author
Howard Washington Odum
1884–1954
A pioneering sociologist of the American South, he brought serious attention to Black life, folklore, and regional social problems at a time when few scholars were doing so. His work also helped shape the University of North Carolina into a major center for social research and publishing.
2 Audiobooks
Negro workaday songs
by Howard Washington Odum, Guy Benton Johnson
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 leading sociologists of the early twentieth-century South. His research focused on Southern society, regional development, and the lives and folklore of African Americans, and he wrote widely as both a scholar and public thinker.
Much of his long career was tied to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he joined the faculty in 1920. There he helped found Social Forces, played a major role in building the university press, and helped establish what later became the Howard W. Odum Institute for Research in Social Science.
Odum died in Chapel Hill in 1954. Remembered as an influential teacher, institution builder, and writer, he remains an important figure in the history of American sociology, especially for anyone interested in the social history of the South.