Restrictions to Access

Use of audio materials may require production of listening copies.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Theodore Rosengarten Oral History Interviews and Other Recordings #5407, Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Transfered from the Southern Folklife Collection to the Southern Historical Collection in December 2008 (Acc. 101036).

Custodial History

Theodore Rosengarten's audiocassettes were damaged in flooding associated with Hurrican Hugo in 1990. The tapes were brought to Wilson Library and washed and re-recorded by Mike Caey and graduate student Patrick Sky. These copies were donated to the Southern Folklife collection. They were transfered to the Southern Historical Collection in 2008.

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• African American agricultural laborers--Alabama--History--20th century.
• African American farmers--Alabama.
• African American prisoners--Alabama.
• African Americans--Alabama--History--20th century.
• Agricultural laborers--Alabama--History--20th century.
• Agriculture--Alabama--History--20th century.
• Alabama Sharecroppers Union.
• Alabama--Race relations--20th century.
• Cobb family.
• Cobb, Ned, 1885-1973.
• Family--Alabama--Social life and customs.
• Oral history.
• Rosengarten, Theodore.
• Sharecroppers--Alabama.
• Tallapoosa County (Ala.)--History.
• Tallapoosa County (Ala.)--Social life and customs.

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.

The collection consists of 47 audiocassette tapes most of which contain interviews conducted by Theodore Rosengarten with Ned Cobb and other members of the Cobb family. These interviews were used as the basis of Rosengarten's book All God's Dangers, which describes Cobb's life as a sharecropper in east-central Alabama, his involvement with Alabama Sharecroppers Union, his 12-year imprisonment for shooting at sheriff's deputies intent on seizing a neighbor's livestock, and his life after leaving prison.

Rosengarten's original recordings consisted of more than 60 hours of interviews with Ned Cobb and an unknown number of hours of interviews with members of his family, including his children and second wife. The 47 tapes represent a portion of the original interviews. There are 18 tapes of interviews with Ned Cobb, 20 tapes of interviews with his family, and five tapes of interviews with unidentified persons. There is also a small number of tapes with music and other recordings.