A Sharecropper's Son

A seven-year-old boy. A grown man's burden. An unforgettable American story.You know the history of the Jim Crow South, but you have never heard it told like this. You have read about sharecropping in textbooks, but you have never felt the weight of a mule's collar in a child's hands, or watched a boy too small to reach the plow handles carve a straight furrow through a cotton field. A Sharecropper's Son takes you inside the life that history forgot.In this deeply personal memoir, Roger Leaks, Jr. chronicles the extraordinary resilience of his father, Roger Leaks, who was thrust into the role of primary provider for his family at the age of seven after his parents' marriage fractured and his mother returned to the sharecropping fields of Chappells, South Carolina. Set against the backdrop of segregation, systemic inequality, and the lingering scars of slavery, this is a story of a boy who fashioned shoes from cardboard, survived on pork grease and hoecakes, and refused to be broken by a system designed to keep him down. It is also a story of community, of landowners and neighbors, of unwritten codes and quiet acts of defiance that shaped an entire way of life in the rural South.Inside these pages, you will discover:¿ The untold realities of Black sharecropping families from the 1920s through the Jim Crow era¿ How one family's faith, creativity, and grit forged a path out of generational hardship¿ A richly detailed portrait of rural Southern life that textbooks have overlookedThis is not just a memoir. It is a legacy of survival, faith, and the relentless pursuit of a better future.