Biography
William Leons was a UCLA graduate student, born about 1935 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and was arrested on July 30, 1961 after traveling from New Orleans to Jackson by Illinois Central train — one of the arrests recorded by the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and preserved in the Civil Rights Digital Library. The catalog establishes the arrest, the participation, and the individually identified police photograph, but not the court disposition, any transfer to Parchman, or the physical release date; those fields are unresolved pending county-jail, court, or penitentiary records.
