This decidedly unsentimental book, which was first published anonymously in 1912, introduced many white readers to the double standards and double consciousness that Black people in contemporary America face. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was republished in 1927, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten. It quickly rose to prominence as a groundbreaking study of African-American culture and served as a model for subsequent authors like Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, and Ralph Ellison. A voyage through Black society around the turn of the century is described in the story, which is told by a man whose pale skin allows him to "pass" for white. He visits a cigar factory in Jacksonville, an exclusive gambling club in New York, and polite aristocracy.