In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois famously described the African American psyche in terms of double consciousness–two warring ideals in one body, yoked together by violence alone. The African self and the American self always in conflict, but desiring to be merged into a single, higher self. In The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, DuBois’s colleague, James Weldon Johnson, offers a slightly different framework for black experience–the freemasonry of the race. Johnson’s concept implies that blackness consists of a set of secret signs, rituals, and common experiences, much like participation in a society of free masons. Johnson’s semi-autobiographical protagonist, the ex-colored man who narrates the novel, is fair-skinned enough that he eventually chooses to pass as white. This experience leads him sometimes to long for connection with other black people.
