No color is my kind : the life of Eldrewey Stearns and the integration of Houston / Thomas R. Cole.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cole, Thomas R., 1949-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Civil rights movements.

History.

Houston (Tex.)--Race relations.

Houston (Tex.).

Civil rights movements--Texas--Houston--History--20th century.

Stearns, Eldrewey.

African American civil rights workers--Texas--Houston--Biography.

African American civil rights workers.

Texas--Houston.

Civil rights workers--Texas--Houston--Biography.

Civil rights workers.

Mentally ill--Texas--Houston--Biography.

Mentally ill.

Cole, Thomas R., 1949-.

Cole, Thomas R.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xv, 239 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, [1997]

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's desegregation movement between 1959 and 1963. 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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [205]-231) and index.

ISBN:

0292711972

0292711980

OCLC:

35593624