and convenience of being white with the majority.

The "Ex-colored Man" is compelled by fear, not only for himself but for his children's sake (so they can grow up "white"), to exist in degraded mediocrity, despite his apparent potential and lofty goals of advancing the African-American race.

A major shift in the plot occurs during a performance of "Faust" in Paris, when the narrator sees his wealthy white father and his legitimate family, including his biological half-sister.

As a "black" man, he would be denied access to such a space, a (purportedly) all-white and all-male hegemonic site.

It is only by virtue of his "light skin" and the assumption of whiteness that he is privy to the discussion at all.The impetus fueling Johnson's narrative experiment seems clearer if one summons to view the African-American male writers tradition.