Leon's Story

Written for young readers ages nine to thirteen, American author Leon Walter Tillage’s memoir, Leon's Story (1997), chronicles the injustices Tillage and his family faced as he grew up in the Jim Crow South, his experiences in the civil rights movement, and his unwavering devotion to equality and optimism. Susan L. Roth, who provides the collage artwork that accompanies the story, edited the book from a series of oral history interviews she conducted with Tillage after her daughter first heard him at a school assembly give a compelling speech about his life. Leon's Story won the 1998 Carter G. Woodson Book Award.

After his birth in 1936, Leon grows up in a small town outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, as the second oldest of nine children. His parents are sharecroppers, and the family lives on a farm owned by Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson grows many different crops but mostly deals in the two most lucrative products, cotton and tobacco. The sharecropping system is one that sounds equitable on the surface, but, as Leon points out, it is another way of discriminating against poor African Americans. At the end of the year, sharecroppers on Mr. Johnson's farm get to keep the proceeds from half the crops they planted, tended, and harvested that season; Mr. Johnson keeps the proceeds from the other half. However, the sharecroppers also have to pay Mr. Johnson for the supplies they use, as well as for the food their families eat, so the amount the sharecroppers are left with is minimal. This keeps wages pitifully low and keeps poor black workers stuck on the farm, with few prospects, for the rest of their lives.

Leon says that, during his childhood, few people use words like "black" to describe African Americans, and it is decades before the term "minority" is fashionable. When whites refer to people of color, they call them "colored" or the n-word. This is demoralizing for young Leon, and when he looks at himself in the mirror, he curses the color of his skin.



Jim Crow laws discriminate against Leon and all black folks in the South. The laws state that the races must remain separate. White children and black children cannot share textbooks in schools. Libraries have a separate room for black people, who cannot go into the rest of the library. Black children go to different schools than white children, and as Leon and his black classmates walk four miles to school, the bus full of white children speeds pass them; on the way home, the whites' school bus stops so the white kids can throw rocks at the black kids. The laws also keep the military segregated, and black and white regiments cannot serve together.

Against this backdrop, Leon comes of age, facing the inhumanity of such laws early in life. The Ku Klux Klan is a very real threat to the safety of black folks in the South. Whenever word spreads that the Klan is on the loose, Leon and other black people in the area flee to the woods and hide until the Klan members eventually leave.

However, perhaps the most defining and devastating moment comes when Leon is fifteen years old. His parents are walking on the side of the road when a car full of drunken white teenagers runs them down, killing Leon's father. The teens face no consequences other than the driver being forced to apologize to the Tillage family.



Leon does not stay mired in bitterness, however. He remains optimistic throughout his struggles and finds a place to productively vent his frustrations a couple of years later, when Martin Luther King, Jr., comes to his school and gives a speech. Dr. King's message uplifts and inspires Leon, who joins the burgeoning civil rights movement. The movement teaches him to accept and embrace the color of his skin. Leon attends marches and protests, learning the principles of nonviolent resistance. He and other activists wear deflated rubber inner tubes underneath their clothing when they are out marching; this way, when the police order their dogs to attack, the protestors will have a protective layer around their skin.

When Leon grows up, he takes whatever jobs he can to earn money. Eventually, he moves to Baltimore and gets a job as a school janitor, where he works for more than thirty years. One of his brothers works at the school as well. For their years of service, the school honors them with a scholarship in their name, as well as a proclamation from the Maryland House of Delegates, celebrating them for their decades of hard work and the challenges they have overcome in their lives.

Leon's Story illustrates the ways racism affects the lives of marginalized populations. Nevertheless, it is also a story of survival, of overcoming the odds, and of the sense of empowerment that comes with standing up, speaking out, and working for a better world. Leon Tillage may be just one thread in the fabric of America, but his story shows that without his thread—and threads of all people of color—there would be no America at all.