Ned Cobb
Ned Cobb (1885-1973) was a tenant farmer born in Tallapoosa County in
Alabama. His autobiography was pseudonymously published in
the book All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw, as told to Theodore Rosengarten.
Cobb grew up with a father who had been a slave and had been emotionally and physically scarred from his past experiences. His father would continuously take his emotional frustration out on his family, continuously beating on the ones he loved to take his mind off his past experiences of being a slave.
Cobb knew he needed to break away from this unhealthy lifestyle so he joined the Sharecropper Union in 1931 to fight for justice for black people and against exploitation. Cobb was a hard worker and was not going to let the white dominant race run his life; he continued to fight against unfair treatment of tenant farmers by starting a tenant farmers union. Cobb continued to climb the ladder of success from wage labor to sharecropper. He was finally able to own his own crops and land. He focused on growing cotton.
Cobb gained great recognition and praise, for as a black man he was making a name for himself. He managed to maintain his farm even through the natural disasters such as the boll weevil epidemic and the collapse of cotton prices. In 1931 when the Communist Party arrived in Alabama, Cobb was profoundly impressed because he was aware that the party was defending the Scottsboro Boys, nine young black men accused of raping two white women.
Cobb continued to do what he did best and that was sharecrop and manage his crops — that is until December 1932, when a sheriff tried to take the home and livestock of one of Cobb's friends. Cobb defended his friend and in turn was involved in a shootout in which he was wounded and arrested. Cobb was sentenced to thirteen years in jail because he refused the lighter sentence that was offered to him. He was released in 1945.
References
- Wormer, Richard. “The Biography of Ned Cobb.” Jim Crow Stories. 26 September 2006.
- Rosengarten, Theodore. All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226727745.
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