Unnamed Census Taker

In "Go Down, Moses" and again in the chapter with that title in Go Down, Moses, the worker for the 1940 U.S. census who visits Samuel Beauchamp in the penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, is described as a "spectacled young white man" with a "broad census taker's portfolio" (256, 351). He is a "year or two younger" than Butch Beauchamp, and he has probably never been wealthy, since the shoes Beauchamp wears are described as "better than the census taker had ever owned" (257, 352).