Leon’s Story
by Leon Walter Tillage
Publication Date: Aug 11, 2008
List Price: $14.95
Format: Hardcover, 107 pages
Classification: Fiction
Target Age Group: Middle Grade
ISBN13: 9781439518588
Imprint: Square Fish
Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
Parent Company: Holtzbrinck Publishing Group
Hardcover Description:
”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 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.