Race and Rumors of Race: The American South in the Early Forties - Softcover

Odum, Howard W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801857570 ISBN 13: 9780801857577

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997

Synopsis

In the early 1940s, rumors of impending and actual race wars circulated furiously among white Southerners. Apparently with the aid of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, liberals, Yankees, New Dealers, and "bad niggers," once docile African-Americans were stockpiling ice picks in Charleston, ordering carton loads of pistols and rifles from the Sears catalog in Memphis, and plotting insurrection against whites at every turn. Alarmed―and fascinated―by these rumors, the University of North Carolina sociologist Howard W. Odum set out to collect and catalog them. He approached professors at various southern universities and asked them to conduct polls among their students to see if they had heard about the pistols, rifles, ice picks, and "Eleanor Clubs," and received thousands of reports confirming that, indeed, they had. The result of Odum's research is Race and Rumors of Race, which first appeared in 1943. Providing a window into white perceptions of race and racial tension in the South during the Second World War, the book locates the roots of the civil rights movement and helps us to understand the complex forces that shaped postwar American politics.

About this title

Book Description

An alarming look at white perceptions of race and racial tension in the South during the Second World War—and compelling insights into the roots of the civil rights movement.

About the Author

Howard W. Odum (1884-1954), "one of the South's best known social scientists in the first half of the twentieth century," according to one biographer, taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of more than 15 books, including American Epoch, Southern Pioneers in Social Interpretation, and Southern Regions of the United States.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0801857570
• ISBN 13: 9780801857577
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288
• Editor: Simon Bryant