" That protagonist goes to Atlanta for college, but leaves for Jacksonville, where he experiences a "cake-walk," and ends up in New York, where he meets a millionaire, with whom he travels to Europe and resolves to make ragtime music classical.  
Recollections in this work include school-time incidents at such as "Red Head's" misspelling of the word "fourth" and the oration of Wendell Phillips' speech "Toussaint L'Ouverture" by a classmate nicknamed "Shiny." That protagonist goes to Atlanta for college, but leaves for Jacksonville, where he experiences a "cake-walk," and ends up in New York, where he meets a millionaire, with whom he travels to Europe and resolves to make ragtime music classical.  When he returns to the South, the title character witnesses the lynching of a black man and realizes that he will never share that fate, as he has successfully adopted the speech and looks of the white man.  FTP, identify this novel about an unnamed mulatto who passes for white, a work by James Weldon Johnson.
Recollections in this work include school-time incidents at such as "Red Head's" misspelling of the word "fourth" and the oration of Wendell Phillips' speech "Toussaint L'Ouverture" by a classmate nicknamed "Shiny.
The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man