Forrest, Leon

Leon Richard Forrest was born January 8, 1937 at Cook County Hospital in Chicago to Adelaide Green Forrest (1920-1964) and Leon Forrest, Sr. (1918-1971). His mother's family was Catholic and from New Orleans. His father's family were Baptists from Bolivar County, Mississippi. Leon Forrest Sr., who worked as a bartender on the Santa Fe railroad, moved to Chicago with his wife and grandmother in the late 1920s. Leon Forrest's great-grandmother Katie helped raise him until the age of nine. His father composed song lyrics and did some recording and his mother loved music and wrote short stories.

Forrest grew up in a middle-class African-American neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. He attended Wendell Phillips, an all African-American elementary school where he won the American Legion Award as the best male student in his class. A friend of Forrest's father let the family use his address so that Leon could attend the highly regarded and racially integrated Hyde Park High school. A mediocre student, Forrest excelled in creative writing. He went on to attend Wilson Junior College (later Kennedy-King). His parents divorced in 1956. When Forrest's mother remarried, she and her husband opened a liquor store where Leon worked as clerk and relief bartender while attending Roosevelt University. He took courses in journalism and playwriting at Wilson and Roosevelt and briefly studied accounting.

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