The Black Ulysses Trilogy presents a compendium of African American folklore collected by pioneer sociologist/folklorist Howard W. Odum. The trilogy collects stories, songs, and folktales, which Odum uses to weave the narrative of his chief informant John Wesley Gordon (Black Ulysses) as he travels the country, fights in World War I, and returns to the South. Odum’s character demonstrates the extent to which folklore subjects and folklore style were part of his daily life. The book partially anticipates Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men (1935), which placed folk materials in a narrative connected to Hurston. Odum, however, steps back from the narrative and allows his character to speak in a rich and energetic dialect. Rainbow Round My Shoulder presents a feisty, inventive, marginalized folk hero with a zest for life.

Rainbow Round My Shoulder: The Blue Trail of Black Ulysses

Politics & Social Sciences

Odum, Howard W.

Social Sciences

Indiana University Press

One of the few depictions of African Americans in World War I, Wings on My Feet (1929) follows the tale of Black Ulysses, John Wesley "Left Wing" Gordon, begun in Howard W. Odum’s Rainbow Round My Shoulder (IUP, 2006). On one level, the novel continues a symbolic journey of the African American spirit; on another, it tracks the experiences of one black soldier from draft to training, shipping out, landing, fighting, returning stateside, and reintegrating into society. The book also explores broader social issues of race, war, and prejudice. As the subtitle makes clear, it is the story not of one war but the various wars Black Ulysses has endured before, during, and after World War I.

Wings on My Feet: Black Ulysses at the Wars

History

Military

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The Negro And His Songs: A Study Of Typical Negro Songs In The South

Literature & Fiction

Johnson, Guy B.

Literary

Kessinger Publishing

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.

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

Americas

Johns Hopkins University Press

Systems of Public Welfare

Willard, D. W.

The University of North Carolina Press

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.Originally published 1943.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Race and Rumors of Race

The Negro and His Songs: A Study of Typical Negro Songs in the South

Praeger

2014 Reprint of 1926 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "Negro Workaday Songs" is the third volume of a series of folk background studies of which "The Negro and His Song" was the first and "Folk-Beliefs of the Southern Negro" was the second. So far as Odum was aware, none of the songs in this collection had been published and the songs were all sung or repeated by actual Black workers or singers and much of their value lies in the exact transcription of natural lines, words and mixtures. Odum intended his study of Black music as a series of pictures of the Black American as portrayed through his workaday songs. He has taken the position that these workaday songs, crude and fragmentary, and often having only local or individual significance, provide a more accurate picture of Negro working life than do conventional folk songs. Odum's book is also an important contribution to the history of the blues in America and a collector's item in that field.

Negro Workaday Songs:

Arts & Photography

Johnson, Guy Benton

Music

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