Colored Memories

A Biographer's Quest for the Elusive Lester A. Walton

By: Susan Curtis

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Hardcover | 19 May 2008

At a Glance

Hardcover
304 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
23.5 x 16.51 x 3.18

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Lester A. Walton was an African American journalist, cultural critic, diplomat, and political activist--an adviser to presidents and industrialists in a career that spanned the first six decades of the twentieth century. In this book, Curtis seeks to discover why Walton is forgotten today. In this unconventional book--a postmodern ghost story, an unprecedented experiment in life-writing--Curtis relates her frustrating search through long-overlooked documents to discover this forgotten man, offering insight into how America's obsession with race has made Walton's story unwelcome. She explores the treachery, duplicity, and archival accidents that transformed a man dedicated to the fulfillment of American democracy into a shadowy figure.

Industry Reviews

"Colored Memories is immensely important, one of the most important critical biographies to emerge in recent years. Sophisticated and subtle, it may well serve as a handbook for future generations of biographers and historians who grapple with and seek to recover individuals from the past."--John Stauffer, author of The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race

"The book's greatest strength is Curtis's sensitivity to her subject. Walton, in her hands, was neither tragic nor heroic. He was a talented and complicated man who was dedicated to the betterment of the race."--Journal of Southern History
"This book is a fine work of historical detection. Curtis has dug deeply in sources all over the country and found as much about this elusive man as anyone is ever likely to find. Her tale of how she sifted through old documents--often doing so in a way that allowed her to find material earlier archivists had considered insignificant--invigorates her prose and allows the reader to understand how history itself (particularly a biography of a man who was marginalized by his race) is an elusive thing that calls for creativity, as well as hard work."--Bruce Clayton, author of Praying for Base Hits: An American Boyhood

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Non-Fiction Biographies & True Stories Biographies Historical, Political and Military Biographies History Earliest Times to Present Day 20th Century History from 1900 to 2000 Regional & National History History of the Americas Industry & Industrial Studies Media, Entertainment, Information & Communication Industries

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Encountering a Ghost Remembering Walton	p. 3
Lester and Me	p. 11
Mysteries in the Archives	p. 33
Treachery and Duplicity Race Man	p. 79
Capitalizing Negro	p. 84
Pictures of His Face	p. 91
A Passing Comment	p. 108
The Crisis on the Links	p. 111
Something Doin'	p. 124
Some Trip	p. 134
The Man Behind the Scenes Representation	p. 151
Representing the Democratic Party	p. 156
Representing the United States	p. 176
Representing Liberia	p. 206
Trauma Reenactment	p. 229
Escape of the Kaffirs	p. 233
Exodus	p. 246
Bibliography	p. 273
Index	p. 285
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Colored Memories

A Biographer's Quest for the Elusive Lester A. Walton

At a Glance

Hardcover

Industry Reviews

Shipping

How to return your order

Defective items

You Can Find This Book In

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