Leon Walter Tillage

LEON'S STORY by Leon Tillage illustrated by Susan L. Roth Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux; ISBN:0374343799

Leon Tillage is not your great artist or athlete he is a man who touched people’s hearts with his story. Leon was born on January 19,1936, in Fuquay North Carolina, outside the capital of North Carolina, Raleigh. He had 8 brothers and sisters; he was the 2nd oldest. They lived on a farm in a very cruddy house. His father was a sharecropper with the man who owned the farm, Mr.Johnson. Leon started school when he was 6; the school he went to was Providence school. They thought them to read and write, the ABC’s, and the times tables. How ever Leon’s life was not perfect because he grew up during the time when the Jim Crow laws were enforced.

Jim Crow laws were laws that said that all races had to be separate. Some of the laws in North Carolina were:

Textbooks: Books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but shall continue to be used by the race first using them.

Libraries: The state librarian is directed to fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of colored people who may come to the library for the purpose of reading books or periodicals.

Militia: The white and colored militia shall be separately enrolled, and shall never be compelled to serve in the same organization. No organization of colored troops shall be permitted where white troops are available, and while white permitted to be organized, colored troops shall be under command of a white officer.

As you can see the laws were terrible. North Carolina had more laws but those are some of them. When Leon went to the movies the blacks would have wait so they wouldn’t get jumped by whites.

Leon’s father was a sharecropper. Sharecropping is were one person owns the farm and splits it with 4 or 5 black families. They would grow all the crops and do all the work with their family. Once the crops were fully-grown and harvested they would give half of what they grew to the owner of the farm. Mr.Johnson and his family did nothing. When the other kids worked Mr.Johnson’s kids would sit on the steps and drink lemonade. As you can see, Mr.Johnson was not very fair.

Leon had many struggles. When Leon turned 15 his parents went out to buy him something, when a bunch of teenagers in a car were dunk and ran over his father and killed him due to racism. When Leon was a kid the Klu Klux Klan was around. When they came riding at night they would hide in the woods so they wouldn’t get captured by them. So they all hid in the woods until they left.

When Leon was in high school Martin Luther King Jr. came to his school and talked about the civil rights movement. When Leon was a few years older he joined the civil rights movement even though his mom didn’t want him to. They would put popped inner tubes under their clothes so if a dog bit them they wouldn’t get hurt so much.

Today Leon works at a school as a custodian in Baltimore, Maryland. He has worked there for the last 30 years. In 1997 his story touched a women’s heart, Susan L. Roth and she helped him write a book called Leon’s story, that tells about what happened to him when he was growing up. She wanted to help him so his story could be shared with the world and not just the school he worked at.