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

by Thomas R. Cole

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.

285 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Beth Mclaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great, complicated book.

Houston takes a lot of pride in being a city of low racial tension. It isn’t, of course, and Dr Cole explores Houston’s, and our own, struggle to hold ideas and beliefs up to the light for closer observation. Dr. Cole’s experience of Eldreway Stearns was as intricate as Eldreway’s experience of himself. It’s just another way of looking at Houston’s perception of its own racism, and the profound fears and misunderstandings that affect every human being’s interaction with their fellow humans. I learned a lot.

[Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had No Color Is My Kind sitting on my shelf for years and finally read it and learned so much about the history of Eldrewey Stearns but also of my home city Houston, TX during the Civil Rights movement. Long ago Mr. Stearns and author Thomas Cole visited my college and gave a lecture about Eledrewey's role in the movement to integrate Houston, which made a smoother transition than many of the other cities in the southern United States, but also about Stearns issues with mental illness and alcoholism and afterwards I purchased the book, which Mr. Stearns signed for me, and I placed it on my to read shelf. It took many years later for me to read it and that was mainly due to getting ready to graduate college, reading so many text books, and writing so many papers and then going out to find a job that fit my degree. During that time I didn't feel up to reading non-fiction, history, or otherwise, and did a palate cleanse with light fiction of mystery, horror, and various comic books and, add in several moves, No Color Is My Kind found itself stored in a box for many years until I came across it. I have to say that I learned so much from it with the knowledge of the Houston riot of 1917 when a large group of black soldiers mutinied against the racist all-white Houston Police Department that resulted in many deaths on both sides. Many in Houston that remembered that moment in Houston history were reluctant during the early days of the Civil Rights Movement to push for integration for fear of another riot but many in Houston, including many business leaders, viewed a smooth transition to integration as better for the city than what was occurring across the rest of the southern U.S. and Stearns and other young supporters of the Civil Rights Movement with sit-ins at local business and demands to the mayor and city counsel for change. There was push back from local hate groups and racist politicians but Houston moved forward. No Color Is My Kind then delves into Stearns life growing up in Southeast Texas and living with his grandmother and later reuniting with his family in Galveston where he encountered many wild characters, had wild times such as becoming the driver as a young teen of a local man that got drunk much of the time and didn't need to behind the wheel, and the racists of the time that openly shamed, attacked, and suppressed any non-white that stood up for themselves. The book also details Stearns issues with alcohol and mental illness and the author working to help him tell his story in his own words. The latter part of the book details all this and paints a complex picture of how our brains are effected by our home life, interactions outside the home, chemical imbalance, add in addiction, and it is easy to see how a once promising young Civil Rights leader fell into a spiral that left him bitter, angry, unmotivated, and forgotten for many years. I am glad that I rediscovered this book and how it opened my mind up to a past of my hometown that I only knew a little about from family members and some small history from my school days.

[Mallary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book. What an incredible lesson in history, race relations, mental health…and the toll that all of the above can take on one’s life.