[1] He attended the English High School of Boston and then studied at Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1920 with a B.A.
Contributors to Folk-Say 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.
From 1942 to 1945, Botkin headed the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress where he focused attention on the emerging aspects of folklore in modern life.
Botkin called on writers to utilize folklore in order to "make the inarticulate articulate and above all, to let the people speak in their own voice and tell their own story.
A recent study by Professor Susan G. Davis documents extensive surveillance of Botkin over more than a decade.
[5] 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.
Accordingly, during the '50s and '60s Richard M. Dorson attacked Botkin's work, which he considered unscholarly, calling much of what was included in his books "fakelore."
His idea that folklore is basically creative expression used to communicate and instill social values, traditions, and goals, is widely accepted by folklorists today.