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The article focuses on the origin and progress of the Texas labor archives. During the Southern Historical Association's meeting in Memphis in November 1966 a group of mostly young historians organized the Association of Southern Labor Historians (SHA). Its purpose was to promote Southern labor history by encouraging the collection of labor records and the delivery of labor papers at meetings concurrent with those of SHA. Inspired by this development, professor George Green of the University of Texas Arlington history department talked with the university librarian, John Hudson, about the absence of primary resource materials for graduate and undergraduate study in history at UTA and the lack of recent research in the South and Southwest on the history of labor. Professor Howard Lackman of the history department joined in the series of conversations. Researchers learned that no university in the Southwest was actively collecting labor records and that the labor community, possessing tons of non-current records, needed and wanted a labor archives.