The Autobiography of an
Ex-Colored Man,
James Weldon Johnson

I based my illustration on The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson.  More specifically the relationship between two of the characters: the main character and a side character called the millionaire. I illustrated the power dynamic between the two characters because it was one of the few relationships in the book that I wanted to translate onto paper. For this Illustration, I chose to include a few key elements that I thought would easily explain the relationship between the characters, such as the chain that connects both of the characters, the tailcoat on the man that is placed lower on the illustration, and even the placement of the two figures in the drawing. Though the illustration was simple, I felt like it was most fitting to express the two characters as the relationship shown in the book isn’t that complicated itself. 

I say that because the way that the main character explained their relationship was in black and white. I felt like it was important to show this relationship because of the hidden way that class and social statuses were the bones or structures for their relationship. Social class and race still affect the opportunities and success people achieve today. For my creation process, I found pose references, sketched out my rough draft in a digital art program, and completed it with line art and color.

My watercolor piece represents how each new generation changes society’s views on social issues. The concept of a monster in a cave symbolizing issues in society came from the connections between racism and/or tolerance being passed down from past generations to the newer ones and old myths and stories being passed down by word of mouth. The story that the different pieces tell is up to interpretation, but they don’t have to be connected. The people in my pieces are meant to look like the people you would see on traffic or safety signs. A blank space that could be filled in by anybody. Racism is symbolized by a snake because of the connection to the serpent in the bible. The serpent represents the tempting devil in the book of Genesis, like how growing up with racism in your family could tempt you to think that it’s ok. It also connects to how racism lets people’s heritage negatively influence their lives. The snake lives underground hidden in caves to represent that it can show up anywhere and sometimes unnoticed. It also makes it difficult to find the source of where it’s coming from. The monster living hidden under this village of people and slowing them from progressing is a metaphor for people holding onto past beliefs and prejudice stopping us from growing as a society. 

The people that enter the cave bring lanterns and swords to show that they have heard about the threat from myths and legends and are prepared to fight it. They are risking their lives like how leaders of social movements have to risk their influence and sometimes physical safety in order to get their views out to the world. An article from NPR written by Leah Donnella says,”Much of American culture is predicated on the idea that we can create a better future for our progeny, instilling in them values that we as a nation have often failed to uphold.” The sword and lantern represent that they have learned from history what the threat is and what they need to do to stop it. The lantern wasn’t invented when the people of the village first discovered the monster, making it much harder to fully see how big the problem is. This ability was also given to the protagonist in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson because of his complexion he would be treated as white or black based on who he was around, so he could hear the arguments of both the perpetrators and the victims of racism. 

The top left piece conveys that it is harder for people affected by the issue to fight it. People whose opinion isn’t respected by the opposing side will have a much harder time swaying them. It also represents that even if they don’t realize it, racism still puts more challenges in their way to do certain things that others get for free because of their heritage. The top right piece conveys that people less or unaffected by racism can get too focused on either things that happened in the past or minor details without realizing the more important issues that are happening around them in the present. Though learning about the issues in the past is important in order to not repeat them, it shouldn't be used as an excuse to not look into what is happening now. Recognizing that something that happened was bad without taking steps to change doesn’t prevent it from happening in the future. When large groups of people get angry about injustice people unaffected or benefitting can easily say what they have to to silence the crowd and continue the pattern. Another strategy could be purposely staying ignorant and uneducated in order to not feel obliged to deal with the problem while people are getting hurt. 

The bottom left piece conveys how racism will keep growing and evolving as we fight it. Passively fighting it by teaching the next generations about tolerance, though it is very helpful, isn’t going to be enough, as we are doing that other people are teaching the newer generations that racism is okay. We can never fully get rid of it, but the best way to stop it from affecting people is to fight racist laws and ideas in society. The bottom right piece conveys that even if we deal with one issue, we can’t stop. There are tons of issues that aren’t prominent in the public eye until they are fought against. Like in the other piece the issue will never fully go away, it will only get smaller and less influential, because it would be impossible to fully change everyone’s biases.

I decided to create this 3D printed map of Manhattan to show the segregation and beginning of what we now know as gentrification. This map is highly detailed with roads and buildings. I have outlined each gentrified and ethnic community to show what it was like in the early 1900s and how it progressed to 2021. After reading The Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man I was really caught off guard with segregation in NYC. I didn’t know specific neighborhoods were segregated, and I believe that ties into what we know today as gentrification and it’s only getting worse. For example, when the Ex Colored Man went to New York City, he and many others were restricted to an area of just 10 blocks. This area stretched from Sixth Avenue from Twenty-third to Thirty-third Streets, with the cross street one block to the west, totalling less than one square mile (0.085 Mi 2 ). Most of these ethnic neighborhoods in the early 1900s were vastly diversified and mainly in the lower part of the island. Around 1910 many of the area’s Italians and Jews began to leave the Lower East Side in search of new neighborhoods. Many moved to Brooklyn, specifically Boro Park and Brownsville, which became a heavily populated Jewish neighborhood. At the same time, many of the wealthier German Americans began moving uptown. In Manhattan today, the vast majority of its districts are heavily gentrified, for example: Harlem, Williamsburg/East Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bed-Stuy/Crown to name a few, are all heavily gentrified districts. I believe it is important for people all around the world to learn what gentrification is, how it started and how it’s affecting mainly lower and middle class communities all around the world.

I created this image to address systemic wealth inequality within the African American community. I had three figures in this image, each representing three different ideas. The first one on the right represents white supremacy. The bottom of the figures represents how that white supremacy has become ingrained in our society and how we have created systemic structures to keep people of color oppressed. Then as we move up, we see blood; this shows how white supremacy has killed for its continued existence. Even today, we still see hate crimes directed towards people of color for simply existing. Even further up, the color used here is the same color used for the blood except it is mixed with white. This describes how people who are unaffected by racism can turn a blind eye and act like these horrors never happened. When that happens, those acts are seen as not as horrible and atrocious as when the color of blood is mixed with white, it becomes pink. At the top, we have this twisted spike and arms coming off of it and attached to those arms; a rope pulls in the second figure into the jaws of white supremacy. The rope represents lynchings and how often white people hung black people in the name of justice. This twisted form of justice was enforced for black people doing minor things, including using their right to vote. The second figure represents people of color and how they are held back from getting wealth. I used a dabbing technique that represented how race is how others perceive you; for instance, if someone sees someone as black, they are black no matter how they identify or where they came from. The third figure represents wealth itself and the spiral that is coming from the first figure. This represents how the wealth system in America will always keep people from succeeding; as long as people can go bankrupt for simply existing, we will always have significant wealth disparities.

Multiple sources inspired this project. First, I read “The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man” by James Weldon Johnson. This book is about a man who learns that his mother is black, and he lives most of his life as a black man. He eventually meets a millionaire and travels the world, and he realizes he wants to be in America. When he returns to America, he witnesses a lynching that realizes that being black is not worth it. He goes to New York and meets a white lady, and they get married and have children. This story shows the disparity between blacks and whites during the reconstruction period. Another source was an artist named Ivan Seal, who created the cover of the series of albums called  “Everywhere at the end of time.” by the caretaker. This album is about memory and dementia. Ivan’s work adds to this album as he is an abstract artist who creates almost recognizable work but not quite. I felt like this idea of creating work that you try to recognize and name something in the painting but cannot represent the ideas of racism and inequality in America because many do not recognize how deep racism truly goes. Many who are not affected try to deny racism's existence in the modern world. 

This painting explored topics of racism and inequality. It showed white supremacy’s grasp on the people of color in this country. How many people of color were and still are kept from gaining wealth in this country. This painting brings awareness of oppression to people of color and wealth inequalities in America.

Throughout human history, we have always resorted to violence for many reasons, whether it be wishing for certain resources, having territory invaded, or just not liking certain things or people. Through modern history there have been two world wars.  For the American soldiers in both world wars, there has been segregation and racial bias. In my project I wrote about the average African American soldier in the first world war, explaining some of the things these soldiers could and could not do.

The goal behind this project was to inform people through words on what history was like for these soldiers, and contrasting it a bit to those of the white soldier. The original idea I had was to make a piece of music, either in the style of the era (Blues, jazz, etc), but with no previous musical experience this quickly fell through so I did something I was more experienced in: writing. The main inspirations for this project was the contrast between the many views presented in the book “The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man” by James Weldon Johnson. The other main inspiration that came to my mind was originally the youtube video “A Long Way to Tipperary and You’re in a Shell Crater with the Last of Your Division” by Jörmungandr, who used historical music which often had an upbeat tune accompanied by the sounds of war edited in, often overpowering the music. The reason why the music with the sound effects over it really influenced the project was because there was a huge contrast presented between the peace of the music, and the horrors of war.

The creation process for this project was very simple. First, I had to properly research background information of the era on how African Americans were treated in the war, along with their accomplishments as well as how the white soldiers were celebrated and treated. The next main step was to create a timeline of sorts of what I decided that I needed to put into the script. When the timeline was complete, all that was left was to put together the timeline in a more elaborate way, explaining details of events as well as history.

It is very important to learn about our past, and what we have done previously as a nation. To quote the philosopher George Sanatayana, “Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it.”. If we end up repeating what we’ve done, it could be disastrous for our nation, not only in reputation but as well as military prowess.