By William A. Owens
University of Texas Press, 1975
Roy Bedichek, J. Frank Dobie, and Walter Prescott Webb—a naturalist, a folklorist, and a historian—all taught at the University of Texas, lived only a few blocks apart, and saw each other almost every day. The true cement of their friendship, however, was the correspondence that makes up much of this book. They wrote not to exchange information, but to communicate ideas, to nail down the generalities of conversation, and, above all, to challenge, encourage, and stimulate one another.
William A. Owens, who knew all three personally, has tied their letters together with his own observations and with transcripts of tape interviews with the men. The result is a unique book, a combination of biography and personal history that portrays not only the three friends, but the land they loved as well.
Paddy Bowman and Lynne Hamer
Utah State University Press, 2011
The creative traditions and expressive culture of students' families, neighborhoods, towns, religious communities, and peer groups provide opportunities to extend classrooms, sustain learning beyond school buildings, and better connect students and schools with their communities. Folklorists and educators have long worked together to expand curricula through engagement with local knowledge and informal cultural arts-folk arts in education is a familiar rubric for these programs-but the unrealized potential here, for both the folklore scholar and the teacher, is large. The value folklorists "place on the local, the vernacular, and the aesthetics of daily life does not reverberate" throughout public education, even though, in the words of Paddy Bowman and Lynne Hamer, "connecting young people to family and community members and helping them to develop self-identity are vital to civic well-being and to school success."
Through the Schoolhouse Door offers a collection of experiences from exemplary school programs and the analysis of an expert group of folklorists and educators who are dedicated not only to getting students out the door and into their communities to learn about the folk culture all around them but also to honoring the culture teachers and students bring to the classroom.
Anath Ariel De Vidas
University Press of Colorado, 2004
Anath Ariel de Vidas
University Press of Colorado, 2004
However, as Anath Ariel de Vidas argues in this masterful ethnography, this self-denigration - added to the absence among the Teeneks of emblematic Indian features such as traditional costumes, agricultural rituals, specific ceremonies, or systems of religious cargos or offices - are not synonymous with collective anomie. Rather, as Ariel de Vidas demonstrates, their seeming ontological acceptance of a marginal social and economic condition is - in its own peculiar way - a language of indigenous resistance.
Virginia Pounds Brown
University of Alabama Press, 1981
Preserving voices from the back roads—Ruby Pickens Tartt and the folklore of Alabama’s Black Belt.
“You recall the expression ‘toting the lead row’, don’t you? In chopping cotton or corn there is always a leader, one who can chop the fastest of them all. When he finishes his row, he goes back and helps the other choppers finish theirs. The one who totes the lead row takes the lead place in the next row.”—Ruby Pickens Tartt
Toting the Lead Row is a powerful biographical and cultural tribute to Ruby Pickens Tartt, a white woman from Alabama’s Black Belt who devoted her life to preserving the oral traditions of rural Black communities. Born in 1880 in Livingston, Alabama, Tartt witnessed nearly a century of social transformation and made it her mission to document the songs, stories, and life histories of her African American neighbors. She believed that the soul of Sumter County resided not in its institutions, but in its cabins, fields, and voices.
During the Great Depression, Tartt worked with the Federal Writers’ Project, collaborating with renowned folklorists such as Carl Carmer and John Lomax. Her home became a hub for cultural preservation, attracting scholars and artists who recognized the depth of her fieldwork. The book’s title refers to a Southern agricultural phrase—“toting the lead row”—symbolizing leadership and support, a role Tartt embodied in her efforts to elevate the voices of those often overlooked.
This volume is divided into two parts: the first offers a detailed biography of Tartt and her work with the WPA, while the second presents a curated selection of her collected writings, including 18 life histories and 12 slave narratives. Through these stories, Tartt preserved a vital piece of Southern history and gave voice to generations whose experiences might otherwise have been lost.
Toting the Lead Row is both a celebration of a remarkable woman and a vital contribution to the study of folklore, race, and Southern identity.
Trevor J. Blank
Utah State University Press, 2009
Trevor J. Blank and Robert Glenn Howard
Utah State University Press, 2013
Sookja Cho
University of Michigan Press, 2017
Harold Scheub
University of Wisconsin Press, 2012

Richard Price and Sally Price
University of Chicago Press, 1991