Jamil Drake

Jamil W. Drake is an Assistant Professor of African American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. He studies twentieth-century Black religion with a special interest in the relationship between race, science, and politics.

His book, To Know the Soul of a People: Religion, Race, and the Making of the Southern Folk (Oxford, 2022), is a history of the social scientific study of Black religious cultures, such as conjure, dreams and visions, chanted sermons, ecstatic singing, and conversion rituals in the rural South of the early twentieth century, especially during the Depression era. Drawing on correspondences, fieldnotes and monographs, the book demonstrates that the social scientific construction of “folk religion” contributed to shaping the perception of impoverished Black communities and laid the seeds of what would eventually become known as the “culture of poverty.”

He is currently working on his second book project, Let My People Live: The Medicalization of Black Religion in the Early 20^th century. It will explore how mainstream public health organizations promoted Black Protestant culture to authorize modern germ theory and professional treatment. Additionally, Jamil has published articles on religion in midwifery, venereal disease control programs, and the culture of poverty. His other works on religion in health sermons and health films will be featured in two upcoming edited volumes on African American religious history and the medical humanities. 

Jamil is a CO-PI on the Callie House Project, a public-facing grant project funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. In this project, he will be exploring the role of spirituality in the work of Black doulas in Atlanta, Georgia.