Howard Washington Odum

author

Howard Washington Odum

1884–1954

A pioneering Southern sociologist, he studied regional life, social change, and African American folklore while helping build modern social-science research at the University of North Carolina. His work mixed scholarship with institution-building, leaving a mark on sociology, publishing, and public welfare education.

2 Audiobooks

Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes

Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes

by Howard Washington Odum

Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes

Religious Folk-Songs of the Southern Negroes

by Howard Washington Odum

About the author

Born in Georgia in 1884, Howard Washington Odum became one of the most influential sociologists working on the American South in the first half of the twentieth century. He studied at Emory College, the University of Mississippi, Clark University, and Columbia University, and his early research focused on African American life and folk songs.

In 1920 he joined the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he helped shape the university's social-science programs in lasting ways. He founded or helped found major institutions there, including the journal Social Forces, the university press, and the research center now known as the Odum Institute, and he also played a leading role in public welfare education.

Odum wrote widely on Southern society, regional planning, and race relations. Readers may also know him for books that drew on Black folklore and song traditions, including The Negro and His Songs, Negro Workaday Songs, and Rainbow Round My Shoulder. He died in Chapel Hill in 1954.