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The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson
page 38 of 154 (24%)



IV


The farther I got below Washington, the more disappointed I became
in the appearance of the country. I peered through the car windows,
looking in vain for the luxuriant semi-tropical scenery which I had
pictured in my mind. I did not find the grass so green, nor the
woods so beautiful, nor the flowers so plentiful, as they were in
Connecticut. Instead, the red earth partly covered by tough, scrawny
grass, the muddy, straggling roads, the cottages of unpainted pine
boards, and the clay-daubed huts imparted a "burnt up" impression.
Occasionally we ran through a little white and green village that was
like an oasis in a desert.

When I reached Atlanta, my steadily increasing disappointment was not
lessened. I found it a big, dull, red town. This dull red color of
that part of the South I was then seeing had much, I think, to do with
the extreme depression of my spirits--no public squares, no fountains,
dingy street-cars, and, with the exception of three or four principal
thoroughfares, unpaved streets. It was raining when I arrived and some
of these unpaved streets were absolutely impassable. Wheels sank to
the hubs in red mire, and I actually stood for an hour and watched
four or five men work to save a mule, which had stepped into a deep
sink, from drowning, or, rather, suffocating in the mud. The Atlanta
of today is a new city.

On the train I had talked with one of the Pullman car porters, a
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