by George Dawson and Richard Glaubman, 2000, 2013
Excellent book. George Dawson, born in 1898, died at age 102, learned to read at age 98. Grew up on a farm in Marshall, Texas. Helped pick cotton at age 4. Oldest of children born to poor black farming couple in east Texas. He never got to go to school. When he turned 12, they had to send him to work on a white man’s farm to earn $1.50 a week, that his dad would pick up every other week, to help feed the family. He was so lonely – slept in a hot little shack out back by himself. Up until then, he was always cozy and cared for with his siblings.
The book opens with he and his dad, a very good, hardworking man, taking their wagon to the town of Marshall, TX, in 1908, to sell ribbon syrup. George gets a penny to pick out a piece of candy at the store. There is a commotion outside. They go out to see what it is. Pete, a young black man, is being dragged down the street by a bunch of white men, to be hung. He has been falsely accused by a white girl of raping her. She’s afraid of her father, because she is pregnant by her white boyfriend, and he wants to know who did this to her. George and his father watch as Pete is drug, kicking and proclaiming his innocence, to the makeshift hangman’s noose and hung. Six months later, the white girl has a white baby and no one ever acknowledges the fact that an innocent man was killed. So tragic! So horrible!
Page 12, he and his father are on their way home in the wagon after witnessing Pete’s hanging:
George says, “I will never work for or talk to a white person again,” I said with anger.
My father, who had seemed lost in his own thoughts, jerked his head and looked at me.
“That was wrong what they did, I said. “Those white folks are mean and nasty people.”
Papa swallowed hard and pulled up on the reins so that the wagon stopped.
He turned toward me. “No. You will work for white folks. You will talk to them.”
“But, Papa, what about Pete? He didn’t do nothing and they killed him.”
“Yeah, I know they had no cause for that, but–“
I cut my father off short, something I had never done.
“But they made Pete suffer so.”
“His suffering is over, son. It’s all over for Pete. You don’t need to worry for him.”
“They took his life. Pete was still young. He should of grown to be a man.”
“That’s so,” Papa said. “It was Pete’s time, though. His time had come and that’s that.”
My anger still had some hold on me and I swallowed hard.
Papa looked at me and said, “Some of those white folks was mean and nasty. Some were just scared. It doesn’t matter. You have no right to judge another human being. Don’t you ever forget.”
My father had spoken.
There was nothing to say. I didn’t know it then, but his words set the direction my life would take even till this day.”
George grew up in Texas during the KKK and Jim Crow laws. He learns from his father not to hold onto anger, to always do what is right, stay out of trouble. It serves him well. He loves his life and just works hard and takes each day as it comes. There are so many times he is treated unjustly, but he never retaliates or holds a grudge.
Once, he is watching a bunch of white cowboys try and break a horse. He watches them beat the horse, then beat it with an iron pipe, and he calls out that he can break the horse. He does, without any violence whatsoever. Now, he’s surrounded by a bunch of shamed cowboys, and they don’t like it. At the nick of time, the ranch supervisor comes out and saves him – orders the cowboys to leave. Thank God!
When he’s a young man, his mom and dad send him off. He rides the rails, and always works wherever he lands. One time, he rides the rails to Brownsville and crosses the bridge into Mexico. He is expecting Jim Crow laws so doesn’t understand when a Mexican man offers his drinking cup to drink from the fountain in the center of town. He doesn’t understand when he gets to go into a restaurant that serves all. He is experiencing that freedom for the first time. He stays a week in Mexico, going all the way to the ocean and fishing. But then he misses Texas and goes home. He leaves again after a few years and rides the rails all over the country and working wherever he lands, always the hardest work possible, because that is the only work a black man who cannot read can get. He builds levees in Louisiana, unloads barges in New Orleans (I think), builds the railroad, and roads.
It’s a beautiful book, but painful because of the racism he faces. When he is 65, he’s forced to retire from the dairy he was working at, and he starts gardening for white people. One of them was racist and put his lunch out on the porch to eat with the dogs. He refused to eat it, even though he was so hungry. She got mad at him when she saw he didn’t eat it. He told her he is a human being, not a dog. She paid him but said he needn’t come back again. He said that’s right, I don’t need to come back.
When he’s 98 and has out-lived 4 wives, he is sitting at home and someone drops off a flyer. He would have thrown it away but they explained it’s about adult education starting nearby. He takes them up on the offer and starts school at the age of 98. After 2 years, he is reading at a 3rd grade level. He’s an inspiration to all.
Richard Glaubman hears about it and decides to meet him and maybe write a book about him. They become good friends. Richard records George telling him the story of his life, and the book is like a conversation with a beloved grandpa telling you the amazing story of his life.
Richard likes to bring him books and news from the 1900’s to see what he remembers of those times. One of them was the Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925. George remembers nothing about it. Richard is amazed. Here’s what George says:
“But it wasn’t part of the America I knew. If it was, I would remember. There were a lot of trials then, but the only ones that colored folks noticed were when a colored man went on trial for raping a white woman. Those trials were made-up things, but the hangings to follow was all too real. No offense, son, but I don’t think we was too worried about what a white man was allowed to teach. A lot of us never had the chance to go to school anyway. At that time, I was heading out to see the country for myself. Didn’t hear a thing about it.”
Towards the end, Richard is telling George what he thought he was going to be writing and saying in the book at first, Page 252:
“I only focused on the story and I had a direction in mind for that. And at first, I asked the right questions and got just the answers that I wanted and expected. Then you gave me an answer that threw me off the track. I remembered that you had to leave your family at age twelve to work for less than a dollar fifty a week. I gave you the opportunity to tell me what you would do if you saw that man, Mr. Little, today. I was looking to give you the chance to voice your anger, to share your outrage about losing your childhood.”
“Except that I don’t have any anger.”
“I know. Your answer wasn’t what I expected and the rest of my questions didn’t make sense anymore. I had come to record a life of hardship and was not prepared to hear of gratitude. I lost my story and had to start over and return for another visit.”
Page 254-255, George is 102 now and he and Richard are talking about Columbine where 15 children were shot dead. “What do you think has gone wrong?”
“Its not just the children. It’s the grown-ups too. Some people are growing children, not raising children, and there’s a big difference.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, people grow hogs. You give them a place to live, give them all the food they need to keep growing, and make sure that they don’t get sick on you. With children you got to raise them. Of course, you feed and clothe them. But a parent has to take the time to teach them right and wrong. A parent has to discipline them. And a parent got to be there to listen to them, help them with their problems. I think most people do their best, but there are some parents these days that are growing children, not raising children.
“It’s a sad thing. These children have everything they need to grow up, but they are missing something inside. They must hurt awful bad and no one has shown them the way to live.”
Page 259, a little more wisdom for living:
“I tell people not to worry about things, not to worry about their lives. Things will be all right. People need to hear that. Life is good, just as it is. There isn’t anything I would change about my life.”
“People worry too much?”
“That’s right. Be happy for what you have. Help somebody else instead of worrying. I will make a person feel better. It’s good to be generous. It doesn’t take much to make a difference. Even the poorest man can just take the time to say hello; that can be a help. Have some sympathy for someone’s hard-luck story. It’s not about money. Give what you can. And if you have nothing, at least pray for somebody. Have good thoughts.”
When he went up to cities up north, like Cincinnati and Toledo, there were no Jim Crow laws. He went into a diner that he could see both black and white people in, but no one was eating. The white waiter handed him a menu and he couldn’t read it. He ordered things like hominy and grits and the waiter told him we don’t have that – order off the menu! He had to get up and leave. Usually he would have what other people were having – he’d point to it and say some of that. He always wished he could read.
This was the 2nd book for our Old Town Book Club 2023-2024. It is a book everyone in America, especially the South, should read. Please God. Let’s end this racism that is so ugly and haunts us and is still ruining lives. Please God.