What do you think?
Rate this book
All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw
All God's Dangers won the National Book Award in 1975.
"On a cold January morning in 1969, a young white graduate student from Massachusetts, stumbling along the dim trail of a long-defunct radical organization of the 1930s, the Alabama Sharecropper Union, heard that there was a survivor and went looking for him. In a rural settlement 20 miles or so from Tuskegee in east-central Alabama he found him—the man he calls Nate Shaw—a black man, 84 years old, in full possession of every moment of his life and every facet of its meaning. . . . Theodore Rosengarten, the student, had found a black Homer, bursting with his black Odyssey and able to tell it with awesome intellectual power, with passion, with the almost frightening power of memory in a man who could neither read nor write but who sensed that the substance of his own life, and a million other black lives like his, were the very fiber of the nation's history." —H. Jack Geiger, New York Times Book Review
"On a cold January morning in 1969, a young white graduate student from Massachusetts, stumbling along the dim trail of a long-defunct radical organization of the 1930s, the Alabama Sharecropper Union, heard that there was a survivor and went looking for him. In a rural settlement 20 miles or so from Tuskegee in east-central Alabama he found him—the man he calls Nate Shaw—a black man, 84 years old, in full possession of every moment of his life and every facet of its meaning. . . . Theodore Rosengarten, the student, had found a black Homer, bursting with his black Odyssey and able to tell it with awesome intellectual power, with passion, with the almost frightening power of memory in a man who could neither read nor write but who sensed that the substance of his own life, and a million other black lives like his, were the very fiber of the nation's history." —H. Jack Geiger, New York Times Book Review
600 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1974
170 people are currently reading
2941 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
January 25, 2012
This book is absolutely incredible and everyone, especially Americans, should read it. No offense, but the reader who makes the comment that the book, told in Nate Shaw's voice, was confusing because of the colloquialisms should, in my humble opinion, be ignored. I admit, it was a bit jarring at first, but then after a while it's like having his voice inside your head and that is the whole point. You get to know how this man's mind works and you see the society through his eyes. This man tells it like it is and the truths that he comes to realize as a poor illiterate farmer in Alabama are those that many in this country do not want to look at to this day. His voice is a resounding trumpet for the oppressed and I don't see how any that have heard it could help but question the immoral foundation that this country was built upon. He came to the conclusion of the necessity for a socialist society without ever having read a book on the subject, just by keeping his eyes open and being lead by the compass of his soul. It's powerful stuff and should be taught alongside Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Brown, and James Baldwin. It is brilliant social critique in its purest form. The man was colossal and his story is epic.
November 5, 2022
The author spent many hours recording interviews with Nate Shaw, an 84 year old former sharecropper who was imprisoned for his union activities. Shaw apparently had a phenomenal memory and could recall every minute detail of his life. This was an interesting book, but I wish that some of this detail had been edited out.
I do not recommend that you listen to the audiobook edition. The author said that he had not reproduced southern or Black dialects in the book, but the narrator of the audiobook ignored this and created an incomprehensible mess. It took about an hour of listening before I could understand the narrator.
I do not recommend that you listen to the audiobook edition. The author said that he had not reproduced southern or Black dialects in the book, but the narrator of the audiobook ignored this and created an incomprehensible mess. It took about an hour of listening before I could understand the narrator.
November 6, 2017
This review contains spoilers.
This review is quite long. Here is a tl;dr: Ned Cobb (1885-1973), also known as Nate Shaw, was a black farmer in Alabama. Ned succeeded in life despite mistreatment and the horrible racism of the American South during the Jim Crow years. He fought constantly against the blackguards who hated his skin. The man is an inspiration.
And here's a little something I wrote after reading this book and listening to too much Dylan, Guthrie—father and son—and Seeger.
Talkin' Ned Cobb Blues
Ned Cobb was a good man who hid his name for no good reason
when a white college kid paid a visit in the middle of his busy season,
and said,
"I'm recording the voices of poor ol' boys and maybe you'd like to be heard."
"Yes, sir, the voice of the blowin' wind is too soft for Tallapoosa."
He'd been bewildered and confused by three hundred years of abuse.
Cursed into the womb by his worn out father,
Ned was taught to go no farther
than the plow at his shoes.
So he pushed that dirt
while plucking the feathers from the absurd Jim Crow bird.
"I'm not afraid of Alabama! Hear the howlin' train that carries my new bosses home! Walk in the sour field they gave me in the corner! In the corner, turn around and listen—my masters' tongues whip and moan.
"My cotton was stolen for a fistful of nickels by those foul, fickle bastards. The Union helped us weave ourselves some dignity from the tatters of our dusty, brown souls. So we did, and my loyalty to anything else ain't never comin' back.
"And now I'm old. By the same rail track, in the rusty arms of this wooden barn, I remember. The white men said, 'That nigger ain't a thing more than his daddy was, but a displaced slave too bold.'
"But I came up. I don't hold anything against those who treated me ill, though they might hate me still. I was the man I wanted to be, the man my masters didn't want to say was real."
Photo taken by me in rural North Carolina.
And now for my full review. I have done my best to cite the page number of all quotations from the book.
5/5 — Somebody Got to Stand Up
Nate Shaw is a name once buried deeply in history’s annals. Slowly, since the man’s departure from this world in 1973, his story has found its way to a more proper place in the records of rural America. Nate Shaw was not a great political figure or a leader of a revolution. Nor did he lead an economic transition or attend a technological change. Shaw, though very intelligent, was illiterate with no formal education. However, Nate Shaw deserves his narrative to be heard not in spite of, but due to the fact of his normality. He lived in the South during a time of sweeping changes in social and agricultural terms. These factors had long been a part of the rural South. A change in any of them meant a change in life for all—agriculture affected everyone. Nate Shaw played a role in this particular act of the American saga. His story is gripping, heartbreaking, and important to history. The story is his own, but it is also the story of many black people. The only difference is that Nate Shaw was fortunate in finding ways to make a lasting impact on those around him, and for the future.
The first of his fortunes was the remarkable life he led. The second, which he probably considered his greatest blessing, was the opportunity to tell the story of that life to the world. This was achieved by way of Theodore Rosengarten, a student and author of history. Rosengarten’s 1974 book All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw serves as Nate’s autobiography. Unable to record his own narrative, Nate delighted Rosengarten through dozens of interviews, laying out his life for future publication. After thirty-one sessions and more than 120 hours of discussion, Nate had imparted the core of his plot, Rosengarten implying that Nate—a wealth of information—surely had more to give. Regardless of that fact, Nate Shaw’s autobiography stuns the reader with his story. Rosengarten merely acted as transcriber and editor.
Nate was already fifteen as the twentieth century was born. His short life had been dominated by economic and emotional hardship. His mother died when he was nine, and his brother a year later. Living by the order of white men, his family had always been poor. Nate first learned of the realities of race in America by way of his older relatives, many of whom had lived before slaves were officially freed, or, as Nate remembered his kin calling the event, “the surrender” (7). As soon as Nate was able to think for himself, he saw firsthand the disadvantages before him. Compounding his adverse fate was his father, named Hayes, the man who influenced Nate more than anything else.
Nate’s mother was a kindly woman, humble and weak, but willing to stand up to her abusive husband in defense of her children. Nate never recalls hunger while his mother was alive. Afterward, however, due to his father, he and his siblings often survived on small, tasteless meals, with bread their main sustenance. His father was a selfish man, taking not only all the meat the family had but also every bit of labor available—utilizing the only resources he could draw from, his second wife and several children. Hayes' wife and sons were forced to work in the fields with expectations of work equivalent to adult men. Hayes paid little respect to any system of morals. He cheated on his wives constantly, beat all members of his family, and avoided work as much as possible. In all of this came Nate’s first lesson from his father: moral principles. Nate had a natural awareness and sentimentality about him that enabled the growth of ethics despite such a harsh childhood. He understood the importance of integrity by defining himself as a man unlike his father.
The other lesson Nate’s father unwittingly instilled in him was that of strong work ethics. Nate was in the field at nine years old. He quickly learned the sacrifice, and therefore, value, of hard work. He knew that he was a black man in a white man’s world—his labor was perhaps his lone asset. There is another facet to this second lesson, however; Nate also learned just how dubious and genuinely dangerous white men could be. It was the first decades of the twentieth century, when segregation and racial exploitation were common throughout the United States, and the norm in most of the South. Nate remembers his father twice being stripped of his money and property. For example, his father kept cattle that a white man, Mr. Albee, owned by way of credit given to Hayes. Mr. Albee agreed to let Hayes sell one of the cows to earn a little profit. As soon as Hayes did, however, Mr. Albee accused him of selling “mortgaged property” (28). Events such as these also lent Nate insight to the business side of farming. If his father had acquired a written statement from Mr. Albee allowing him to sell the cow, he would have been unable to trick Hayes. Such experiences helped Nate to understand the dangers that unscrupulous white men could inflict in such a prejudiced world, legally and otherwise. Though Nate’s father was rough, even cruel at times, and generally unprincipled, Nate came from his troubled youth with wisdom.
Nate’s suspicion of corrupt white men carried over into adulthood. As tenant farmers, he and his father had been misused by such men. Often, landowners such as a Mr. Clay would hire black families. They would be given crops to manage, but received little to none of the yield. For Hayes and Nate, there was nothing to be done about the situation. It was “just somethin to keep us alive while he was workin for nothin” (30). In all of this, Nate witnessed the realities of the rural South, both agriculturally and socially. White men often controlled blacks as though they were still in bondage, no better in their eyes than chattel. It was extremely difficult for blacks to earn any type of true financial independence in Alabama because they would rely on the mercy of the landowning whites. Nate remarked often of his father: “He wasn’t a slave but he lived like one” (33). The truth of life in the rural South for African Americans was all too well known to Nate even by the time he was a teenager. The mentality that resulted affected the remainder of his life.
Nate worked under his father until he married at the age of twenty-one in 1906. He had learned much about farming from his work under various white landowners. Unfortunately, Nate was sometimes unable to practice what he knew were the best farming methods due to his employers’ intransigence. Nate never received a proper education, but had acquired a great knowledge of land, crops, animals, and farming techniques. He knew how to fertilize, where to plant the right crops, and how to produce an ample yield. Whenever he tried to apply his wealth of knowledge, intolerable landowners often suppressed him.
Nate obviously held a deep resentment to his racist, dishonest employers. But this is not to say that he was a racist himself. Nate practiced unwavering morals throughout his life. He disliked the men not due to their being members of the white race, but because they utilized that attribute to their benefit in an entrenched system of racial inequality in the rural South. Nate considered himself fair to everyone. It is a large stain of shame on the history of rural America that such a man was burdened with this undue lot in life.
But, here is where Nate’s story finds its greatest worth. Despite his subjugation, it proved impossible to stop Nate. His employers constantly tried to take advantage of his ignorance and lack of education. Even after he became an independent man, he was in debt to his white landowning bosses. They attempted many times to orchestrate his financial ruin. Contracts would be written with great disadvantage for Nate; he would be given the worst parcel of land on which to grow crops necessary to his survival; his status as a black man was the basis for incessant abuse in the market, on the roads, and in the fields. In the face of all this, however, Nate remained a dignified black farmer. Due to his hard work and great knowledge of land and animals, his money slowly accrued. Naturally, any white racists who previously held enmity for Nate found themselves with a greater hatred after his financial success. Nate saw the way white men reacted to his material prosperity. They didn’t want a black man to possess anything they didn’t have, but Nate did: excess meat, new buggies and mules, and two new cars in the late 1920s. He recalled, “The white people was afraid—I’ll say this: they was afraid the money would make the nigger act too much like his own man. Nigger has a mind to do what’s best for hisself, same as a white man. If he had some money, he just might do it” (264).
Nate relied on cotton for the bulk of his profit, but supplementary income from other jobs helped him achieve economic independence. He visited town once a week to sell butter, milk, eggs, vegetables, and so forth; he also often hauled lumber, kept bees for honey, and wove baskets to sell. During World War I, cotton prices rose to a new high, and he prospered further. After the war and throughout the 1920s, prices dropped to a fraction of what they had been. It was a tough time for rural farmers, especially once the Great Depression began. Many of Nate’s friends and acquaintances left Alabama for better hopes farther north. Nate never considered leaving. He knew a great deal about farming, but little else, so his chances were better in Alabama than elsewhere.
Here is where his story takes a stark turn—where his narrative reaches the proverbial climax for the main character. In 1931, Nate heard of a union dedicated to farmers such as him, the Sharecroppers Union. Nate sensed the winds of change whipping around him, and decided he should look into such a group. “And I knowed what was goin on was a turnabout on the southern man, white and colored; it was somethin’ unusual. And I heard about it bein a organization for the poor class of people—that’s just what I wanted to get into, too” (296). Whites were immediately concerned about such an organization. Nate was warned not to join, but did so anyway—he saw it as a real opportunity for change. As far as Nate could see, the Sharecroppers Union had no strict agenda or plans other than to guide black farmers in supporting one another through times of trouble. That was enough to convince Nate that he needed to be a part of the union; it was more than anyone else had done for black farmers. With communist leanings, the group met with collective support as their basic tenet. This was a major step for Alabama sharecroppers. Afraid of their white employers, and paranoid about one another, blacks had previously been unable to effect change. As more joined the Sharecroppers Union, they began to form an identity. As they came together, so, too, did their common desire for true freedom.
The union met secretly. Nate was unable to recall the name of the “teacher,” or the leader of the union meetings, but his words motivated Nate. Throughout his life, Nate had witnessed the dreadful condition of the black man in the rural South. At this time, he grasped a sense of great urgency for change. He had stood up humbly and respectfully to his would-be oppressors since he came into adulthood, but this union would be his vehicle for a more definite remedy. Succinctly put, “Somebody got to stand up” (307).
The meetings began to thrive, which the white community inevitably discovered. They were afraid of the effects such a union would have on blacks. It was an unjust and discriminatory fear when simply measured by the nature of the white population's concern; but, the fear was justified in terms of the nascent social change detected. As we have clearly seen through Nate’s eyes, for decades after slavery was officially claimed abolished, blacks in Alabama maintained no higher status and were treated just as poorly by many whites as they had been under slavery. As the Sharecroppers Union began to have influence in Nate Shaw’s Alabama, it met head-on with this deeply established social, cultural, and economic system. Fear was the prime motivator on both sides—blacks were afraid of white men’s undue and unchecked authority; whites feared collapse of the social hierarchy and their supremacy therein. It was a time of great anxiety and concern for the future.
For Nate and his community, these new emotions and the old, deep-seated animosities converged in 1932 to form the apex of Nate’s story. His friend, Virgil Jones, was a poor sharecropper, in debt but always hardworking to sustain his family. Jones’ employer had dispatched the sheriff to collect his stock. Essentially, all of his property and means of livelihood were to be repossessed. However, this was not solely a matter of business but an act of aggression and intimidation toward members of the Sharecroppers Union. In such seizures, Nate knew that he and others would follow. He decided to stand up to the sheriff by attempting to politely negotiate the situation. This proved impossible. Both parties left after a brief altercation, only to confront one another later in the day. A shootout occurred in which three shotgun blasts to Nate’s hindquarters impelled self-defense. He fired back, but injured no one as the police ran away.
After his arrest, the International Labor Defense, which was associated with the Sharecroppers Union, sent a lawyer to defend Shaw. Nate knew it was virtually hopeless. He witnessed the injustice that plagued the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine young black men falsely accused of raping two white women. Some of the women recanted their stories, and there was no medical evidence of rape. However, as Nate points out, the legal system was not inclined to provide justice for blacks. Like the Scottsboro Boys, his full story was not allowed to be heard, and he did not receive a fair trail. Nate was sentenced to twelve years in prison. He was offered parole on the terms that he would turn over his farm and leave Tallapoosa. Nate refused. He served his full sentence instead. Nate Shaw returned to his farm in 1945. Enduring opposition for years afterward, he continued to succeed by his ingenuity and steadfastness.
The consequences of Nate Shaw’s story are heavy and abundant. By cooperating in a scheme of activist populism, he represents the struggle of thousands of poor black agriculturalists in the rural American South. With no political means of defending their inherent rights as full citizens, blacks had to take up the cause by their own efforts. Men such as Nate Shaw were fundamental to any type of movement that attempted social change. While incident over Virgil Jones’ property was taking place, he stood to face his white oppressors when the police came; everyone else ran. Nate was not afraid. He knew that he was right, that the actions of a Jim Crow Alabama were wrong, and he blocked attempts to suppression and manipulation. Nate had acted with this sense of valid defiance all of his life: tacitly as a boy, explicitly as a man.
Most black farmers did not succeed financially as did Nate Shaw. In this, we see his tenacity and skill. However, his plight for equality was common to all black farmers in the South. For some, it was a struggle of achieving parity; others were simply trying for the ability to freely strive for that goal. In most cases, that hope was lost. Nate’s father was born a slave and, as Nate saw it, died a slave. Many chose not to fight. They lived in a world hostile to their being, and they acquiesced to longstanding racism. A few, like Nate Shaw, used any scarce assets they had, namely their bodies and minds. For such men in Alabama, hard work, self-respect, and community efforts like the Sharecroppers Union served as their instruments for change.
This review is quite long. Here is a tl;dr: Ned Cobb (1885-1973), also known as Nate Shaw, was a black farmer in Alabama. Ned succeeded in life despite mistreatment and the horrible racism of the American South during the Jim Crow years. He fought constantly against the blackguards who hated his skin. The man is an inspiration.
And here's a little something I wrote after reading this book and listening to too much Dylan, Guthrie—father and son—and Seeger.
Talkin' Ned Cobb Blues
Ned Cobb was a good man who hid his name for no good reason
when a white college kid paid a visit in the middle of his busy season,
and said,
"I'm recording the voices of poor ol' boys and maybe you'd like to be heard."
"Yes, sir, the voice of the blowin' wind is too soft for Tallapoosa."
He'd been bewildered and confused by three hundred years of abuse.
Cursed into the womb by his worn out father,
Ned was taught to go no farther
than the plow at his shoes.
So he pushed that dirt
while plucking the feathers from the absurd Jim Crow bird.
"I'm not afraid of Alabama! Hear the howlin' train that carries my new bosses home! Walk in the sour field they gave me in the corner! In the corner, turn around and listen—my masters' tongues whip and moan.
"My cotton was stolen for a fistful of nickels by those foul, fickle bastards. The Union helped us weave ourselves some dignity from the tatters of our dusty, brown souls. So we did, and my loyalty to anything else ain't never comin' back.
"And now I'm old. By the same rail track, in the rusty arms of this wooden barn, I remember. The white men said, 'That nigger ain't a thing more than his daddy was, but a displaced slave too bold.'
"But I came up. I don't hold anything against those who treated me ill, though they might hate me still. I was the man I wanted to be, the man my masters didn't want to say was real."
Photo taken by me in rural North Carolina.
And now for my full review. I have done my best to cite the page number of all quotations from the book.
5/5 — Somebody Got to Stand Up
Nate Shaw is a name once buried deeply in history’s annals. Slowly, since the man’s departure from this world in 1973, his story has found its way to a more proper place in the records of rural America. Nate Shaw was not a great political figure or a leader of a revolution. Nor did he lead an economic transition or attend a technological change. Shaw, though very intelligent, was illiterate with no formal education. However, Nate Shaw deserves his narrative to be heard not in spite of, but due to the fact of his normality. He lived in the South during a time of sweeping changes in social and agricultural terms. These factors had long been a part of the rural South. A change in any of them meant a change in life for all—agriculture affected everyone. Nate Shaw played a role in this particular act of the American saga. His story is gripping, heartbreaking, and important to history. The story is his own, but it is also the story of many black people. The only difference is that Nate Shaw was fortunate in finding ways to make a lasting impact on those around him, and for the future.
The first of his fortunes was the remarkable life he led. The second, which he probably considered his greatest blessing, was the opportunity to tell the story of that life to the world. This was achieved by way of Theodore Rosengarten, a student and author of history. Rosengarten’s 1974 book All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw serves as Nate’s autobiography. Unable to record his own narrative, Nate delighted Rosengarten through dozens of interviews, laying out his life for future publication. After thirty-one sessions and more than 120 hours of discussion, Nate had imparted the core of his plot, Rosengarten implying that Nate—a wealth of information—surely had more to give. Regardless of that fact, Nate Shaw’s autobiography stuns the reader with his story. Rosengarten merely acted as transcriber and editor.
Nate was already fifteen as the twentieth century was born. His short life had been dominated by economic and emotional hardship. His mother died when he was nine, and his brother a year later. Living by the order of white men, his family had always been poor. Nate first learned of the realities of race in America by way of his older relatives, many of whom had lived before slaves were officially freed, or, as Nate remembered his kin calling the event, “the surrender” (7). As soon as Nate was able to think for himself, he saw firsthand the disadvantages before him. Compounding his adverse fate was his father, named Hayes, the man who influenced Nate more than anything else.
Nate’s mother was a kindly woman, humble and weak, but willing to stand up to her abusive husband in defense of her children. Nate never recalls hunger while his mother was alive. Afterward, however, due to his father, he and his siblings often survived on small, tasteless meals, with bread their main sustenance. His father was a selfish man, taking not only all the meat the family had but also every bit of labor available—utilizing the only resources he could draw from, his second wife and several children. Hayes' wife and sons were forced to work in the fields with expectations of work equivalent to adult men. Hayes paid little respect to any system of morals. He cheated on his wives constantly, beat all members of his family, and avoided work as much as possible. In all of this came Nate’s first lesson from his father: moral principles. Nate had a natural awareness and sentimentality about him that enabled the growth of ethics despite such a harsh childhood. He understood the importance of integrity by defining himself as a man unlike his father.
The other lesson Nate’s father unwittingly instilled in him was that of strong work ethics. Nate was in the field at nine years old. He quickly learned the sacrifice, and therefore, value, of hard work. He knew that he was a black man in a white man’s world—his labor was perhaps his lone asset. There is another facet to this second lesson, however; Nate also learned just how dubious and genuinely dangerous white men could be. It was the first decades of the twentieth century, when segregation and racial exploitation were common throughout the United States, and the norm in most of the South. Nate remembers his father twice being stripped of his money and property. For example, his father kept cattle that a white man, Mr. Albee, owned by way of credit given to Hayes. Mr. Albee agreed to let Hayes sell one of the cows to earn a little profit. As soon as Hayes did, however, Mr. Albee accused him of selling “mortgaged property” (28). Events such as these also lent Nate insight to the business side of farming. If his father had acquired a written statement from Mr. Albee allowing him to sell the cow, he would have been unable to trick Hayes. Such experiences helped Nate to understand the dangers that unscrupulous white men could inflict in such a prejudiced world, legally and otherwise. Though Nate’s father was rough, even cruel at times, and generally unprincipled, Nate came from his troubled youth with wisdom.
Nate’s suspicion of corrupt white men carried over into adulthood. As tenant farmers, he and his father had been misused by such men. Often, landowners such as a Mr. Clay would hire black families. They would be given crops to manage, but received little to none of the yield. For Hayes and Nate, there was nothing to be done about the situation. It was “just somethin to keep us alive while he was workin for nothin” (30). In all of this, Nate witnessed the realities of the rural South, both agriculturally and socially. White men often controlled blacks as though they were still in bondage, no better in their eyes than chattel. It was extremely difficult for blacks to earn any type of true financial independence in Alabama because they would rely on the mercy of the landowning whites. Nate remarked often of his father: “He wasn’t a slave but he lived like one” (33). The truth of life in the rural South for African Americans was all too well known to Nate even by the time he was a teenager. The mentality that resulted affected the remainder of his life.
Nate worked under his father until he married at the age of twenty-one in 1906. He had learned much about farming from his work under various white landowners. Unfortunately, Nate was sometimes unable to practice what he knew were the best farming methods due to his employers’ intransigence. Nate never received a proper education, but had acquired a great knowledge of land, crops, animals, and farming techniques. He knew how to fertilize, where to plant the right crops, and how to produce an ample yield. Whenever he tried to apply his wealth of knowledge, intolerable landowners often suppressed him.
Nate obviously held a deep resentment to his racist, dishonest employers. But this is not to say that he was a racist himself. Nate practiced unwavering morals throughout his life. He disliked the men not due to their being members of the white race, but because they utilized that attribute to their benefit in an entrenched system of racial inequality in the rural South. Nate considered himself fair to everyone. It is a large stain of shame on the history of rural America that such a man was burdened with this undue lot in life.
But, here is where Nate’s story finds its greatest worth. Despite his subjugation, it proved impossible to stop Nate. His employers constantly tried to take advantage of his ignorance and lack of education. Even after he became an independent man, he was in debt to his white landowning bosses. They attempted many times to orchestrate his financial ruin. Contracts would be written with great disadvantage for Nate; he would be given the worst parcel of land on which to grow crops necessary to his survival; his status as a black man was the basis for incessant abuse in the market, on the roads, and in the fields. In the face of all this, however, Nate remained a dignified black farmer. Due to his hard work and great knowledge of land and animals, his money slowly accrued. Naturally, any white racists who previously held enmity for Nate found themselves with a greater hatred after his financial success. Nate saw the way white men reacted to his material prosperity. They didn’t want a black man to possess anything they didn’t have, but Nate did: excess meat, new buggies and mules, and two new cars in the late 1920s. He recalled, “The white people was afraid—I’ll say this: they was afraid the money would make the nigger act too much like his own man. Nigger has a mind to do what’s best for hisself, same as a white man. If he had some money, he just might do it” (264).
Nate relied on cotton for the bulk of his profit, but supplementary income from other jobs helped him achieve economic independence. He visited town once a week to sell butter, milk, eggs, vegetables, and so forth; he also often hauled lumber, kept bees for honey, and wove baskets to sell. During World War I, cotton prices rose to a new high, and he prospered further. After the war and throughout the 1920s, prices dropped to a fraction of what they had been. It was a tough time for rural farmers, especially once the Great Depression began. Many of Nate’s friends and acquaintances left Alabama for better hopes farther north. Nate never considered leaving. He knew a great deal about farming, but little else, so his chances were better in Alabama than elsewhere.
Here is where his story takes a stark turn—where his narrative reaches the proverbial climax for the main character. In 1931, Nate heard of a union dedicated to farmers such as him, the Sharecroppers Union. Nate sensed the winds of change whipping around him, and decided he should look into such a group. “And I knowed what was goin on was a turnabout on the southern man, white and colored; it was somethin’ unusual. And I heard about it bein a organization for the poor class of people—that’s just what I wanted to get into, too” (296). Whites were immediately concerned about such an organization. Nate was warned not to join, but did so anyway—he saw it as a real opportunity for change. As far as Nate could see, the Sharecroppers Union had no strict agenda or plans other than to guide black farmers in supporting one another through times of trouble. That was enough to convince Nate that he needed to be a part of the union; it was more than anyone else had done for black farmers. With communist leanings, the group met with collective support as their basic tenet. This was a major step for Alabama sharecroppers. Afraid of their white employers, and paranoid about one another, blacks had previously been unable to effect change. As more joined the Sharecroppers Union, they began to form an identity. As they came together, so, too, did their common desire for true freedom.
The union met secretly. Nate was unable to recall the name of the “teacher,” or the leader of the union meetings, but his words motivated Nate. Throughout his life, Nate had witnessed the dreadful condition of the black man in the rural South. At this time, he grasped a sense of great urgency for change. He had stood up humbly and respectfully to his would-be oppressors since he came into adulthood, but this union would be his vehicle for a more definite remedy. Succinctly put, “Somebody got to stand up” (307).
The meetings began to thrive, which the white community inevitably discovered. They were afraid of the effects such a union would have on blacks. It was an unjust and discriminatory fear when simply measured by the nature of the white population's concern; but, the fear was justified in terms of the nascent social change detected. As we have clearly seen through Nate’s eyes, for decades after slavery was officially claimed abolished, blacks in Alabama maintained no higher status and were treated just as poorly by many whites as they had been under slavery. As the Sharecroppers Union began to have influence in Nate Shaw’s Alabama, it met head-on with this deeply established social, cultural, and economic system. Fear was the prime motivator on both sides—blacks were afraid of white men’s undue and unchecked authority; whites feared collapse of the social hierarchy and their supremacy therein. It was a time of great anxiety and concern for the future.
For Nate and his community, these new emotions and the old, deep-seated animosities converged in 1932 to form the apex of Nate’s story. His friend, Virgil Jones, was a poor sharecropper, in debt but always hardworking to sustain his family. Jones’ employer had dispatched the sheriff to collect his stock. Essentially, all of his property and means of livelihood were to be repossessed. However, this was not solely a matter of business but an act of aggression and intimidation toward members of the Sharecroppers Union. In such seizures, Nate knew that he and others would follow. He decided to stand up to the sheriff by attempting to politely negotiate the situation. This proved impossible. Both parties left after a brief altercation, only to confront one another later in the day. A shootout occurred in which three shotgun blasts to Nate’s hindquarters impelled self-defense. He fired back, but injured no one as the police ran away.
After his arrest, the International Labor Defense, which was associated with the Sharecroppers Union, sent a lawyer to defend Shaw. Nate knew it was virtually hopeless. He witnessed the injustice that plagued the Scottsboro Boys, a group of nine young black men falsely accused of raping two white women. Some of the women recanted their stories, and there was no medical evidence of rape. However, as Nate points out, the legal system was not inclined to provide justice for blacks. Like the Scottsboro Boys, his full story was not allowed to be heard, and he did not receive a fair trail. Nate was sentenced to twelve years in prison. He was offered parole on the terms that he would turn over his farm and leave Tallapoosa. Nate refused. He served his full sentence instead. Nate Shaw returned to his farm in 1945. Enduring opposition for years afterward, he continued to succeed by his ingenuity and steadfastness.
The consequences of Nate Shaw’s story are heavy and abundant. By cooperating in a scheme of activist populism, he represents the struggle of thousands of poor black agriculturalists in the rural American South. With no political means of defending their inherent rights as full citizens, blacks had to take up the cause by their own efforts. Men such as Nate Shaw were fundamental to any type of movement that attempted social change. While incident over Virgil Jones’ property was taking place, he stood to face his white oppressors when the police came; everyone else ran. Nate was not afraid. He knew that he was right, that the actions of a Jim Crow Alabama were wrong, and he blocked attempts to suppression and manipulation. Nate had acted with this sense of valid defiance all of his life: tacitly as a boy, explicitly as a man.
Most black farmers did not succeed financially as did Nate Shaw. In this, we see his tenacity and skill. However, his plight for equality was common to all black farmers in the South. For some, it was a struggle of achieving parity; others were simply trying for the ability to freely strive for that goal. In most cases, that hope was lost. Nate’s father was born a slave and, as Nate saw it, died a slave. Many chose not to fight. They lived in a world hostile to their being, and they acquiesced to longstanding racism. A few, like Nate Shaw, used any scarce assets they had, namely their bodies and minds. For such men in Alabama, hard work, self-respect, and community efforts like the Sharecroppers Union served as their instruments for change.
July 31, 2025
Only in America can racism and anti-racism, labor rights and pornography all be thrown into the same bag, but that is the case here. In 1969 a young graduate student, Theodore Rosengarten, stumbled upon"Nate Shaw", the pseudonym of a Black sharecropper in Alabama active in trade union work during the Great Depression. (Just before the publication of this book in 1974 some swine blew his cover and revealed Shaw's real name.) In the 1930s the only thing more dangerous than being a Black man or woman in the U.S. South was being a Communist. Shaw was both, in the latter case only indirectly. The sharecropper's union he joined had been founded by the Communist Party USA. His story reads like an American, twentieth century version of BIOGRAPHY OF A RUNAWAY SLAVE by Miguel Barnet. Like the Cuban cimarron Shaw broke his shackles and threw in his lot with the one organization that fought both racism and capitalism. The connection to porn? Legal protection for the Alabama sharecropper's union was provided by the maternal grandfather of Nina Hartley, porn star extraordinaire and darling of the U.S. left until today. If I had one book only to recommend on race and labor in America ALL GOD'S DANGERS would be it. Recommended extra reading: THE HAMMER AND THE HOE: ALABAMA COMMUNISTS DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION by R.D. Kelley.
April 4, 2013
Theodore Rosengarten stumbled upon Nate Shaw, by chance, when Nate Shaw was 85 years old and living in his home and only state of Alabama. Although Nate, his real name being Ned Cobb, could not read or write, his memory for his eight and a half decades on this earth was impeccable. Mr. Rosengarten sat down with him on several occasions and recorded his life and made an autobiography out of his story. That story is contained in the 600 pages of All God's Dangers.
Nate Shaw lived during the time after slavery, during segregation, and was a prominent supporter of the Sharecroppers Union (SCU). Because of his simple yet dignified stance in life, he was thrown in jail for almost two decades of his life for simply being a black man and standing up for what he believed was his god given right: to protect and keep that which was rightfully his. Contained within the book is anecdotal stories about how the dynamic between the whites and black lived in the south and how they were treated in respect to one another. It also showed how, despite the elimination of slavery, the blacks were kept down and were unable to rise past their "station" in life. For that reason, Nate Shaw's life and autobiography is invaluable. It shows us a window into the past, in one section of our vast country, during a period of time where humans were created equal, but were not treated so.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the story is long-winded and can be incredibly boring. Like most lives, Nate's isn't exactly chock full of high drama and excitement. Nothing against him or against Rosengarten who, undoubtedly, found every word Nate uttered fascinating as he got to know him. It's about three hundred pages too long and Nate's reciprocal nature of story telling takes up a lot of room. For this is not just a story of Nate, it's a story of farming, sharecropping, picking cotton, working with a lumber company, weaving baskets, and about mules. All the same, the biographical text is important to own and have as a window into the U.S.A.'s past and its hopes for the future.
Nate Shaw lived during the time after slavery, during segregation, and was a prominent supporter of the Sharecroppers Union (SCU). Because of his simple yet dignified stance in life, he was thrown in jail for almost two decades of his life for simply being a black man and standing up for what he believed was his god given right: to protect and keep that which was rightfully his. Contained within the book is anecdotal stories about how the dynamic between the whites and black lived in the south and how they were treated in respect to one another. It also showed how, despite the elimination of slavery, the blacks were kept down and were unable to rise past their "station" in life. For that reason, Nate Shaw's life and autobiography is invaluable. It shows us a window into the past, in one section of our vast country, during a period of time where humans were created equal, but were not treated so.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, the story is long-winded and can be incredibly boring. Like most lives, Nate's isn't exactly chock full of high drama and excitement. Nothing against him or against Rosengarten who, undoubtedly, found every word Nate uttered fascinating as he got to know him. It's about three hundred pages too long and Nate's reciprocal nature of story telling takes up a lot of room. For this is not just a story of Nate, it's a story of farming, sharecropping, picking cotton, working with a lumber company, weaving baskets, and about mules. All the same, the biographical text is important to own and have as a window into the U.S.A.'s past and its hopes for the future.
June 15, 2014
This is a remarkable book. Rosengarten has allowed Nate Shaw to tell his life story in his own words and in his own way. Some people will undoubtedly get impatient with Nate's way of telling his story. "Do I really need to know that much about mules." I read the book in short stretches, often stopping when I got bored. I couldn't resist going back to read more. I felt as though I knew Nate and, after a while, almost as if I had an obligation to hear him out. Nate Shaw was a remarkable man. Getting to know him is reason enough to read this book. But the reader will also have a chance to experience what it was like for an illiterate, black sharecropper to live and work in Alabama in the first half of the twentieth century.
May 12, 2014
I was profoundly touched by this biography of Nate Cobb, aka Nate Shaw. What a great storyteller he was and such an honorable man! With Integrity, dignity, humour, and wisdom, Nate narrates his life as a poor black man from the 1880's through to the Civil Rights Movement. Although he was illiterate, Nate's keen observational skills and his innate intelligence bring insight into the rural culture of the Southern US, especially the relationship between the whites and blacks at that time.
Rosengarten transcribed and edited the hours of recordings he made of Mr Cobb with such deftness and sensitivity that I often forgot I was reading a book. Nate's 'voice' had such authenticity that I could almost hear him speaking aloud. I applaud Dr. Rosengarten's successful quest to bring understanding and clarity to this little known era in American history.
Rosengarten transcribed and edited the hours of recordings he made of Mr Cobb with such deftness and sensitivity that I often forgot I was reading a book. Nate's 'voice' had such authenticity that I could almost hear him speaking aloud. I applaud Dr. Rosengarten's successful quest to bring understanding and clarity to this little known era in American history.
February 24, 2024
A remarkable string of tales told first-hand about what it was like for an illiterate black man to live in Alabama from 1885 to 1973. The memory of that man was amazing. I would think it has to be one of the most authentic commentaries on what life was like for poor blacks (and whites) during that period in the deep South. The dialect of Nate Shaw took a bit getting used to, but after a while it became quite enjoyable to read.
November 18, 2021
I fell in love with Nate Shaw. I am going to be totally candid here and tell you that periodically I was in so much awe of Nate Shaw that I would have to stop reading the book and look at the cover picture of Nate Shaw. I literally would kiss his image. The story of Nate Shaw is so amazing and real. He is a real man. His story is the same story so so many oppressed people have experienced and continue to experience. His story is the same story many people, not only in the US but also in other countries are experiencing now due to the corporate world continuing to seek cheap labor to exploit. This story is told from the perspective of Nate Shaw. There are few accounts like it and when I see what has happened in Jamacia, in India, etc...as big corporations seek to control what food people can grow from what seeds and to whom they can sell...I think of Nate Shaw. Despite the absolute racist, cruel, unjust and underhanded scenerios Nate was forced to endure, he managed to take care of his family and live his life authentically. There is much to be learned from this book.
April 30, 2014
WWWEEEELLLLLL....I wanted to like this book more than I did. It's a very detailed and moving first person account of the life of a black man whose father was a freed slave. However, the recorder of this oral history could have edited it much more tightly. I appreciate that he has tried to maintain the rhythm and the digressive patterns of Mr. Shaw's story telling, but in the process he has included so many repetitions that the narrator began to feel to me like an overly chatty person seated next to me on an eight-hour flight. I have to admit, I speed-read parts of it.
Still, an interesting picture of the coming of age of a free man who has the intelligence to realize what he must do to prosper.
Still, an interesting picture of the coming of age of a free man who has the intelligence to realize what he must do to prosper.
June 25, 2024
A very long book but so worth it. The life of Nate Shaw was heart-breaking in many ways, but he was a great example of perseverance in the era of Jim Crow.
May 13, 2021
This is truly an amazing autobiography, from the illiterate son of a former slave, who, with grace and courage, navigates his way through the end to Reconstruction, Jim Crow, prison, and redemption.
Want to read
October 10, 2019This is not my review: but a notation on why it is on my to-read list:
Dwight Garner writes this:
from the NYTimes "50 Best Memoirs since 1969
All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw
Theodore Rosengarten
Alfred A. Knopf, 1974
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...
This book’s author, Theodore Rosengarten, was a Harvard graduate student who went to Alabama in 1968 while researching a defunct labor organization. Someone suggested he speak with Shaw, whose real name was Ned Cobb. What emerged from Cobb’s mouth was dense and tangled social history, a narrative that essentially takes us from slavery to Selma from the point of view of an unprosperous but eloquent and unbroken black man.
— Dwight Garner
Dwight Garner writes this:
from the NYTimes "50 Best Memoirs since 1969
All God’s Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw
Theodore Rosengarten
Alfred A. Knopf, 1974
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2...
This book’s author, Theodore Rosengarten, was a Harvard graduate student who went to Alabama in 1968 while researching a defunct labor organization. Someone suggested he speak with Shaw, whose real name was Ned Cobb. What emerged from Cobb’s mouth was dense and tangled social history, a narrative that essentially takes us from slavery to Selma from the point of view of an unprosperous but eloquent and unbroken black man.
— Dwight Garner
October 18, 2014
I loved reading Nate Shaw's stories in his oral autobiography. I am disappointed that I won't be "hearing" him anymore, and getting just a small grasp on the difficult life of a black sharecropper, son of a man born in slavery. It's really remarkable and different from just about anything I've ever read. Nate was illiterate and didn't have two nickels to rub together, but he stood up for what he believed in and contributed to the better conditions blacks live under today - and spent twelve years in prison for it. The New York Times essay summarizes the book and the back story better than I can: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/boo...
October 20, 2009
This is something of an oral history. Rosengarten, doing his graduate work, stumbled on Nate Shaw (a pseudonym), one of those natural storytellers. This book is so fluid that it almost reads itself, or at least carries the reader along with the current. Along the way, Shaw illustrates the hard-scrabble life of a tenant farmer in the South under Jim Crow. Amazingly enough, Shaw's pure talent as a storyteller (no doubt ably assisted by some judicious editing) makes the book both engrossing without being depressing, a real triumph given the circumstances.
April 29, 2022
All God's Dangers is not without its moments of heart and drama/action, but much more often it's rambling and uninteresting. I also was a bit disappointed to learn the truth about Nate's time in the sharecropper's union and in prison. It was a little less dramatic and meaningful than I was hoping.
Read
August 20, 2012Rating this book would be like rating a person, something I don't feel myself qualified to do.
June 19, 2013
Incredible book.
July 17, 2014
Gave up on this one. I liked the beginning but then it seemed to go on and on about the same thing. Needed a good editor.
September 30, 2014
What a great read and captured in the style of Nate Shaw. I am amazed by his simple yet meaningful of a life that was not so easy but still well lived. We all can learn something from Mr. Shaw.
August 29, 2016
Boring in extremis, but probably interesting to anthropologists, writers doing research, and overzealous lovers of humanity.
July 9, 2007
Poignant. Humanizing.
March 9, 2021
For the past three or four years, I have read an autobiography by a black author during the January-February, MLK/Black History Month time of year. The books have included Booker T. Washington's "Up from Slavery," Michelle Obama's "Becoming," and this book, "All God's Dangers," which is essentially the autobiography of Neb Cobb as told to Theodore Rosengarten, who fictionalized the names to protect the privacy of the family.
From these three viewpoints covering three periods of history (Washington 1856-1901, Obama 1964-2018, Cobb 1885-1971) I have observed three common themes that have been successful in improving the plight of black people: 1) Education (Washington and Obama); 2) Solid family life (Obama and Cobb); and 3) Hard work (Washington, Obama, and Cobb). Booker T. Washington in particular stressed that other methods, such as government/political/protest tactics, are less effective, often counterproductive, in improving one's station in life, gaining respect, and producing equality. For example, he told the story of a black farmer who developed a better way of cultivating his crops and had white farmers beating a path to his door.
"All God's Dangers" tells the story of a black tenant farmer whose entire life was marked by oppression by white men. He stood up for justice, at one point using violence that sent him to jail for 12 years. It's an eye-opening history that reinforces the need for equality while illustrating--through positive and negative examples--that the best means is education, solid family life, and hard work.
Neb Cobb also had a close relationship with Jesus Christ Who provided hope for the future as well as a strong moral compass. Faith in Christ, above all else, provides the ultimate redemption for all races.
From these three viewpoints covering three periods of history (Washington 1856-1901, Obama 1964-2018, Cobb 1885-1971) I have observed three common themes that have been successful in improving the plight of black people: 1) Education (Washington and Obama); 2) Solid family life (Obama and Cobb); and 3) Hard work (Washington, Obama, and Cobb). Booker T. Washington in particular stressed that other methods, such as government/political/protest tactics, are less effective, often counterproductive, in improving one's station in life, gaining respect, and producing equality. For example, he told the story of a black farmer who developed a better way of cultivating his crops and had white farmers beating a path to his door.
"All God's Dangers" tells the story of a black tenant farmer whose entire life was marked by oppression by white men. He stood up for justice, at one point using violence that sent him to jail for 12 years. It's an eye-opening history that reinforces the need for equality while illustrating--through positive and negative examples--that the best means is education, solid family life, and hard work.
Neb Cobb also had a close relationship with Jesus Christ Who provided hope for the future as well as a strong moral compass. Faith in Christ, above all else, provides the ultimate redemption for all races.
November 30, 2020
What a storyteller Mr. Nate Shaw was. So glad that Theodore Rosengarten found him and recorded him over many hours, telling his own "autobiography" chronologically! Never imagined anyone could remember so many many names and describe so many events, even the most ordinary (to him) and everyday. This book is about 556 pages, transcribed from the tapes. Shaw had an incredibly wonderful vocabulary, although he never learned to read or write. He was obviously an intent listener, who absorbed so much from his large family and friends. Amazing stories. As others have said, everyone in the USA should read this book, or listen to it if it has been recorded. Shaw, who died in 1973 just before this book was published, was born into a deeply Southern society where most white people wanted to take everything away from all "freed" Blacks, and keep them from voting and owning anything. Regardless of the social setting, Shaw almost always prevailed. I just loved the language, the sayings. For examples: "That hit me like hotcakes..." "I held them lines and they drug me away from that tree and when I looked and knowed anything I was just rollin and wallowin right up under that front wheel." (That was an adventure with mules and a huge wagon load of hay.). On and on...You won't maybe get through the whole book, but it's worth any try you give it.
~ Linda Campbell Franklin
~ Linda Campbell Franklin
March 29, 2018
There are parts of this that are not exactly fast-paced, but that's not what it's meant to be. An extremely important life story to read, in part because so few like this were so well recorded. I will always remember the intelligence, dignity and deep morality of this man and how he remained true to himself and insisted on respect for himself even in situations where it was literally dangerous for him to do so. He was also beautifully respectful of and loving toward his wife, which I was very impressed by given the time in which he lived. Being disrespectful of or domineering toward a woman would have been an easy way to elevate himself, but he never stooped to that level. A wonderful and amazing person, both in his time and if he were alive today. So glad I read this, both to know now that he existed, and as an important part of American history.
October 26, 2020
This was a virtual autobiography in the man’s own words of his entire 88 years on this earth. From growing up in Alabama 20 years after the Civil War to sharecropping cotton to tenant farming to joining a union to protest bad treatment by the white man (which sent him to prison - where he found God) to his successful reentry back home.
Nate Shaw was an uneducated man in terms of formal schooling but a very observant one who learned to negotiate the system to slowly crawl out of abject poverty. Defiant but with hard work and a Christian attitude toward ‘colored’ and white people, he survived and prospered.
He recognized his life as a continuation of slavery and lived to see the beginnings of the civil rights movement. A bit tedious to read due to all the detail but an amazing story of resilience.
Nate Shaw was an uneducated man in terms of formal schooling but a very observant one who learned to negotiate the system to slowly crawl out of abject poverty. Defiant but with hard work and a Christian attitude toward ‘colored’ and white people, he survived and prospered.
He recognized his life as a continuation of slavery and lived to see the beginnings of the civil rights movement. A bit tedious to read due to all the detail but an amazing story of resilience.
January 29, 2022
Amazing, unique narrative. I became aware of this book via a recommendation of Noam Chomsky on Ezra Klein’s podcast. And now I understand why he chose it. Every American should read this story to hear the perspective of a sharecropper just a generation removed from slavery. The first hand narrative and vernacular requires an adjustment, but once you get used to it, it’s an easy and comfortable storytelling style that utterly transports you across time and place. I listened to the audio book, and am glad I did. I came to love hearing the narrator voicing Nate Shaw telling us the story of his life, and of America in his time. Finally, I found it remarkable that despite the injustices he faced, he never became bitter. But he was still able to speak truth to power. I know this story will stay with me for a long time.
April 17, 2023
Het lukt me niet volledig om in het verhaal te raken , hoewel ik het wel boeiend vind ... lijkt het verhaal wat te traag voorbij te schuiven , mocht het 250 blz zijn en wat anders omschreven zou het boek ( voor mij ) wat beter geweest zijn , ofwel mss als ik ( nog : ) wat ouder geweest was ... , een boeiend levensverhaal over een periode/plaats waar ik niet (veel) van af weet , .... mss was het leven vroeger eenvoudiger het was waarschijnlijk niet gemakkelijker ,
Mss later als ik oud ben en meer tijd heb eens herlezen , .... nu ja als je oud bent heb je eigenlijk minder tijd , ...of heb je er dan toch meer omdat men dan weet wat er belangrijk is voor dat zelf ?
Boeiend ( uitgesponnen) levensverhaal ,
Mss later als ik oud ben en meer tijd heb eens herlezen , .... nu ja als je oud bent heb je eigenlijk minder tijd , ...of heb je er dan toch meer omdat men dan weet wat er belangrijk is voor dat zelf ?
Boeiend ( uitgesponnen) levensverhaal ,
September 3, 2025
Spoken by Nate Shaw and recorded by Theodore Rosengarten, this biography details the life of sharecropper Nate Shaw. Shaw's father was 14 when the Civil War freed him. Shaw details the day-to-day existence of a black man's life in rural Alabama from the 1930s through the 1970s. A fascinating first-hand account, I recommend it as accompanying reading to the more academic (and more horrific) Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews