Rosengarten, Theodore.

Theodore Rosengarten (1944- ) graduated from Amherst College in 1966 and received his Ph.D. in American civilization from Harvard University in 1975. In 1969, while working on his Ph.D., Rosengarten researched the Alabama Sharecropper's Union in Tallapoosa County, Ala. In the course of his research, he met African American farmer Ned Cobb (1885-1973), a former member of the Union. He went on to record a series of oral histories with Cobb and his family. These interviews were edited and re-ordered by Rosengarten for his book, All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw (Knopf, 1974), which won the National Book award in 1975. Rosengarten went on to teach history at various institutions including the University of California, Irvine; the College of Charleston, and the University of South Carolina.

All God's Dangers describes Ned Cobb's life in Tallapoosa, Ala. His father was a former slave and tenant farmer. Ned Cobb began sharecropping on his own at age 19 and was eventually able to purchase his own land and become prosperous. In 1931, he joined the Alabama Sharecroppers Union, which was associated with the American Communist Party and fought for the rights of sharecroppers to sell their own crops and deal directly with banks. In 1932, sheriff's deputies came to seize livestock belonging to Cobb's neighbor, a fellow Union member. In the attempted to stop them, Cobb fired at the deputies, for which he was spent 12 years in prison. All God's Dangers also describes Cobb's life after leaving prison as he adjusted to the changes in argiculture that had occured and to living with his adult children.

From the guide to the Theodore Rosengarten Oral History Interviews and Other Recordings, 1971-1977, (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Library. Southern Historical Collection.)