Nate Shaw

Theodore Rosengarten

Born in the 1890s, Nate Shaw could neither read nor write, but was able to tell his life story in detail. He had been a member of the Alabama Sharecropper Union in the 1930s, and his account reflects the social history of southern America.

The Life of Nate Shaw

All God's Dangers

Nate Shaw's father was born under slavery. Nate Shaw was born into a bondage that was only a little gentler. At the age of nine, he was picking cotton for thirty-five cents an hour. At the age of forty-seven, he faced down a crowd of white deputies who had come to confiscate a neighbor's crop. His defiance cost him twelve years in prison. This triumphant autobiography, assembled from the eighty-four-year-old Shaw's oral reminiscences, is the plain-spoken story of an "over-average" man who witnessed wrenching changes in the lives of Southern black people -- and whose unassuming courage helped bring those changes about.

Nate Shaw's father was born under slavery. Nate Shaw was born into a bondage that was only a little gentler. At the age of nine, he was picking cotton for thirty-five cents an hour. At the age of forty-seven, he faced down a crowd of white deputies who had come to confiscate a neighbor's crop. His defiance cost him twelve years in prison. This triumphant autobiography, assembled from the eighty-four-year-old Shaw's oral reminiscences, is the plain-spoken story of an “over-average” man who witnessed wrenching changes in the lives of Southern black people—and whose unassuming courage helped bring those changes about.

Rizzoli

New Site-specific Art at Charleston's Spoleto Festival

Places with a Past

In this brilliant account of life in the antebellum South, Rosengarten brings readers a masterful piece of history told from two perspectives. Tombee is the biography of Thomas Chaplin, the unlucky slave master and proprietor of Tombee Plantation. The book also contains the personal journal Chaplin kept, providing a relentless study of the horror of plantation slavery. Maps and charts.

Theodore Rosengarten

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