could enjoy at the time. The narrator describes learning to love music at a young age as well as attending an integrated school. It is while attending this school that the narrator first realizes he is African-American and thus subject to ridicule and mistreatment for his racial heritage. This "discovery" occurs when he is publicly corrected by his teacher and the headmaster when he stands when "the white scholars" (schoolchildren) are asked to stand. Returning home from school, the distraught narrator confronts his mother, asking her if he is a "nigger." His mother reassures him, however, noting that while she is not white, "your father is one of the greatest men in the country—the best blood of the South is in you." The narrator notes that this event became a racial awakening and loss of innocence that caused him to suddenly begin searching for—and finding—faults in himself and his mother, setting the stage for his eventual decision (though far in the future) to "pass" as a white man. While in school, the narrator also grows to admire and befriends "Shiny," an unmistakably African-American boy, who is described as one of the brightest and best-spoken children in the class. After the narrator's mother dies, he becomes a poor orphan and subject to harsh conditions. He adapted very well to life with lower-class black people and was able to move easily among the classes of black society. During this carefree period, he taught music and attended church, where he came in contact with upper-class black people. Living in an all black community, he discovers and describes three classes of black people: the desperate, the domestics, and the independent workmen or professionals. The Ex-Colored Man believed the desperate class consists of lower-class black people who loathe the whites. The domestic worker class comprises black people who work as servants to whites. And the artisans, skilled workers, and black professionals class included black people who had little interaction with the whites. Many white readers, who viewed all black people as a stereotype of a single class, were unfamiliar with class distinctions described among black people. Time with the Rich White Gentleman While playing ragtime at a late night hotspot in New York, the Ex-Colored Man caught the attention of a wealthy white gentleman. The gentleman's liking for ragtime develops as liking for the Ex-Colored Man himself. The white gentleman hired him to play ragtime