An imposing and regal black man whom the narrator encounters on his ship from Liverpool to Boston. The physician was born into slavery but managed to study at Howard University and rise into the Northern black elite, into which he introduces to the narrator. His attitudes about race are remarkably conservative: he has no issue with prejudice so long as it doesn’t “interfere with my personal liberty” and condemns “those lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies.”
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The Washington Physician Character Timeline in Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
The timeline below shows where the character The Washington Physician appears in Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 10
...route to Boston, the narrator quickly noted “a tall, broad-shouldered, almost gigantic, colored man” ( the physician ) whose majestic air attracted everyone’s attention; a few days later, the narrator found him...
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...the South. The narrator ended up spending a few weeks in Washington, also mostly with the physician and his friends; Washington seemed to have the most “developed” black society, with its many...
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...the narrator insists, but rather a way of seeking better opportunities for their children. And the physician was harsh toward lower-class blacks—or, in his words, “those lazy, loafing, good-for-nothing darkies […] who...
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