Chicago, the urban city known to many as
Canaan, celebrated as a “[l]usty, virile, and bois-
terous city... city of the high, the low, the mer-
chant prince and the consuming pauper... of the
polyglot racial spawns spewed from all the quar-
ters of the globe.” The Bensons take a formidable
work ethic with them and succeed in establishing
themselves as a respectable family in Chicago.
Their son Sol joins the Eighth Illinois, an army di-
vision that earns the nickname “The Black Dev-
ils” after their heroic battles in FRANCEduring
World War I. Sol departs, confident in his abilities
to fight but concerned that violence against
African-American families at home will not cease.
He and his regiment return to a hero’s welcome,
but the city erupts into a vicious race riot that tar-
gets Sol and his community just days later. Over
the course of the novel, Turpin explores the com-
munity and social dynamics that sustain and ex-
haust families. The Bensons weather their
children’s emotional distress and impromptu mar-
riages because of pregnancy. They also see the
next generation honor the Benson family tradi-
tions of fortitude and will.
Hailed as a “novel of prime human signifi-
cance on a theme never before approached in
American literature,” O Canaan!also was cele-
brated as an “unforgettable story, told with sweep
and power.”
Bibliography
Turpin, Waters. O Canaan!1939, reprint, New York:
AMS Press Inc., 1975.
Odum, Howard Washington(1884–1954)
A sociologist whose published studies of African-
American folk music and folklore contributed
much to the ongoing scholarship on race relations
and African-American culture.
Born in Bethlehem, Georgia, to William
Pleasants Odum and Mary Ann Thomas Odum,
he spent his childhood on the family’s modest
farm. Following the family’s relocation to Oxford,
Georgia, he attended Emory College and gradu-
ated with a degree in classics and in English.
Odum began teaching immediately after gradua-
tion and also proceeded to work toward a master’s
degree in classics from the University of Missis-
sippi. In 1909 he completed his first Ph.D., at
Clark University, in psychology and in 1910 he
completed his second in sociology at COLUMBIA
UNIVERSITY. Odum was on the faculty at the Uni-
versity of Georgia and at Emory University before
he began a 34-year career in 1920 as the Kenan
Professor of Sociology at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. He married Anna Louise
Kranz, a Clark University graduate student whom
he met while pursuing his doctoral studies at the
Worcester, Massachusetts, school. The couple wed
on Christmas Eve 1910 and went on to have three
children.
During the Harlem Renaissance, Odum pub-
lished several works on African-American culture.
These included THE NEGRO AND HIS SONGS
(1925), coauthored with GUYBENTONJOHNSON,
and a trilogy of works about a quasi-fictional hero
referred to as Black Ulysses. The collection con-
sisted of Rainbow Round My Shoulder: The Blue
Trail of Black Ulysses(1928), Wings on My Feet:
Black Ulysses at the Wars (1929), and Cold Blue
Moon: Black Ulysses Afar Off(1931).Bibliography
Brazil, Wayne. Howard W. Odum: The Building Years,
1884–1930.New York: Garland Press, 1988.
Howard Odum Papers, University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill.
Odum, Howard. American Sociology: The Story of Sociol-
ogy in the United States through 1950.New York:
Longmans, Green, 1951.
———, and Guy Benton Johnson. The Negro and His
Songs: A Study of Typical Negro Songs in the South.
1925; reprint, New York: Negro Universities Press,
1968.
———, and Guy Benton Johnson. Negro Workaday
Songs.1926; reprint, New York: Negro Universities
Press, 1969.
Sosna, Morton. In Search of the Silent South: Southern Lib-
erals and the Race Issue.New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1977.O’Keeffe, Georgia Totto(1887–1986)
An accomplished artist celebrated for her pio-
neering modernist work, O’Keeffe also was the
first woman painter to have her works featured in
a solo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.400 Odum, Howard Washington