The Life and Legacy of Ned Cobb in Conversation

Abstract

The Life and Legacy of Ned Cobb in Conversation Elijah Gaddis (bio) Introduction Ned cobb passed away in november 1973 after a life whose contours spanned nearly the full spectrum of southern history. He was born to a family of freedpeople two decades after Emancipation. His early years were spent during the establishment of the Jim Crow regime in Alabama. And, in his adulthood, Mr. Cobb played an important role in some of the earliest of the multi-generational struggles against Jim Crow and for human and civil rights for African American people in the South. By the kind of cosmic coincidence that marked so much of Ned Cobb's life, a group of family members, scholars, and community folk gathered almost exactly forty-six years to the day of his death to commemorate and discuss his remarkable life. The conversation here was the centerpiece of a symposium held at the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts and Humanities at Auburn University on November 5, 2019. Among those convened were Theodore ("Ted") and Dale Rosengarten. Dale wrote one of the earliest studies of Mr. Cobb and the Sharecropper's Union (SCU), the radical organization that he belonged to in the 1930s.1 Ted molded Mr. Cobb's life story into one of the classic works of Southern Studies, the National [End Page 295] Book Award-winning All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw.2 As they relay in the interview transcribed here, the Rosengartens first came to Tallapoosa County out of an interest in the SCU. Cobb was an early participant in the union, and his armed stand against the seizure of a neighbor's property was marked as one of the signal accomplishments of the movement.3 The force of Cobb's life story soon overwhelmed those original intentions. All God's Dangers became a story about the fabric of everyday life for Mr. Cobb. Because of this, it is perhaps the best documentary evidence that we have of the experiences and thoughts of a Black sharecropper, both in Alabama and in the broader South. Likewise, the legacy of his life is measured not just in the important historical events that he participated in, but perhaps most profoundly through the lives of his many descendants. For this event we welcomed at least four generations of the Cobb family to the front rows of a packed room. Three of them joined us on the stage—his granddaughter, Dr. Shirley Dean Ray, and his great-granddaughters, Dr. Ileeia Cobb and Mrs. Sandra Gaffney. Each offered reflections on the man they knew as grandfather, great grandfather, or simply as the subject of family stories. Together, the participants added complexity to the story of a person and a time period that does not often figure prominently in our perceptions of southern history. Ned Cobb's life tells us about the pains of the post-Reconstruction South as the gains of freedom were clawed [End Page 296] Click for larger view View full resolution Dr. Elijah Gaddis leads a conversation on the life and legacy of Ned Cobb. Pictured here are (from left to right): Dr. Gaddis, Dr. Dale Rosengarten, Dr. Shirley Dean Ray, Dr. Ileeia Cobb, and Dr. Ted Rosengarten. Photo courtesy Maiben Beard, Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities, Auburn University. back. It tells us about the early organization of the "Long Civil Rights Movement," when socialist organizers and sharecroppers stood up and demanded their rights by the thousands, first in Alabama, and then, later in the 1930s, throughout the South.4 The story of Ned Cobb's life seems to proceed in almost mythical fashion. He reads like a folktale, a phenomenally articulate, heroic figure whose voice [End Page 297] calls from the depths of an often unrecorded past. In the dept of his recollections, and the beauty of his storytelling, he is a historian's dream. But, as the transcript of our conversation here shows, his story is all the more remarkable for his humanity. From the voices of people who knew him and admired him, who lived and worked with him, this conversation offers a deeper look into both Ned Cobb and the...