Leon's Story

Tillage, Leon Walter

ISBN 10: 1680650017 ISBN 13: 9781680650013

Publisher: Turtleback Books, 2000

Synopsis

"Leon's Story is a powerful, wonderful thing!" -- Nikki Giovanni

"I remember that as a young boy I used to look in the mirror and I would curse my color, my blackness. But in those days they didn't call you "black." They didnt say "minority." They called us "colored" or "nigger." "

Leon Tillage grew up the son of a sharecropper in a small town in North Carolina. Told in vignettes, this is his story about walking four miles to the school for black children, and watching a school bus full of white children go past. It's about his being forced to sit in the balcony at the movie theater, hiding all night when the Klansmen came riding, and worse. Much worse.

But it is also the story of a strong family and the love that bound them together. And, finally, it's about working to change an oppressive existence by joining the civil rights movement. Edited from recorded interviews conducted by Susan L. Roth, Leon's story will stay with readers long after they have finished his powerful account.

"Leon's Story" is the winner of the 1998 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Nonfiction.

About this title

About the Author:

Leon Walter Tillage lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where he has worked for thirty years as a custodian at The Park School.

Susan L. Roth's many picture books include "Ishi's Tale of Lizard," which was an American Bookseller Pick of the Lists. She lives in Great Neck, New York.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Tillage, a black custodian in a Baltimore private school, reminisces about his childhood as a sharecropper's son in the South, and his youth as a civil-rights protester. He explains the mechanics of sharecropping and segregation, tells of his mistreatment and his father's murder at the hands of white teenagers out to ``have some fun,'' and relates his experiences with police dogs, fire hoses, and jail while following Martin Luther King's ideas of nonviolent protest. Tillage matter-of-factly recounts horrific events, using spare language that is laced with remarkable wisdom, compassion, and optimism. Such gentleness only gives his story more power, as he drives home the harder realities of his childhood. Although the collage illustrations are interesting, they are too moody and remote for the human spirit behind the words, and readers will regret Roth's decision--especially in light of the boy smiling so brightly on the cover--that ``even one photo would be too many for Leon Walter Tillage's words.'' (Memoir. 8-14) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Turtleback Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 1680650017
• ISBN 13: 9781680650013
• Binding: Library Binding
• Number of pages: 107