CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – Archie Green spent a lifetime making sure people remember the past – capped by a nearly single-handed push that spawned a national center devoted to folklore and the creative heritage of America’s working class.
Now, a university where the late cultural pioneer studied and taught for more than a decade wants to make sure people remember him.
The School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois will host a Sept. 14 tribute to Green, a union activist turned folklore icon who died March 22 in San Francisco at age 91.
“We feel people should know about his work and his contributions,” said Ron Peters, a retired labor professor who headed the planning for the event. “We also want to make a statement that the subject matter he championed is very legitimate and has expanded the frontiers of knowledge.”
He says folklore was little regarded in most academic circles when Green – then 40, with years as a shipwright and carpenter under his belt – came to the U. of I. in 1958, already attuned to the power of working-class culture.
Green’s graduate studies – in library sciences because the university offered no folklore program – evolved into a career-long crusade to collect, preserve and promote songs, stories and other aspects of American life that ultimately gave folklore newfound appreciation and credibility, Peters said.
“Folklore was viewed as something of a peripheral activity for leisure time, a little like pop culture is now,” he said. “Academics considered it superficial, something that would come and go, but Archie proved that it’s socially important. It says something about the times and we can learn from it.”
Green combined his boyhood love of cowboy songs and an early career as a shipwright and carpenter into a passion he dubbed “laborlore” – music, slang and rituals created by ordinary people that shaped the union movement and helped build America’s working class.
Peters says Green’s efforts provided a window into how workers relate to their jobs and communities, and countered the prevailing notion that folklore was little more than historical trivia.
Along with collecting songs and tales from mines, factories and other work sites, Green also campaigned to spread the lessons of folklore beyond classrooms and into the public eye through museums, the media and other outlets.
For six years, he mounted a nearly one-man lobbying effort that ultimately persuaded Congress to pass a 1976 law that created the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.
“The center was the ultimate blessing,” said Peters, who first met Green in the late 1960s. “It was important to him because it provided recognition that folklore was important and legitimate.”
Judy McCulloh, a longtime friend who also worked as a book editor for Green at the U. of I. Press, says Green retired from academic life in 1982, but never stopped advocating for folklore.
“On his deathbed – literally – his last effort was a letter to his congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, urging her to allocate stimulus funds to document workers’ culture, just as New Deal programs included spending for folk units, to our enduring benefit,” McCulloh said.
The Sept. 14 tribute to Green will feature remarks by David Taylor, the head of research and programs for the American Folklife Center, along with performances by folk music scholar Stephen Wade and Jordan Kaye of the Prairie Dogs, a Champaign-Urbana folk and bluegrass band.
Other speakers include U. of I. history professor David Roediger and Mike Munoz, a union activist and friend of Green’s. An open mike session will follow the program, giving friends and supporters an opportunity to recount their personal memories.
The program will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Sept. 14 in the Wagner Education Center at the School of Labor and Employment Relations, 504 E. Armory Ave., Champaign.
Green earned a master of library science degree from the U. of I. in 1960, then spent more than a decade as a teacher and librarian at the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations, now the School of Labor and Employment Relations. He later earned a doctorate in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania and taught at the University of Texas and the University of Louisville.
He wrote dozens of articles and books, including “Only a Miner,” a study of coal mining songs that launched a “Music in American Life” series published by U. of I. Press, one of the sponsors of the tribute.
In 1995, he received the American Folklore Society’s Benjamin A. Botkin Prize for outstanding achievement in public folklore and earned the Living Legend Award from the Library of Congress in 2007.
