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Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities
Advancing Alabama Labor History

September 11, 2026

Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University 

Pebble Hill • 101 S. Debardeleben Street, Auburn 

 

Schedule

9:30 AM

Coffee and Registration

 

Labor history ephemera displays available inside the historic Scott-Yarbrough House

10 AM

Welcome 

10:15 AM

Keynote Address by Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley

11:15 AM

Q&A

11:30 AM

Break

11:45 AM

Panel: Scholarship in Progress

 

Daniel Rhodes, facilitator

  • Wesley Bishop, Jacksonville State University
  • Logan Barrett, Auburn University
  • Laura King, Auburn University
  • Hailey Allen, Birmingham 
  • Cordelia Hulsey, University of Alabama

12:30 PM

Lunch

 

Labor history ephemera displays available inside the historic Scott-Yarbrough House

1:30 PM

Panel: Labor History and Oral History

 

Frank Kennamer, University of Alabama, facilitator 

Planning and Executing an Oral History Project
  • Julia Brock, University of Alabama
Examples of Oral History/Labor History Project 
  •  Kristina Mullenix, Alabama Coal Miners Digital Archive
  •  Alabama AFL-CIO, Voices of the Alabama Labor Movement

If you have an oral history/labor history project you’d like to share, email Frank Kennamer at fdkennam@gmail.com.

2:30 PM

Break

2:45 PM

Panel: Labor History in the Archives

 

  • Alabama Department of Archives and History
  • Alabama State University
  • Auburn University Special Collections
  • Birmingham Public Library
  • Cobb Memorial Archives
  • Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark
  • Southern Labor Archives
  • Tuskegee University

3:30 PM

Stories and Storytelling from Labor Leaders

4 PM

Adjourn
 

 

Dr. Robin D.G. Kelley

Robin D. G. Kelley is the Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U. S. History and professor of African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. He specializes in the history of social movements in the U.S., the African Diaspora and Africa; Black intellectuals; music; visual culture; contemporary urban studies; historiography and historical theory; poverty studies and ethnography; and organized labor, among other topics. Kelley is the author of several books including the prizewinning Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009); Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists during the Great Depression (1990); Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class (1994); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012); Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1997), which was selected one of the top ten books of the year by the Village Voice; and Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002/2022). He is a coauthor of Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century (2001) and a coeditor of Black, Brown, and Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora (2009), recipient of an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; and To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans (2005).

 

Sponsors

North Alabama Area Labor Council, AFL-CIO

Department of History at Auburn University

Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities


Image: John Vachon, Vestibule of Baptist church during Sunday services, Gadsden, Alabama, December 1940. Library of Congress.