Sociologist and collector of Southern folk songs. A native of Georgia, Odum was
appointed founding chair of the Sociology Department at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1920. Odum’s “new regionalism” was an important
philosophical influence on the intellectual climate of the postDepression South, and his
seminal work, Southern Regions of the United States (1936), establishedhis reputation as
the leading Southern sociologist of his day.
Odum began collecting African American folksongs while pursuing a master’s degree
at the University of Mississippi. He subsequendy earned Ph.D.s in psychology (Clark
University, 1909), and sociology (Columbia University, 1910). In 1911 several issues of
the Journal of American Folklore featured portions of his psychology dissertation, which
is based on transcriptions of the songs he collected in Mississippi.
Odum believed that studies of folklore could increase understanding of African
American culture and thus improve Soudiern race relations. Therefore, his two joint
publications with student and colleague Guy Benton Johnson focus on folksongs as
cultural products (Johnson and Odum 1925, 1926). Both books are landmark studies of
African American secular song as well. Odum also published three “folk novels” based
on the repertoire of one of his informants, a wandering laborer named John Wesley
Gordon, Odum’s “Black Ulysses.”
Although Odum’s national reputation was based on his influence as a sociologist, his
contributions to folklore are equally important because of the number of African
American folksongs he collected, his in-depth study of one African American informant,
and his focus on the social and psychological function of song in a community.
Lynn Moss Sanders
References
Brazil, Wayne Douglas. 1975. Howard W.Odum: The Building Years, 1884–1930. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press.
Johnson, Guy Benton, and Howard W. Odum. 1925. The Negro and His Songs: A Study of Typical
Songs in the South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
——. 1926. Negro Workaday Songs. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Odum, Howard Washington. 1928. Rainbow Round My Shoulder. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
——. 1929. Wings on My Feet. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill.
——. 1931. Cold Blue Moon. Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill.
——. 1964. Folk, Region, and Society: Selected Papers of Howard W. Odum, ed.
Katharine Jocher, Guy B. Johnson, George L.Simpson, and Rupert B.Vance. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press.