Labor Studies in the South

Abstract

The Fourth Biennial Southern Labor Studies Conference will meet in Atlanta, September 30-October 2, 1982. The program will include both traditional and working class history, and David Montgomery (Yale University) has agreed to de liver the keynote address. One of the highlights of the Conference will be a twenty year retrospective on the publication of E.P. Thompson's The Making of the Eng lish Working Class. Selected papers of the Second Southern Labor Studies Conference, 1978, were recently released by Greenwood Press. The volume, entitled Southern Work ers and their Unions 1880-1975, and edited by Merl Reed, Leslie Hough, and Gary Fink, includes essays on black workers, civil rights, women, southern coal miners, and a more broadly focused essay by Lorin Lee Cary (University of Toledo) on middle-echelon labor leaders. The Atlanta Labor History Project, under the auspices of the Southern Labor Archives, continues to sponsor public programs on the history of working Atlan tans between the 1880s and the World War II era. Project results are disseminated through articles in the labor press, field trips, public seminars, the development of a labor history tour, and the identification and documentation of significant labor historical sites. Much of the work has been directed by Clifford M. Kuhn (UNC) and has been partially funded through grants from the Georgia Endowment for the Humanities. The Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, under the directorship of Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, continues its investi gation of Piedmont industrialization. Hundreds of interviews have been completed and project workers are now beginning to analyze and interpret the results of their research. For information contact Professor Hall through the Department of His tory, UNC. Mary Frederickson (UNC) and Dale Newman (University of Pittsburgh) re cently conducted a series of public programs reconstructing the history of Georgia textile workers through slide tape media presentations, panel discussions and inter changes with the audience. The programs were held in various textile towns and were targeted toward textile workers and their families.