Rupert B. Vance (1899 -1975)

President Chase also asked Odum to create a sociology department, which became one of the nation's premier social science programs. Odum focused on social and economic issues in the textile industry, tenant farming, and race relations. He recruited other prominent southern studies scholars to staff the Institute for Research in Social Science. These scholars included Rupert Vance, Arthur Raper, Guy and Guion Johnson, and Harriet Herring. Under their influence, the university became a national leader in the study of the American South.

• Learn more about the Institute for Research in Social Science.
• Listen to an interview with Harriet Herring recall her early life and experiences studying labor in North Carolina mill towns in the first half of the 20th century.
• Listen to an interview with Sociologist Guy B. Johnson as he describes his path to sociology and recalls his participation in the Southern Regional Council in the 1940s.
• Listen to an interview with Southern sociologist Guion Griffis Johnson as she describes her work with the Georgia Conference on Social Welfare during the 1940s and her involvement with the women's movement and civil rights activism during the 1960s and 19