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8 Howard odum and the Institute for Research in social science In 1913, Jack Woofter’s father, t. J. Woofter sr., gave the sociologist Howard W. odum a much-needed job in the school of education at the University of georgia, where he stayed until 1918, gaining a reputation as an energetic scholar and administrator . after a brief tenure at his alma mater, emory University, odum moved to the University of north carolina, where he repaid the favor by hiring Jack Woofter to work in the expanding Institute for Research in social science (IRss) in 1927. odum and the younger Woofter both believed in the social scientist’s duty to secure definite facts about the “negro problem” and accelerate the pace of change in the south, but odum’s zeal resulted from a more profound conversion than any experienced by Woofter. They were both methodists and the grandsons of slaveholders, but came from different generations and different georgian settings. odum was ten years older than Woofter and was brought up about fifteen miles from athens, in a district with strained race relations, until his father acquired a new dairy farm thirty miles to the south, near covington, in newton county.1 after moving to chapel Hill in 1920, odum developed his vision of southern studies , but university administration initially occupied him as much as scholarship. He founded the department of sociology and the school of Public Welfare, began the liberal journal Social Forces, and fostered a collaborative research ethos. By 1927, he had edited a collection of biographical essays and coauthored three books about negro songs and public welfare and was about to publish Man’s Quest for Social Guidance.2 over the next decade, he would play a leading part in cementing sociology as an academic discipline in the south and mount a challenge to the subject’s domination by the University of chicago and columbia University.3 Faced with a shortfall of state funds during the 1920s, Unc was reluctant to make a long-term commitment to regional social studies, forcing odum to compete for donations by wealthy individuals or philanthropic bodies. He proved adept at raising money, although he found the process nerve-wracking. In 1924, the laura spelman Rockefeller memorial (lsRm), an immensely rich new york charity founded in 1918 by John d. Rockefeller to commemorate his wife, gave odum a three-year grant totaling $97,500 to create the IRss, and a further $15,000 in 1925 specifically for research on race relations. The lsRm had noted in its social science policy in 1922, “all those who work toward the general end of social welfare are embarrassed by the lack of that knowledge which the social sciences 195 196 | Race Harmony and Black Progress must provide.” In 1925, lsRm director Beardsley Ruml, who set up the social science Research council (ssRc) in 1923 and enjoyed great discretion in the allocation of funds, indicated that race was now a priority and invited proposals by social scientists on “the problem that arises in connection with the tendency of human beings to associate (or dissociate).”4 odum took heart from his first lsRm grant, but feared for the institute’s longterm future. seeking larger grants required burdensome correspondence and meetings with Ruml and other officials to satisfy them that he could deliver. They, in turn, knew that he was “apprehensive that the memorial was going to fail the Institute” and that he worried that Unc social scientists were perceived as “too provincial; . . . [and] that their energies were too scattered and at other times that they attempted to produce too much.” He had hired a number of young southern researchers, but he was short of experienced, qualified staff and was struggling to convince senior colleagues at chapel Hill that investment in the social sciences would enhance the university’s reputation for excellence in teaching and research.5 In the spring and summer of 1927, he was under huge pressure—trying to run the IRss, publish his work, edit that of others, and launch several new projects to justify the lsRm’s donations. according to John H. stanfield, “odum’s eagerness to please his benefactors at the memorial bordered on obsequiousness,” but it was more a case of anxiety. He was engaged in ongoing battles against reactionary religious and political groups in north carolina who were outraged by deliberately provocative articles in Social Forces on race, religion, and the origins of man. In addition, his wife was hospitalized for several...

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