All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw

All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw is a 1974 work of oral history by American historian Theodore Rosengarten. Based on four years of interviews, the book narrates the life of illiterate African-American sharecropper “Nate Shaw” (real name Ned Cobb) in Nate’s own words.

Theodore Rosengarten, the author of this book, was a Harvard graduate student who traveled to Alabama in 1968 to examine a defunct labor group. Someone advised him to contact Shaw, whose true name was Ned Cobb. What came out of Cobb's mouth was a deep and complicated social history, a story that effectively takes us from enslavement to Selma through the eyes of an impoverished but articulate and unbroken black man.

Reading it will teach you more about wheat, guano, agricultural equipment, bugs, cow slaughter, and mule management than you ever imagined imaginable. This is also a detailed account of how whites deceived and abused blacks throughout the first part of the twentieth century. "I heard Abraham Lincoln emancipated the African people years ago", Cobb recalls, "but it didn't amount to a hill of beans". "Any manner they could deny a Negro was a celebration to "em", he says of his white neighbors. This book isn't often easy to read, but it's the genuine deal, a must-read for everyone.

Detailed information:

Author: Theodore Rosengarten
Language: English

Genre: Memoir
Link to read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/226701