1937, Southern Regions of the United States, Odum, Howard W.

Book Description: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1937. Cloth Hardback Boards.

Book Condition: Very Good+++. No Jacket. Charts and Maps. 2nd large Printing-. 7.5" X 10.25". A study of the regional culture and welfare of the Siouthern United States. Alot of B&W charts and maps. Owners name and some underlining - 664 pages. Black Cloth Boards With Gold Guilt. Well-known sociological study of the South by Odum. Much important information on the South at the time of the Great Depression. US History.

About The Author: Howard Washington Odum, American sociologist, born May 24, 1884, near Bethlehem, Georgia, U.S. died Nov. 8, 1954, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Odum, Howard W.

American sociologist who was a specialist in the social problems of the southern United States and a pioneer of sociological education in the South. He worked to replace the Southern sectionalism with a sophisticated regional approach to social planning, race relations, and the arts, especially literature. A student of folk sociology, particularly that of Southern blacks, he was ahead of his time in urging equal opportunity for African Americans.

Odum studied under noted psychologist G. Stanley Hall at Clark University and sociologist Franklin H. Giddings at Columbia University. In 1920 he joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina, where he established departments of sociology and public welfare, started a social-science research institute, and founded the journal Social Forces.
 
One of Odum's books on African Americans, Rainbow Round My Shoulder: The Blue Trail of Black Ulysses (1928), was praised for its literary quality. Among his other works are Southern Regions of the United States (1936), Understanding Society (1947), and American Sociology (1951). At President Herbert Hoover's request, Odum and William Fielding Ogburn (Ogburn, William Fielding) edited the report Recent Social Trends in the United States, 2 vol. (1933), for the President's Research Committee on Social Trends.

The son of William Pleasants and Mary Ann Odum. In 1900, he began his academic studies at Emory College, eventually receiving a Ph.D. in psychology from Clark University. He then entered Columbia University, where, under the direction of Franklin Henry Giddings, he completed the requirements for his second doctoral degree in sociology. In 1910, his dissertation, "Social and Mental Traits of the Negro," was published in part by Columbia University Press. Odum then worked at the Philadelphia Bureau of Municipal Research as a researcher and later as a professor at the University of Georgia. He returned to Emory in 1919 as the dean of liberal arts.

In 1920, Odum arrived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to direct the School of Public Welfare and Department of Sociology. A few years after his arrival, Odum established the Institute for Research in Social Science, and founded the journal, Social Forces. While at the University of North Carolina, he began to demonstrate the variety of talents and great energy that his peers found remarkable. Odum toiled constantly to improve race relations, the quality of education, and living conditions in the South. Howard W. Odum served as President of the American Sociological Society in 1930.

Upon his death, Howard Odum's papers were donated to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for preservation. A detailed search feature for the Odum papers is available on-line. The UNC-Chapel Hill archives provides the following biographical summary of Odum's life and work.

(CF)