This phrase comes up frequently in "Leon’s Story", an autobiography by a
sharecropper’s son. Born near Fuquay, North Carolina in 1936, Leon Walter
Tillage grew up under the Jim Crow laws that shaped his young life.
"While we kids worked in the hot summertime, we wondered why Mr. Johnson’s
kids never worked. He had children that were approximately our age and a
little older, and they would stay up under the pecan tree and drink lemonade
while everybody else’s kids were out there working. And we kids couldn’t
understand why we worked all the time and then at the end of the year we
didn’t have anything..."
"We kids wanted to know why we had to live in an old broken-down house. Why we
had to walk around with no new shoes. Why we couldn’t have a pretty car like
Mr. Johnson (who owned the farm) and them. ...and I couldn’t figure out why we
didn’t have some of these nice things. We knew somewhere something was wrong,
but we just couldn’t figure out what to do about it. Why in America we had to
be second best. Our parents would only say ‘Well, that’s the way it’s
intended, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. You’ll never equal up to the
whites.’
"Our parents’ attitudes were different in those days. If my son asked me
something now, I would try to explain things to him to my best ability, but in
those days you did not question your parents. They was very strict and they
would give you a quick answer and that was it. You didn’t feel bad about it,
you just didn’t ask them anymore, and that was the way it was."
Throughout the rest of the book, he describes all the other ways that it was.
The segregated elementary school that was four miles away - black children had
no bus, no running water, no cafeteria and a stove they had to stoke
themselves for heat and cooking lunch. The stores where blacks were not
allowed to try on the clothes, hats or jewelry they wished to buy...the
segregated movie theater, where blacks only had wooden crates crammed into the
balcony. The daily humiliations, rudeness and physical violence practiced on
them by nearly all whites...not to mention those sleepless nights when the
Klansmen were riding. He describes what he and other young people went through
when they dared to march for their civil rights.
Some readers may be thinking, so what? This has all been said before, and by
other, more important people in history. So what makes these recollections
(and a few people have charged that some are imperfect recollections) of a
Baltimore janitor so powerful? Why is this particular book, by this man, so
important?
There are a couple of different reasons to read this book. Most basically, it
is as it began, as an oral history taken from lectures Mr. Tillage has been
giving to students for years at the Park School in Baltimore. About four years
ago, out of all those students who went home to talk to their parents about
this special lecture, one was the child of local author/illustrator Susan L.
Roth.
"Well before she finished explaining, I felt that this was a story that should
be told to more than just the seventh grade at The Park School." writes Mrs.
Roth in her summation at the end of the book. "It seemed to me the world
should be listening to him." It took a couple of years to pull the project
together, but "Leon’s Story" was finally published by Farrar Straus Giroux on
October 29, 1997. Mrs. Roth supplied the art work.
On a higher level, this is a story of one man going through hard times, and
becoming...what he is today. In today’s culture, a harsh upbringing seems to
be an excuse for too many (and for all colors) to indulge in selfishness,
greediness, dope, lying, stealing, child abuse, rape or murder. How Leon
turned away from his generation’s equivalent of the thug life is, to me, as
important as what he went through under the horrors of Jim Crow.
"What amazes me most about Leon," writes Mrs. Roth, "is his prevailing
optimism. When I ask him how can stay as he is, he talks about his parents and
his strong religious upbringing. He talks of his parents’ strictness, and also
of their constant unconditional love, strength, and support. He speaks of his
mother’s difficult but successful struggle to keep the siblings together after
his father’s death."
‘But, Leon,’ I’ve said many times, ‘you have no bitterness. How come?’
"Leon smiles. ‘What good would that do? I know there were bad times,’ he says.
‘But you know, there were rejoicing times, too.’"
And this spirit comes through in the book. Kind, good people are mentioned -
the Clarks, a white couple who in Leon’s words, "treated us like people", and
saved the school kids from more than a few beatings - the Jewish store that
would let blacks try on clothes before they bought them - the policemen who
only went through the motions of beating the marchers, and let them run - the
Greek and Jewish business folks who let the marchers hide in their basements
from the Klan - two nameless white men who saved Leon from dogs that were
sicced on him by a drunk employer.
He describes how Christmas and a death in the family would bring everybody
together, black and white. The love and faith in his family, particularly from
his parents, was always there for him when he needed it. And Leon seems to
have found a great deal of fulfillment from marching for civil rights.
When recruiters were talking to the older high school students, explaining
what they hoped to accomplish, Leon says "They didn’t have to talk too much-we
were ready for a movement. Of course, we figured it would be a little violent,
but we didn’t know it was going to be rough as it was. Our parents would say
to us, "We don’t understand. Don’t you know you’re going to get killed for
listening to these people? You’re going to get beat up. What’s wrong with
you?’ then we would say to them, ‘We’re getting beat up now. We’re getting
killed now. So I’d rather get beat up for doing something or trying to change
things. I mean, why get beat up for nothing?’
And when they marched, they were vilified, pelted with excrement, beaten and
thrown in jail. Yet they still marched. "But our friends and relatives and
also the white man didn’t understand the way we felt and the way we thought
about the situation, which was we didn’t care who we sat beside." explains
Leon. "We didn’t care so much about walking in the front door. What we cared
about was who are you to tell us what we can and can’t do in America, the land
of freedom, the land of democracy. That is what we got beat up for. It was as
simple as that."
Susan Roth adds her perspective at the end of the book. "In telling his story,
Leon Tillage is continuing his peaceful protesting by helping to educate
people. We all need to know and to remember the history over and over again.
We all need to help the changes to continue."
Amen to that.
First published in Baltimore's Child, February, 1998. Quotes are mostly
from the book, and from telephone conversations with the illustrator and author.
"THAT WAS JUST THE WAY IT WAS"
by 
