Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

Publication of names of individuals mentioned in the field notes is forbidden until 1 January 2025.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Field Studies in the Modern Culture of the South Records #4214, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Provenance

Received from Mrs. John Gillin of Chapel Hill, N.C., in 1980. Photographic negatives added by John Reed in April 1992 (Acc. 92053).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Anthropology--Research--Alabama.
• Anthropology--Research--North Carolina.
• Avery County (N.C.)--Social conditions.
• Brewton (Ala.)--Social conditions.
• Camden (Ala.)--Social conditions.
• Community organization--Southern States.
• Diet--Southern States.
• Folklore--Southern States.
• Housing--Southern States.
• Labor--Southern States.
• Selma (Ala.)--Social conditions.
• Southern States--History--20th century.
• Southern States--Religion--20th century.
• Technology--Social aspects--Southern States.
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Institute for Research in Social Science.
• York County (S.C.)--Social conditions.

In 1946, the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, received a grant from the Rosenwald Fund to support a series of studies of the contemporary culture of the American South. This project was directed by John Gillin, professor of Anthropology at UNC. The following description of the project is based on Research in Service to Society: The First Fifty Years of the Institute for Research in Social Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill by Guy Benton Johnson and Guion Griffis Johnson (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1980), pages 153-154.

Five communities, representing five different subcultural areas, were chosen for study. One of these, a North Carolina coastal community on Core Sound, was to be studied by Gillin himself. Doctoral candidates were responsible for the field work in the other communities. Vladimir Hartman studied a North Carolina mountain community, Morton Rubin was responsible for the study of a Deep South plantation community in Alabama, while Charles Peavy dealt with a "piney woods" community in southern Alabama. The fifth area was a textile town in Piedmont South Carolina, to which three scholars were assigned. Kenneth Morland studied the mill community, Ralph C. Patrick, Jr., studied the town itself, and Hylan Lewis, a young black sociologist from Atlanta University, observed the ways of the black people of the town. In addition, Gillin planned to write a summary volume on the culture of the modern South.

Although the whole series was not published as planned, the project resulted in a number of excellent dissertations and in several significant publications. Morton Rubin's Plantation County was published in 1951, Hylan Lewis's Blackways of Kent in 1955, and Kenneth Morland's Millways of Kent in 1958. Hartman's work resulted in his 1957 doctoral dissertation, "A Cultural Study of a Mountain Community in Western North Carolina." Ralph Clinton Patrick's disseration, "A Cultural Approach to Social Stratification," (Harvard University, 1954) was also a result of this work. Gillin's heavy involvement in other researches, particularly his studies of Latin American culture, plus his departure for the University of Pittsburgh in 1959, prevented the completion of the projected summary volume on the culture of the South. A paper that he published in 1951 in collaboration with Emmett J. Murphy, entitled "Notes on Southern Culture Patterns," was indicative of what such a volume would have attempted to do. The article presented the results of the field workers' efforts to delineate the content of the southern subcultures. A checklist headed "Some Characteristic Traits in Areas of the South," covering over two hundred items under such categories as technology, housing, food, labor, stratification, and religion, was used to determine the presence or absence of a given trait in each of the five subcultures. The tentative conclusion was that "it is impossible to say what is distinctively Southern with any degree of finality."

This collection consists almost entirely of notes based on interviews and observations made in the field by six of the seven Modern Culture of the South project researchers. Gillin's own planned field work was never conducted.

Most of the notes apparently were transcribed from recordings made by the researchers at the end of each day's field work. They refer primarily to conversations the researchers had with individuals in the communities being studied. The notes include much detail not included in the works based on them. The actual names of places, institutions, and individuals, for example, are used in the notes but not in the books.

The notes are on 4 x 6 sheets and constitute Series 1 of the collection. Series 2 consists of a travel notes by John Gillin and a few other miscellaneous project-related items. Series 3 consists of 33 photographs made by researchers in York, S.C., and in the area around Selma and Camden, Ala.

Photographs (PF-4214/1-2)

Extra-oversize papers (X-OP-F/4214/1)