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Lower-Order Urbanization and Territorial Monopoly in the Southern Furnishing Trade

Alabama, 1871-1890

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Louis M. Kyriakoudes
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Extract

Sometime during World War I,Ned Cobb, an African American sharecropper better known to us by his pseudonym Nate Shaw, journeyed from the Tallapoosa County, Alabama, farm where he was sharecropping to Opelika, a small market town about 12 miles away, to buy cotton seed hulls for his mules,meal for his family, and shoes for his children. At Mr. Sadler’s general store, Cobb had a chilling encounter with one Henry Chase, a crippled white store clerk. Chase, resentful that Cobb had been served by one of the store's white female clerks, tried to provoke a fight with Cobb and then accused Cobb of threatening him with a pistol. Cobb wisely refused to be goaded, but he was arrested anyway when Chase brought his complaint to the sheriff. Cobb only escaped trouble with the law and more trouble with Chase and his gang because of the intercession of influential white merchants who knew Cobb from earlier business in town (Rosengarten 1974: 162–72).

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 2002 , pp. 179 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2002 

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