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The year 1989 marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Southern Labor Archives in Atlanta, Georgia. In 1982, 1984, and 1986 the Southern Labor Archives sponsored the Southern Labor Studies Conference. In 1984 the Conference was held in Arlington, Texas, in cooperation with the Southwestern Labor Studies Association. In 1985 the Southern Labor Archives received support from the Georgia Humanities Council to create a traveling exhibit on the history of textile workers, nationally, regionally, and in two particular mill towns in Georgia. The Southern Labor Archives also helped the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers celebrate its centennial in 1988. The American Library Association honored the Southern Labor Archives in 1988 by giving it the John Sessions Memorial Award for outstanding service to the labor community. The Archives will soon be sponsoring, with the Bill Usery Labor Management Relations Foundation and the U.S. Department of Labor, a major conference on the past, present, and future of the U.S. labor policy.

The Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia, was the second labor archive established as a result of the activities of the Association of Southern Labor Historians. This group of historians concerned about the lack of attention paid to the southern working class on the part of labor historians, developed during the 1966 meeting of the Southern Historical Association with the purpose of stimulating study of the southern trade union movement by collecting union records and presenting papers on labor history at meetings concurrent with those of the Southern Historical Association. Dr. George Green of the University of Texas (UT) at Arlington, Texas, returned home from this meeting and began a series of conversations with UT faculty and administrators, as well as Texas labor leaders. These discussions led to the creation in 1967 of the Texas Labor Archives at UT. The Southern Labor Archives is a very young repository. The Archives seeks, however, to become a major regional and national research resource by concentrating its efforts on documenting the development of the labor movement in the South.