“Life Is So Good,” by George Dawson

Banned Book of the Month

Dominik Hofbauer at Unsplash

George Dawson was born in Marshall, Texas, in the northeast corner of the state near the Arkansas and Louisiana borders. His grandfather had been enslaved, as was his great-grandfather. Dawson left Marshall at age twenty-one and traveled extensively on the railroads throughout the United States, Mexico, and Canada. Nine years later, he returned to find his family members gone with no record of where to find them. Had there been a record, it would have meant nothing to George, who couldn’t read.

George met a literate woman, Elzenia Arnold; they married and moved to Dallas, where they had seven children. George helped them all with their homework though still unable to read. George began employment in Dallas, working for the city doing road repair. He later worked for a local dairy, where he worked for twenty-seven years before retiring in 1965.

At the age of ninety-eight, he was working door-to-door for an adult learning center when he acknowledged to an instr…