Critical Essay

Critical Essay

How It Feels to Be Colored Me
I AM COLORED but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances (about a situation which make a wrong or illegal action easier to understandor excuse) except the fact that I am the only Negro (a word used in the past for a black person) in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief.
I remember the very day that I became colored. Up to my thirteenth year I lived in the little Negro town of Eatonville, Florida. It is exclusively (only) a colored town. The only white people I knew passed through the town going to or coming from Orlando. The native whites rode dusty (covered with dust) horses, the Northern tourists chugged ( down the sandy village road in automobiles. The town knew the Southerners and never stopped cane chewing when they passed. But the Northerners were something else again. They were peered at cautiously (carefully) from behind curtains by the timid (not having courage or confidence). The more venturesome (always ready to take risks) would come out on the porch to watch them go past and got just as much pleasure out of the tourists as the tourists got out of the village.
The front porch might seem a daring place for the rest of the town, but it was a gallery seat for me. My favorite place was atop (on top of something) the gate-post. Proscenium (the part of a theater stage that comes forward beyond the curtain) box for a born first-nighter. Not only did I enjoy the show, but I didn't mind the actors knowing that I liked it. I usually spoke to them in passing. I'd wave at them and when they returned my salute (to move your right hand to your head, especially in order to show respect to an officer in the Army, …), I would say something like this: "Howdy-do-well-I-thank-you-where-yougoin'?" Usually automobile or the horse paused at this, and after a queer (old-fashioned strange or difficult to explain) exchange of compliments (loi khen), I would probably "go a piece of...