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193 books match the query 'Cultural & Regional' and 6 start with n

cover of Nathan B. Young and the Struggle over Black Higher Education

Nathan B. Young and the Struggle over Black Higher Education

Antonio F. Holland

University of Missouri Press, 2006

At the turn of the twentieth century, African Americans eager to improve their lives through higher education were confronted with the divergent points of view of two great leaders: Booker T. Washington advocated vocational training, while W. E. B. Du Bois stressed the importance of the liberal arts. Into the fray stepped Nathan B. Young, who, as Antonio Holland now tells, left a lasting mark on that debate.

Born in slavery in Alabama, Young followed a love of learning to degrees from Talladega and Oberlin Colleges and a career in higher education. Employed by Booker T. Washington in 1892, he served at Tuskegee Institute until conflict with Washington’s vocational orientation led him to move on. During a brief tenure at Georgia State Industrial College under Richard R. Wright, Sr., he became disillusioned by efforts of whites to limit black education to agriculture and the trades. Hired as president of Florida A&M in 1901, he fought for twenty years to balance agricultural/vocational education with the liberal arts, only to meet with opposition from state officials that led to his ouster.

This principled educator finally found his place as president of Lincoln University in Missouri in 1923. Here Young made a determined effort to establish the school as a standard institution of higher learning. Holland describes how he campaigned successfully to raise academic standards and gain accreditation for Lincoln’s programs—successes made possible by the political and economic support of farsighted members of Missouri’s black community.

Holland shows that the great debate over black higher education was carried on not only in the rhetoric of Washington and Du Bois but also on the campuses, as Young and others sought to prepare African American students to become thinkers and creators. In tracing Young’s career, Holland presents a wealth of information on the nature of the education provided for former slaves and their descendents in four states—shedding new light on the educational environment at Oberlin and Tuskegee—and on the actions of racist white government officials to limit the curriculum of public education for blacks.

Although Young’s efforts to improve the schools he served were often thwarted, Holland shows that he kept his vision alive in the black community. Holland’s meticulous reconstruction of an eventful career provides an important look at the forces that shaped and confounded the development of black higher education during traumatic times.
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cover of No Color Is My Kind: Eldrewey Stearns and the Desegregation of Houston

No Color Is My Kind

Eldrewey Stearns and the Desegregation of Houston

Thomas R. Cole

University of Texas Press, 2021

In 1959, a Black man named Eldrewey Stearns was beaten by Houston police after being stopped for a traffic violation. He was not the first to suffer such brutality, but the incident sparked Stearns’s conscience and six months later he was leading the first sit-in west of the Mississippi River. No Color Is My Kind, first published in 1997, introduced readers to Stearns, including his work as a civil rights leader and lawyer in Houston’s desegregation movement between 1959 and 1963. This remarkable and important history, however, was nearly lost to bipolar affective disorder. Stearns was a fifty-two-year-old patient in a Galveston psychiatric hospital when Thomas Cole first met him in 1984. Over the course of a decade, Cole and Stearns slowly recovered the details of Stearns’s life before his slide into mental illness, writing a story that is more relevant today than ever.

In this new edition, Cole fills in the gaps between the late 1990s and now, providing an update on the progress of civil rights in Houston and Stearns himself. He also reflects on his tumultuous and often painful collaboration with Stearns, challenging readers to be part of his journey to understand the struggles of a Black man’s complex life. At once poignant, tragic, and emotionally charged, No Color Is My Kind is essential reading as the current movement for racial reconciliation gathers momentum.

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

No Color Is My Kind

The Life of Eldrewey Stearns and the Integration of Houston

By Thomas R. Cole

University of Texas Press, 1997

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.
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cover of No Quittin' Sense

No Quittin' Sense

By the Reverend C. C. White and Ada Morehead Holland

University of Texas Press, 1994

This story, set in the Piney Woods country of East Texas, spans most of a century, from shortly after the close of the Civil War to the 1960's. It is the story of Charley White, who was born in the middle of those woods—in a decaying windowless log cabin a few years after his mother and father were freed from slavery. His childhood, lived in almost unbelievable poverty, was followed by financial stability achieved in middle age through years of struggle. And then, in order to obey God's will, he abandoned this secure life, and for forty years he waged a one-man war on poverty and intolerance.

Winner of the Carr P. Collins Award (best nonfiction book) of the Texas Institute of Letters, No Quittin' Sense presents the story of Rev. C. C. "Charley" White, whose life has inspired thousands of readers since the book was first published in 1969.

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cover of Not of Pure Blood: The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico

Not of Pure Blood

The Free People of Color and Racial Prejudice in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico

Jay Kinsbruner

Duke University Press, 1996

Countering the popular misconception that racial discrimination has largely not existed in Puerto Rico, Jay Kinsbruner’s Not of Pure Blood shows that racial prejudice has long had an insidious effect on Puerto Rican society. Kinsbruner’s study focuses on the free people of color—those of African descent who were considered nonwhite but were legally free during slavery—in order to explore the nature of racial prejudice in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico. In considering the consequences of these nineteenth-century attitudes on twentieth-century Puerto Rico, Kinsbruner suggests that racial discrimination continues to limit opportunities for people of color.
Following a discussion of Puerto Rican racial prejudice in historical perspective, Kinsbruner describes residential patterns, marriages, births, deaths, occupations, and family and household matters to demonstrate that free people of color were a disadvantaged community whose political, social, and economic status was diminished by racism. He analyzes the complexities and contradictions of Puerto Rican racial prejudice and discrimination, explains the subtleties of “shade discrimination,” and examines the profoundly negative impact on race relations of the U.S. occupation of the island following the Spanish American War.
Looking behind the myth of Puerto Rican racial equity, Not of Pure Blood will be of interest to specialists in Caribbean studies, Puerto Rican history, and Latin America studies, and to scholars in a variety of fields investigating questions of racism and discrimination.
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cover of Notable Men and Women of Spanish Texas

Notable Men and Women of Spanish Texas

By Donald E. Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph

University of Texas Press, 1999

Winner, Presidio La Bahia Award, Sons of the Republic of Texas, 2000
Texas Old Missions and Forts Restoration Association Book Award, the Texas Old Missions and Fort Restoration Association and the Texas Catholic Historical Society, 2001

The Spanish colonial era in Texas (1528-1821) continues to emerge from the shadowy past with every new archaeological and historical discovery. In this book, years of archival sleuthing by Donald E. Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph now reveal the real human beings behind the legendary figures who discovered, explored, and settled Spanish Texas.

By combining dramatic, real-life incidents, biographical sketches, and historical background, the authors bring to life these famous (and sometimes infamous) men of Spanish Texas:

  • Alvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
  • Alonso de León
  • Francisco Hidalgo
  • Louis Juchereau de St. Denis
  • Antonio Margil
  • The Marqués de Aguayo
  • Pedro de Rivera
  • Felipe de Rábago
  • José de Escandón
  • Athanase de Mézières
  • The Marqués de Rubí
  • Antonio Gil Ibarvo
  • Domingo Cabello
  • José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara
  • Joaquín de Arredondo

The authors also devote a chapter to the women of Spanish Texas, drawing on scarce historical clues to tell the stories of both well-known and previously unknown Tejana, Indian, and African women.

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