No Color Is My Kind: The Life of Eldrewey Stearns and the Integration of Houston

Cole, Thomas R.

ISBN 10: 0292711980 / ISBN 13: 9780292711983

Published by University of Texas Press, 1997

About this Item

1997 paperback stated 1st University of Texas Press edition implicit 1st printing inscribed by the author on the ffep ("12/23/09 For Allen, with admiration, gratitude, and anticipation, Tom"). Light soil on cover and a few pages, a bit of curling, else fine . Seller Inventory # ABE-1629752395517

Bibliographic Details

Title: No Color Is My Kind: The Life of Eldrewey ...

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Publication Date: 1997

Binding: Soft cover

Condition: Near Fine

Signed: Inscribed by Author

Edition: 1st Edition.

About this title

Synopsis:

No Color Is My Kind is an uncommon chronicle of identity, fate, and compassion as two men—one Jewish and one African American—set out to rediscover a life lost to manic depression and alcoholism.

In 1984, Thomas Cole discovered Eldrewey Stearns in a Galveston psychiatric hospital. Stearns, a fifty-two-year-old black man, complained that although he felt very important, no one understood him.

Over the course of the next decade, Cole and Stearns, in a tumultuous and often painful collaboration, recovered Stearns' life before his slide into madness—as a young boy in Galveston and San Augustine and as a civil rights leader and lawyer who sparked Houston's desegregation movement between 1959 and 1963.

While other southern cities rocked with violence, Houston integrated its public accommodations peacefully. In these pages appear figures such as Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Leon Jaworski, and Dan Rather, all of whom—along with Stearns—maneuvered and conspired to integrate the city quickly and calmly.

Weaving the tragic story of a charismatic and deeply troubled leader into the record of a major historic event, Cole also explores his emotionally charged collaboration with Stearns. Their poignant relationship sheds powerful and healing light on contemporary race relations in America, and especially on issues of power, authority, and mental illness.

From the Back Cover:

'No Color Is My Kind: The Life of Eldrewey Stearns and the Integration of Houston' is an uncommon chronicle of identity, fate, and compassion as two men-one Jewish and one African American-set out to rediscover a life lost to manic depression and alcoholism.