Chapter 2

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINASOCIAL STUDY SERIESThe Negro and His Songs$3.00Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro5.00Negro Workaday Songs3.00Southern Pioneers2.00Law and Morals2.00The Scientific Study of Human Society2.00Systems of Public Welfare2.00Roads to Social Peace1.50The Country Newspaper1.50Children’s Interest in Reading1.50

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINASOCIAL STUDY SERIESThe Negro and His Songs$3.00Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro5.00Negro Workaday Songs3.00Southern Pioneers2.00Law and Morals2.00The Scientific Study of Human Society2.00Systems of Public Welfare2.00Roads to Social Peace1.50The Country Newspaper1.50Children’s Interest in Reading1.50

NEGRO WORKADAY SONGS

BY

HOWARD W. ODUM, Ph.D.

Kenan Professor of Sociology and Director ofthe School of Public Welfare, University ofNorth Carolina

AND

GUY B. JOHNSON, A.M.

Institute for Research in Social Science,University of North Carolina

Logo Lux Veritas

CHAPEL HILLTHE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESSLONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORDOXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS1926

Copyright, 1926, ByThe University of North Carolina PressALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Presses ofEdwards & Broughton CompanyRALEIGH

A vast throng of Negro workaday singers, mirrors of a raceWorkingmen in the Southern United States from highway, construction camp, from railroad and farm, from city and countryside, a million strongA half million migrants from the South, Eastward, Northward, Westward, and some South againNegro offenders in thousand fold in local jails, county chain gangs, state and federal prisonsA horde of Southern casual laborers and wanderers down that lonesome roadA brown black army of “bad men”—creepers and ramblers and jamboree breakers, “travelin’ men” de luxeItinerant full-handed musicianers, music physicianers and songsters, singly, in pairs, quartets, always moving onA host of women workers from field and home and factory at once singers and subjects of the lonesome bluesA swelling crescendo, a race vibrato inimitable, descriptive index of group character, folk urge and race power

A vast throng of Negro workaday singers, mirrors of a race

Workingmen in the Southern United States from highway, construction camp, from railroad and farm, from city and countryside, a million strong

A half million migrants from the South, Eastward, Northward, Westward, and some South again

Negro offenders in thousand fold in local jails, county chain gangs, state and federal prisons

A horde of Southern casual laborers and wanderers down that lonesome road

A brown black army of “bad men”—creepers and ramblers and jamboree breakers, “travelin’ men” de luxe

Itinerant full-handed musicianers, music physicianers and songsters, singly, in pairs, quartets, always moving on

A host of women workers from field and home and factory at once singers and subjects of the lonesome blues

A swelling crescendo, a race vibrato inimitable, descriptive index of group character, folk urge and race power


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