No Color Is My Kind

Thomas R. Cole is the McGovern Chair and Director of the McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. He is the author of several books, including The Journey of Life: A Cultural History of Aging in America, which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and, most recently, Old Man Country: My Search for Meaning Among the Elders.

This remarkable book recovers the emotions, the places, and the events that shaped one man's life—and started a major city's journey toward a racial reckoning.— Judson Robinson, President and CEO, Houston Area Urban LeagueThis compelling story seems especially relevant now, in a time of renewed awareness of systemic racism and growing concern about deepening inequalities. It has been almost sixty years since the sit-ins changed the course of Houston's history. This book about the charismatic and troubled student leader during that critical moment reminds us of the ways in which imperfect individuals can come together to significantly advance the long march to justice.— Stephen L. Klineberg, author of Prophetic City: Houston on the Cusp of a Changing AmericaDivided into three parts with nine well-delineated chapters, this 'historian, medical humanist, and writer' chronicled his struggle to write this biography as much as Stearns struggled to assert his identity as a Black man trying to bring equality to Texans as he descended into insanity. As such, this biography joins the genre of other biographies of civil rights activists such as David Garrow's biography of King, Les and Tamara Payne's biography of Malcolm X, and David Levering Lewis's biography of W.E.B. Du Bois . . . this biography paints an intriguing and complex picture of Stearns.— Journal of African American History

• Preface to the New EditionIntroductionPart One. Leader at Last1. Launching a Movement2. Blackout in Houston3. Railroads, Baseball, and the Color Line4. "I Was Going Places"Part Two. A Boy from Galveston and San Augustine5. Uphome6. Rabbit Returns7. Driving Mr. GusPart Three. Wandering and Return8. "They Got Me, But They Can't Forget Me": A Mad Odyssey9. Drew and Me: Recovering Separate SelvesAppendix: Interview SourcesAcknowledgmentsNotesReferencesIndex