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Biography: Ned Cobb (1885-1973)
By Rod Cameron
Born in 1885, Ned Cobb was a tenant farmer in Alabama in the early 1900s. As a cotton farmer, Cobb fought against unfair treatment of tenant farmers by forming a tenant farmers union. According to James R. Grossman, in the opening decades of the twentieth century Cobb clawed his way up the ladder from wage laborer to sharecropper, cash renter, and finally owner. Grossman explains that often the value of the land farmed by farmers in Alabama at the time was less than the value of the crops grown on it. In Cobb's case, the crop was cotton. So when farmers had to borrow money to pay for expenses, bankers or merchants loaned money based on the value of the crop rather than the land. So once the crop was sold after harvest, bankers and merchants took payment out of the cash produced by the crop. As a result, farmers were often forced to grow cash crops on all their land rather than use part of it to grow food for their own families. This forced them to go back to the same merchants to borrow more just to feed their families. The resulting cycle made it nearly impossible to ever rise above the poverty level.
Cobb's struggles are portrayed in the poem "In Egypt Land" by John Beecher and in the book All God's Dangers by Theodore Rosengarten.
Cobb, whose real name is Nate Shaw, was the son of slaves himself and struggled throughout his life to gain independence. Rosengarten, whose book is based upon 1500 pages of oral history as told by Shaw, reveals Shaw in the1930s, joining a sharecroppers union and coming to the aid of a neighbor whose land is about to be possessed by deputies. After exchanging shots with the sheriff, Shaw was sent to spend twelve years in prison. Upon his release in 1945, Shaw was almost sixty.
This essay was submitted by Rod Cameron, an English teacher at Abraham Lincoln High in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Activity Suggestions
- Read the poem "In Egypt Land" by John Beecher and outline the struggles faced by Ned Cobb in a response essay. For the poem, go to http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/beecher/adams.htm and scroll down the page until you see it.
- Ned Cobb was known to have joined a sharecroppers union. Did the sharecropper's union prove to be effective? Did it help or hinder the sharecropper's fight against poverty? Research the topic, and organize your response in a short essay. Go to http://csf.colorado.edu/pen-l/2001II/msg04173.html for background information on sharecropping.
- Do you think it was ethical for bankers and merchants to keep tenant farmers in the cycle of poverty caused by growing cash crops? Explore both sides of the issue and outline your position in an essay. Start your investigation on Web sites such as the following: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/a_f/brown/sharecropping.htm
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