No Color Is My Kind

by Cole, Thomas R.

• ISBN13: 9780292711976
• ISBN10: 0292711972
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Texas Pr

Summary

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' 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.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(12)
Part One Leader at Last	13	(90)
1. Launching a Movement	13	(22)
2. Blackout in Houston	35	(24)
3. Railroads, Baseball, and the Color Line	59	(22)
4. "I Was Going Places"	81	(22)
Part Two A Boy from Galveston and San Augustine	103	(52)
5. Uphome	103	(22)
6. Rabbit Returns	125	(14)
7. Driving Mr. Gus	139	(16)
Part Three Wandering and Return	155	(48)
8. "They Got Me, But They Can't Forget Me": A Mad Odyssey	155	(22)
9. Drew and Me: Recovering Separate Selves	177	(26)
Appendix: Interview Sources	203	(2)
Notes	205	(22)
References	227	(6)
Index	233
Photo sections precede chapters 1, 5, and 8.