Benjamin A. Botkin

Career

Benjamin A. Botkin began his academic career teaching at the University of Oklahoma in the early 1920s, and he married Gertrude Fritz in 1925. From 1929 to 1932, he edited the yearly publication Folk-Say, whose contributors included Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Henry Roth, J. Frank Dobie, Louise Pound, Alexander Haggerty Krappe, Stanley Vestal, Alain Locke, Sterling Brown, Paul Horgan, and Mari Sandoz. He also edited the small magazine Space from 1934 to 1935.

In 1938, Botkin became the national folklore editor and chairman of the Federal Writers' Project, a role he held until 1941. Together with Charles Seeger, he coordinated a large-scale research and recording effort focused on American music. From 1942 to 1945, he directed the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, where he highlighted the role of folklore in contemporary life. During this period, he also served as president of the American Folklore Society.

At a 1939 Writers' Congress panel that included Aunt Molly Jackson, Earl Robinson, and Alan Lomax, Botkin argued that writers could gain a point of view from folklore, noting that folk art's completeness and integrity come from the artist's direct response to a group experience with which they identify. He urged writers to use folklore to 'make the inarticulate articulate and above all, to let the people speak in their own voice and tell their own story.'

For many years, Botkin was harassed and kept under surveillance by the F.B.I., as documented in a recent study by Professor Susan G. Davis covering more than a decade of monitoring. He died on July 30, 1975, at his home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York.

Approach to folklore

Botkin embraced the ever-evolving state of folklore. According to him, folklore was not static but ever changing and being created by people in their daily lives. He developed his novel approach to American folklore while teaching in Oklahoma and later working in the federal government, as part of the Federal Writers' Project, during the late 1930s and the early 1940s. He became Folklore editor of the Writers' Project in 1938.

His efforts working with the Library of Congress led to the preservation and publication of the ex-slave narratives, part of the Federal Writers' Project. His book Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery was the first book to use oral narratives of formerly enslaved African Americans as legitimate historical sources. Many researchers viewed folklore as a relic from the past, but Botkin and other New Deal folklorists insisted that American folklore played a vibrant role in the present by drawing on shared experience and promoting a democratic culture.

Botkin served as the head of the Archive of American Folk Song of the Library of Congress (formerly held by John Lomax and Alan Lomax) between 1942 and 1945. He became a board member of People's Songs Inc., a forerunner to Sing Out!, during the mid '40s. At that time Botkin left his government post to devote full-time to writing. During the '40s and '50s he compiled and edited a series of books on folklore, including A Treasury of American Folklore (1944), A Treasury of New England Folklore (1947), A Treasury of Southern Folklore (1949), A Treasury of Western Folklore (1951), A Treasury of Railroad Folklore (with Alvin F. Harlow, 1953), A Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore (1955), and A Civil War Treasury of Tales, Legends and Folklore (1960).

In his foreword to A Treasury of American Folklore, Botkin explained his values: 'In one respect it is necessary to distinguish between folklore as we find it and folklore as we believe it ought to be. Folklore as we find it perpetuates human ignorance, perversity, and depravity along with human wisdom and goodness.' During the '50s and '60s Richard M. Dorson attacked Botkin's work, calling much of what was included in his books 'fakelore.' Botkin ignored Dorson and disregarded his criteria.

Folklore, he believed, was an art to be shared, not an exclusive artifact for scholars. His idea that folklore is basically creative expression used to communicate and instill social values, traditions, and goals, is widely accepted by folklorists today. Botkin insisted that democracy is strengthened by the valuing of myriad cultural voices. He is considered the 'Father of Public Folklore.'

On-going Memorial Activities

The American Folklore Society awards the Benjamin A. Botkin Prize to individuals whose work in documenting American folklore has deepened the conversation of the way in which people create an art that reflects their reality and transmits culture and understanding. The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress runs a series of lectures in his honor where 'distinguished experts speaking about their research and current issues and best practices in folklore, folklife, ethnomusicology, and related fields.' The lectures are then published by AFC and made available on their website.