Title: Race and rumors of race
First published: 1943
Description: 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.
Subjects: Race relations, Whites, Attitudes, Social conditions, African Americans, History, Southern states, race relations, African americans, southern states, Whites, history, Southern states, social conditions, Southern states, history, African Continental Ancestry Group, Rassenunruhen, Südstaaten, Racism, United states, race relations, Black or African American, White people, Black People
Places: Southern States, United States
Time periods: 1865-1945, 20th century