Saturday, January 06, 2007
Book Review - Leon's Story - Just incredile! YA
First they were slaves; that is unpaid human beings of a darker hue who were owned by white men and women throughout the United States. The Civil War initiated the end to the ridiculous, degrading and humiliating practice only to begin another, sharecropping. Leon Walter Tillage has been a custodian in the Park School in Baltimore for “going on thirty years,” and is the son of a sharecropper from North Carolina. Tillage’s ability to relate the horrors of this replacement practice in his book Leon’s Story emanates from his heart and is absorbed soulfully by his readers who experience the poverty and degradation long after they close the cover on Tillage’s literary achievement.
Mr. Johnson owned the farm on which the Tillage’s lived. The sharecroppers had to share one half of everything they produced with Johnson. “So, let’s say Mr. Johnson gave my father ten acres of tobacco, ten acres of alfalfa and ten acres of corn – whatever – to work. Then at the end of a year, when it came time to sell the crops and settle up, Mr. Johnson would get five acres of each crop, and my father would get the other five.” That sounds fair, doesn’t it? But now consider that no one in the Tillage family could read, write, or calculate the figures Mr. Johnson creates. Mr. Johnson would also set up a credit for the Tillages at the corner store. This gave the family access to food prior to the crop yield, but again, they had no knowledge as to their total. At the end of the growing season the debt was paid to the store first. If the bill was greater than the financial rewards, Mr. Johnson covered the excess and the family began the next year in debt. The thought of getting an education was mute, for the jobs offered to blacks were not those that required a degree, guaranteeing the sharecropping business a long and prosperous life. “Education didn’t mean much to my father; the way they looked at it in those days was, you were colored, so all you needed to learn was how to read your name, write your name, stuff like that, but why sit in school? You’ll never get a job in the bank, or you’ll never get a job down in the drugstore, so it was a waste of time for him.”
Sharecropper homes were akin to slave quarters. There was no running water or electricity. Leon’s mother cooked for the Johnsons and brought back a treat at the close of her day. Pot lickers were the remains from the boiling of collard and other greens “mom’ cooked for the owner’s family. She would bring her treasure back home in the evening and create a soup full of vitamins derived from the well cooked vegetables.
The movies were the most important part of the week. “The white people sat at the bottom in what looked like nice soft chairs, and sometimes we sat on Coca-Cola crates because they couldn’t fit that many chairs in the balcony. When the lights were on (at intermission), the white kids would throw stuff – popcorn and things like that – up into the balcony, and you didn’t want to get hit.”
Klansmen mentality was intolerant of the fact that black people breathed. Whites didn’t have to don a hood to illustrate their contempt and disrespect for blacks. Leon and his family witness the horrific death of his father at the hands of an obsessed and twisted young man. It is the most painful part of his history and will cause the most callused reader to weep. Justice was served with an apology from the youth’s father, for the young life form refused to extend his regrets to low lives.
Tiny in appearance and powerful in truth, Tillage reminds his readers of a time not so far away. We would be fools to convince ourselves that such injustices could never occur again in our civilized America, for they continue with slums. As long as there are people living in poverty, children going to bed hungry, and the people of wealth at the helm, slavery and sharecropping remain under another title.
Mr. Johnson owned the farm on which the Tillage’s lived. The sharecroppers had to share one half of everything they produced with Johnson. “So, let’s say Mr. Johnson gave my father ten acres of tobacco, ten acres of alfalfa and ten acres of corn – whatever – to work. Then at the end of a year, when it came time to sell the crops and settle up, Mr. Johnson would get five acres of each crop, and my father would get the other five.” That sounds fair, doesn’t it? But now consider that no one in the Tillage family could read, write, or calculate the figures Mr. Johnson creates. Mr. Johnson would also set up a credit for the Tillages at the corner store. This gave the family access to food prior to the crop yield, but again, they had no knowledge as to their total. At the end of the growing season the debt was paid to the store first. If the bill was greater than the financial rewards, Mr. Johnson covered the excess and the family began the next year in debt. The thought of getting an education was mute, for the jobs offered to blacks were not those that required a degree, guaranteeing the sharecropping business a long and prosperous life. “Education didn’t mean much to my father; the way they looked at it in those days was, you were colored, so all you needed to learn was how to read your name, write your name, stuff like that, but why sit in school? You’ll never get a job in the bank, or you’ll never get a job down in the drugstore, so it was a waste of time for him.”
Sharecropper homes were akin to slave quarters. There was no running water or electricity. Leon’s mother cooked for the Johnsons and brought back a treat at the close of her day. Pot lickers were the remains from the boiling of collard and other greens “mom’ cooked for the owner’s family. She would bring her treasure back home in the evening and create a soup full of vitamins derived from the well cooked vegetables.
The movies were the most important part of the week. “The white people sat at the bottom in what looked like nice soft chairs, and sometimes we sat on Coca-Cola crates because they couldn’t fit that many chairs in the balcony. When the lights were on (at intermission), the white kids would throw stuff – popcorn and things like that – up into the balcony, and you didn’t want to get hit.”
Klansmen mentality was intolerant of the fact that black people breathed. Whites didn’t have to don a hood to illustrate their contempt and disrespect for blacks. Leon and his family witness the horrific death of his father at the hands of an obsessed and twisted young man. It is the most painful part of his history and will cause the most callused reader to weep. Justice was served with an apology from the youth’s father, for the young life form refused to extend his regrets to low lives.
Tiny in appearance and powerful in truth, Tillage reminds his readers of a time not so far away. We would be fools to convince ourselves that such injustices could never occur again in our civilized America, for they continue with slums. As long as there are people living in poverty, children going to bed hungry, and the people of wealth at the helm, slavery and sharecropping remain under another title.
# posted by Bite Me Kissimmee @ 2:37 PM 
