'Through the Fire': Alum Edwin Coleman

THE REGISTER-GUARD (EUGENE, OREGON) -- Geographically, Coleman’s stories span the country from Arkansas in the Deep South to California and on up to the Pacific Northwest, first in Washington and then Oregon. Racially, they include the hush-hush intermixture of white and black that have characterized this country from the introduction of slavery onward to the separation of the races in the Jim Crow days and beyond. Musically, he’s shared the stage with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Vince Guaraldi, Cal Tjader and Peter, Paul and Mary. Educationally, he tells of a father and mother who finished the sixth and 10th grades, respectively, although he eventually earned a doctorate and became a professor of English at University of Oregon. He finished at the two-year City College and then enrolled at San Francisco State College, later San Francisco State University. He taught theater at San Francisco State and Chico State University before moving to Eugene.