All God's Dangers (National Book Award Winner): The Life of Nate Shaw

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