Books by Howard W. Odum

This study of typical Afro-American songs in the US south is a foundation study of great importance both to the specialist and to the general reader. With scholarly investigation is combined intelligent sympathy and a rare understanding of the black in his various aspects. The book discusses the religious songs, the social songs, and the work songs of the Afro-American.

This is the story of racial tension in the United States during the year of global war from mid-1942 to 1943. The author sees three groups to blame for this tension: the new Afro-American, better educated, better aware of his economic potentialities; northern agitators campaigning for black rights; and the old white South, unwilling to relinquish its traditional folkways.

The editors have sought to suggest in the title of these selected papers the range, complexity, and unity of Odum's thought as he moved from the Afro-American and black folksongs to the folk society and folk sociology, from race relations and the southern region to regionalism and regional-national planning, from folkways to technicways and stateways, and from social values to social action.