Research in Service to Society

The First Fifty Years of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina

Guy B. Johnson, Guion Griffis Johnson

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781469648071
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Investigación en educación

The Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina quickly achieved a national reputation for its contribution to pure research, university teaching, and public affairs. From its inception in 1924, it addressed touchy issues such as race relations, industrial inequities, and political inefficiency in the South. Despite worries about academic acceptance and funding, the institute's scholars produced research and publications that are landmarks in American social science. Originally published in 1980. 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.

CHAPTER 1: The Beginning

The Institute for Research in Social Science was formally organized at the University of North Carolina on June 30, 1924. It began in a small way, in an environment that was sometimes hostile, gradually won recognition and respectability, survived the Great Depression, and eventually became a taken-for-granted force in the life of the University, the state, and the nation. The guiding genius and founding father of the Institute for Research in Social Science was the late Howard W. Odum, Kenan Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina from his appointment in 1920 until his retirement in 1954. Even when he arrived in Chapel Hill in the summer of 1920, with two Ph.D. degrees and a head full of dreams, he envisioned a scheme whereby research in the social sciences would point the way to a new era of progress for the state and the South.

The Founding Father: Howard W. Odum

Howard Washington Odum was born in 1884 in the little community of Bethlehem in Walton County, Georgia. His parents were farm people of modest means, and he knew that if he was going to realize his early ambition of entering the world of the intellectuals, he would have to make it largely through his own efforts. He had a restless mind and a strong body, and he was not afraid of work. His parents were able to help him a little with his education, but it was chiefly with hard physical work, stints of schoolteaching, and some borrowed money that he gave himself a remarkable education: an A.B. degree from Emory College in 1904, an M. A. degree from the University of Mississippi in 1906, and two doctoral degrees.

His earlier college training had all been in classics, but at “Ole Miss” one of his favorite professors was Thomas P. Bailey, author of Race Orthodoxy in the South, who had studied psychology under the renowned G. Stanley Hall at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and from there on Odum’s Interest was centered in the social sciences. Bailey helped him to get a fellowship to study under Hall. Odum’s first Ph.D. was earned in psychology at Clark University in 1909. During four years as teacher and student in Mississippi, he had assembled an immense collection of Negro folk songs and observations on the social life of the southern Negro people. He used his collection of religious folk songs as the basis of his doctoral dissertation at Clark. The next year he went to Columbia University to study under the distinguished sociologist, Franklin H. Giddings. In one year he earned a second Ph.D. degree. His dissertation, again drawn from his voluminous field notes, was later published as his first book, The Social and Mental Traits of the Negro.

At Clark University Odum had fallen in love with a brilliant young woman, Anna Louise Kranz, who was also studying psychology. After the completion of his second doctorate and several months of work in a new job in Philadelphia, Odum felt that he was ready for the responsibilities of marriage. On December 24, 1910, he and Miss Kranz were married at her home in Tennessee. The contrast between the gentle and somewhat frail woman and the restless, dynamic man was striking, but Mrs. Odum never lacked the inner strength to cope with the problems of married life with such a man. They were a devoted pair. She bore three children, managed the household and social affairs with efficiency and charm, and gave her husband constant emotional and intellectual support. This fragile woman, who lay at death’s door several times during the Odums’ Chapel Hill sojourn, was to survive hen husband by more than a decade.

After two years with the Philadelphia Bureau of Municipal Research, Odum went to the University of Georgia at Athens in 1912 to teach educational sociology. At Athens he met Eugene C. Branson, who was to have a strong influence on his career plans. In 1919 Odum moved to his alma mater, Emory, as professor of sociology and dean of liberal arts. He helped in the relocation of Emory from Oxford to Atlanta and in its tiansition to university status. He had high hopes at first of making Emory a great center for social science training but was soon frustrated and disillusioned, and when he was offered a post at the University of North Carolina he was happy to accept it. This was to be his last move. He came to Chapel Hill in the summer of 1920 and plunged immediately into a remarkable career of teaching, research, writing, administration, and public service.

He organized the School of Public Welfare in 1920 and served as its director. In the same year he organized the Department of Sociology and began his long service as its chairman. In 1922 he founded the Journal of Social Forces and was its editor until his retirement. In 1924 he founded the Institute for Research in Social Science and was its director until 1944. During his thirty-four years at Chapel Hill he wrote seventeen books of his own, edited or coauthored eleven others, and wrote nearly two hundred articles, chapters, and pamphlets. Along the way he found time to engage in many state, regional, and national public service activities. As if all of this were not enough, Odum also maintained a herd of pedigreed Jerseys that earned him the distinction of being one of only five breeders in the nation to develop a genetic type. No one at the University during this century has surpassed him in the variety and volume of his achievements.

What kind of man was Howard W. Odum? Perhaps the most obvious thing about him was his tremendous energy, both physical and mental. He was always moving, and he moved at a rapid pace. It was often said by his associates in Alumni Building that “if you see a pair of coattails disappearing around a corner, you know they belong to Dr. Odum.” His imagination was ebullient, and his thoughts poured out in a torrent of written or spoken words. Many students had trouble with his lectures until they learned how to pay attention to his meaning rather than his words. His writing was often a bit chaotic, but at the same time poetic, and one colleague described his style as “a blend of Walt Whitman, Thomas Wolfe, and William Faulkner.”¹ Odum liked to plan a new project, get it organized and running smoothly, and then turn it over to someone else. He wearied of routine matters, and he did not enjoy such petty details as presiding over meetings, presenting speakers, or writing the minutes of meetings. Often, after he had opened a meeting, he would make an inconspicuous exit, go to his office, write for an hour or more, and return to the meeting just in time to preside over its adjournment.

Odum had an intense devotion to the South and an abiding faith in its people. What the South needed, he thought, was not harsh criticism but understanding, wise leadership, and self-development. From his own roots he had an appreciation of why certain people joined the Ku Klux Klan, lynched Negroes, and did other unjust things. He often said, “But for the grace of God you or I might be doing these same things. Let us condemn their evil deeds, but still love the people. We need to change the system in the South so that people do not feel compelled to do bad things.” His own parents were to him the epitome of “the folk.” To condemn people was to turn his back on his own “folk,” and this he would never do.

With all of his remarkable talents, Odum was basically a very shy person. He was not urbane or smooth, and he had little facility for the small talk of teas and parties. He was always the country boy from Georgia, with a certain distaste for what he considered to be the trivialities of social life.

He worked incessantly, as if every day was to be his last chance to get something done. There were probably few days in his whole life when he relaxed completely and did nothing “useful.” Often he would be working on several different books. At his office every minute that he could snatch between lectures or conferences would be devoted to one of his manuscripts. In the late afternoon he might go to his farm to check on his Jerseys. After dinner he would retire to the study in his home and work on another manuscript. When he felt the need of sleep, he sank into a large lounge chair and slept for an hour or two, and then he would go back to his writing. He used to say, “I relax by changing from one manuscript to another.”

Odum claimed that he really enjoyed working at this pace. He said that like his father he was naturally endowed with a robust constitution and that he had scercely been sick a day in his life. His father had died at the age of ninety-two. Odum retired at seventy in the summer of 1954, and he was looking forward to producing several more books, particularly an autobiography that he planned to call The White Sands of Bethlehem. But at the very moment of his retirement he suddenly began to look tired and ill, and on November 8, 1954, he was dead from a cancer of the pancreas. Most people said that he had simply worked himself to death. Those who knew him best wondered what caused the cancer, and they thought it was not overwork but frustration and disappointment at not having achieved still more. For years he had carried the scars of the misunderstanding of his motives by fellow southerners who thought he was a traitor to the South. In his early years at Chapel Hill he had endured the barbs of faculty and townspeople who did not know the difference between sociology and socialism. He had also been the center of controversies over the right of Social Forces to publish articles that might give offense to religious fundamentalists and the right of the Institute to do research on such delicate subjects as the textile industry or race relations. He was disappointed in the casual and uncooperative way in which some of his social science colleagues played their roles in the Institute, and he was frustrated and embarrassed by the eternal explaining, cajoling, and begging that he had to do to get money from the foundations. And perhaps, worst of all, he had seen his last big dream for the University—a school of public administration, planned in detail and with financial support by a foundation all but assured—go up in smoke because the president of the University failed to keep an appointment in New York at which he was to put the administration’s stamp of approval on the new school.

Odum left many monuments to his genius for pioneering. Aside from his prolific writings, the most enduring of these are the Institute for Research in Social Science, Social Forces, the School of Social Work, and the Department of Sociology. In 1933 the American Council on Education’s Committee on Graduate Instruction made a study in which it attempted to identify the departments in American universities that deserved a good rating in terms of being “adequately staffed and equipped.” At the University of North Carolina eleven departments were listed: Botany, Chemistry, Classics, Education, English, History, Political Science, Psychology, Romance Languages, Sociology, and Zoology. Only one of these was given the special rating of “distinguished,” and that was the Department of Sociology. Not bad for a department that was only thirteen years old! The department’s good fortune was made possible to a considerable extent by the existence of the Institute, which enabled Odum to attract able professors as well as promising young graduate students, some of whom would stay on after receiving their doctorates. The other social science departments likewise profited from the energizing presence of the Institute.

Those Who Helped

Several people besides Odum played important roles in the founding of the Institute: Harry Woodburn Chase, Jesse Frederick Steiner, Louis Round Wilson, Beardsley Ruml, and Eugene Cunningham Branson. The relation of the first four to Odum and the Institute may be sketched briefly. The role of E. C. Branson requires some elaboration.

Harry W. Chase was a native of Massachusetts. After earning his A.B. and A.M. degrees at Dartmouth, he went to Clark University to study psychology under G. Stanley Hall. There he became the good friend of one of his fellow graduate students, Howard W. Odum. Like Odum, Chase fell in love with a young woman who was also studying psychology. He and Lucetta Crum were married on December 26, 1910, just two days after Odum’s marriage to Anna Louise Kranz. The two couples were to be lifelong friends. It could well be that some of Odum’s devotion to the South rubbed off on Chase, for as soon as he had received his doctorate in 1910 Chase took a position as professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina. In 1918 he became dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Following the untimely death of President Edward Kidder Graham during the great influenza epidemic, Chase was elected chairman of the faculty in January 1919, and in June he was elected president of the University. His formal installation did not take place until April 28, 1920. Among those who attended the inauguration was his old friend Howard W. Odum, who was then dean of the School of Liberal Arts at Emory University near Atlanta. Odum had accepted an offer from Chase several months earlier and was preparing to move to the University of North Carolina. After returning to Atlanta, Odum wrote Chase: “I congratulate you and the University on the remarkable success of the inauguration exercises. It was a great occasion. Personally, it was worth a great deal more to me than I am able to estimate. When one has staked his future on the belief in a certain institution and its youthful President, it is most refreshing to find them measuring up even beyond former estimates.”²

Two months later Odum would move to Chapel Hill because his friends Chase and Branson had paved the way. In Chase, Odum had a warm friend who played a vital role in supporting and facilitating his proposals. Chase’s departure in 1930 to become president of the University of Illinois was a hard blow to Odum.

Jesse Steiner, a native of Ohio, was born in 1880. He had a doctorate from the University of Chicago, and he had considerable experience as teacher, missionary, author, and administrator. During World War I he became national director of the Bureau of Training for Home Service and later director of educational service for the American Red Cross. When Odum founded the Department of Sociology in 1920, he was already searching for someone who would strengthen the depth and respectability of the department. He was fortunate to be able to bring Steiner to Chapel Hill in 1921. Steiner and his family soon made many warm friends in Chapel Hill. He was scholarly, calm, a lucid lecturer, and a friendly adviser to his students. For several years these two men were the Department of Sociology. When Steiner moved to Tulane University in 1927, Odum again had a deep feeling of toss.

Louis R. Wilson, born in 1876 in North Carolina, was already an old-timer on the campus when Odum arrived. He was Kenan Professor of Library Administration and director of the University Extension Bureau, and he was soon to be director of the University of North Carolina Press. He was a helpful adviser in planning the organization of the Institute, and he became a member of its governing board. He and Odum had occasion to disagree at times but these minor differences subtracted little from Wilson’s role as friend, supporter, and defender. In 1932, after thirty years of service at Chapel Hill, Wilson left to become dean of the University of Chicago’s Graduate Library School. Retiring there at the age of sixty-five, he returned to Chapel Hill in 1942 and made a new career as elder statesman and historian of the University as well as member once more of the Institute’s Board of Governors. On December 27, 1976, he celebrated his hundredth birthday, still vigorous and able to relate his vivid recollections of a fascinating career.

Beardsley Ruml, a native of Iowa and a resident of New York City, was director of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial. The directors of this philanthropic foundation, which was founded in 1919, were particularly interested in helping universities to strengthen their curricula and research in the social sciences. Odum had occasion to see Ruml several times in the early 1920s. Ruml was impressed by the dynamism and the great plans of the young sociologist, and in the spring of 1924 he submitted to the Memorial, with his stamp of approval, Odum’s application for the three-year grant that would make possible the founding of the Institute. In a sense Ruml was the key to Odum’s plan, because he was “the man who knew where the money was.” The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial was to be the financial mainstay of the Institute in its formative years.

The Godfather: Eugene C. Branson

Each of these four men played a part, but the intellectual godfather of the Institute was Eugene C. Branson. Branson was born in Morehead City, North Carolina, in 1861. After his education at Trinity College (now Duke University) and Peabody College for Teachers, he worked in public schools as principal or superintendent in Raleigh and Wilson, North Carolina, and Athens, Georgia. Later he was appointed professor of pedagogy at the Georgia State N...