Taking place on Sept. 9 to 11 at the University's Graham Memorial Hall, the conference is titled “Putting Workers First: Southern Labor from 1619 to COVID-19.” “I think this conference will be really worthwhile for anyone interested in questions of work and labor of economic justice, racial justice, because it will explore the past of the South and its history in terms of labor,” Erik Gellman, UNC history professor and host of the conference, said. In between topics on Saturday, a plenary session will concur where Duke University Professor Emeritus Robert Korstad’s award-winning book, “Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South,” will be celebrated.