To Know the Soul of a People: Religion, Race, and the Making of Southern Folk

To Know the Soul of a People is a history of religion and race in the agricultural South before the Civil Rights era, by Jamil W. Drake. It chronicles a cadre of social scientists who studied the living conditions of black rural communities, revealing the abject poverty of the Jim Crow south. These scholars aimed to illuminate the impoverished conditions of their subjects for philanthropic and governmental organizations and the broader American public, especially during the Great Depression.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 280 pages
Publication date: 31 March 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Before the Civil Rights era, Jamil W. Drake's book explores the history of religion and race in the agricultural South. He describes a group of social scientists who investigated the living conditions of black rural communities, exposing the abject poverty of the Jim Crow South. These university-affiliated researchers recorded shotgun houses, unsanitary privies, and contaminated water, as well as scaly hands, enlarged stomachs, and malnourished bodies. However, they also paid attention to the spiritual possessions, chanted sermons, ecstatic singing, conjuration, dreams and visions, fortune-telling, taboos, and other religious cultures of these communities. These scholars aimed to shed light on the impoverished conditions of their subjects for philanthropic and governmental organizations, as well as the broader American public, particularly during the Great Depression. Religion played a crucial role in their efforts to chart the long economic depression across the South.

From 1924 to 1941, Charles Johnson, Guy Johnson, Allison Davis, Lewis Jones, and other social scientists framed the religious and cultural practices of black communities as "folk" practices, aiming to reform them and the broader South. Drake demonstrates that social scientists' use of "folk" reveals religion as an important site for highlighting the supposed mental, moral, and cultural deficits of America's so-called folk population. Furthermore, these social scientists not only pioneered rural social science and reform but also used their study of religion to plant the seeds of the concept that would later be known as the "culture of poverty" in the latter half of the twentieth century.

Dimension: 235 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780190082697