Words: 7. The Autobiography of a Former Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson is a fictional autobiography of a man born into a mixed-race family trying to find his racial identity but never fully committing to it. At first he is unaware of his origins and believes he is a white boy, but after a bullying incident at school, his own. The Power of Music in the Autobiography of a Former Colored Man. To understand the power of music, this essay analyzes the role of music in Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. In The Autobiography, the narrator is able to marry the two halves of his musical identity in a way that he cannot with his own,