In his autobiographyAlong This Way (1933), African-American poet James Weldon Johnson describes his experiences as a songwriter in New York City, a consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua, the executive secretary of the NAACP, and a professor of creative literature at Fisk University. In this excerpt, he recounts a visit to Salt Lake City in 1905 and his encounters with overt discrimination.

Outcasts in Salt Lake City

from Along This Way, by James Weldon Johnson

Just before spring in 1905, Bob and Rosamond started again over the Orpheum Circuit; I made the trip with them. Some other performers who were playing the same circuit and who left Denver for San Francisco on the same train with us had planned to stop off for a day at Salt Lake City to visit the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and see the town. They persuaded us to do likewise. We had our tickets adjusted for a stop-over until the next day and got off the train at Salt Lake City. We took a carriage, and directed the driver, a jovial Irishman, to take us to a good hotel. He took us to the best. Porters carried our luggage into the lobby, and I went to the desk, turned the register around and registered for three. The clerk was busy at the key-rack. He glanced at us furtively, but kept himself occupied. It grew obvious that he was protracting his time. Finally, he could delay no longer and came to the desk. As he came his expression revealed the lie he was to speak. He turned the register round, examined our names, and while his face flushed a bit said, "I'm sorry, but we haven't got a vacant room." This statement, which I knew almost absolutely to be false, set a number of emotions in action: humiliation, chagrin, indignation, resentment, anger; but in the midst of them all I could detect a sense of pity for the man who had to make it, for he was, to all appearances, an honest, decent person.

It was then about eleven o'clock, and I sought the eyes of the clerk and asked if he expected any rooms to be vacated at noon. He stammered that he did not. I then said to him that we would check our bags and take the first room available by night. Pressure from me seemed to stiffen him, and he told us that we could not; that we had better try some other hotel. Our bags were taken out and a cab called, and we found ourselves in the same vehicle that had brought us to the hotel. Our driver voluntarily assumed a part of our mortification, and he attempted to console us by relating how ten or twelve years before he had taken Peter Jackson (the famous Negro pugilist) to that same hotel and how royally he had been entertained there. We tried two other hotels, where our experiences were similar but briefer. We did not dismiss our cabman, for we were being fast driven to the conclusion that he was probably the only compassionate soul we should meet in the whole city of the Latter-Day Saints.

We had become very hungry; we felt that it was necessary for us to eat in order to maintain both our morale and our endurance. Our cabman took us to a restaurant. When we entered it was rather crowded, but we managed to find a table and sit down. There followed that hiatus of which every Negro in the United States knows the meaning. At length, a man in charge came over and told us without any pretense of palliation that we could not be served. We were forced to come out under the stare of a crowd that was conscious of what had taken place. Our cabman was now actually touched by our plight; and he gave vent to his feelings in explosive oaths. He suggested another restaurant to try, where we might have "better luck"; but we were no longer up to the possible facing of another such experience. We asked the cabby if he knew of a colored family in town who might furnish us with a meal; he did not, but he had an idea; he drove along and stopped in front of a saloon and a chophouse; he darted inside, leaving us in the carriage; after a few moments he emerged beaming good news. We went in and were seated at a wholly inconspicuous table, but were served with food and drink that quickly renewed our strength and revived our spirits.

However, we were almost immediately confronted with the necessity of getting a place to sleep. Our cabby had another idea; he drove us to a woman he knew who kept a lodging house for laborers. It was a pretty shabby place; nevertheless, the woman demurred for quite a while. Finally, she agreed to let us stay, if we got out before her regular lodgers got up. In the foul room to which she showed us, we hesitated until the extreme moment of weariness before we could bring ourselves to bear the touch of the soiled bedclothes. We smoked and talked over the situation we were in, the situation of being outcasts and pariahs in a city of our own and native land. Our talk went beyond our individual situation and took in the common lot of Negroes in well-nigh every part of the country, a lot which lays on high and low the constant struggle to renerve their hearts and wills against the unremitting pressure of unfairness, injustice, wrong, cruelty, contempt, and hate. If what we felt had been epitomized and expressed in but six words, they would have been: A hell of a "my country."

We welcomed daybreak. For numerous reasons we were glad to get out of the beds of our unwilling hostess. We boarded our train with feelings of unbounded relief; I with a vow never to set foot again in Salt Lake City. Twenty-three years later, I passed through Salt Lake City, as one of a large delegation on the way to a conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People held in Los Angeles. Our train had a wait of a couple of hours, and the delegation went out to see the town, the Tabernacle, and the lake. I spent the time alone at the railroad station.

Along This Way, by James Weldon Johnson, was originally published by Viking Press in 1933.