Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the William H. Friedland Collection #70176, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Received from Sean Burns in June 2022 (20240118.1).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Encoded by: Laura Smith, February 2024

Updated by: Davia Webb and Laura Smith, April 2024

Since August 2017, we have added ethnic and racial identities for individuals and families represented in collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Burns, Sean.
• Folklorists--United States.
• Friedland, William H.
• Green, Archie.
• Labor--Folklore.
• Labor--History.
• Labor--Songs and music.
• Working class--Songs and music.

William H. (Bill) Friedland (1923-2018) of Staten Island, N.Y., was an assembly line worker and labor organizer in the automobile industry in 1940s Detroit, Mich. A labor folklorist, Friedland collected labor songs and recorded two albums ( Songs of the Wobblies and Ballads for Sectarians) with folk musician and "Labor's Troubadour" Joe Glazer (1918-2006).

In the 1950s Bill Friedland earned two degrees from Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich., and later a Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley. In 1969 Friedland joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he founded and chaired the Community Studies Department, which focused on experiential learning and social justice.

Bill Friedland was friends and colleagues with labor historian and folklorist Archie Green (1917-2009). Friedland shared this collection of papers related to Green and labor folklore with author Sean Burns. In 2011, Burns published a biography of Green titled Archie Green: The Making of a Working Class Hero and donated the Friedland Collection in 2022. Acquired as part of the Southern Folklife Collection.

The collection contains papers of sociologist and labor folklorist William H. Friedland (1923-2018) that were shared with author Sean Burns for Burns's biography, Archie Green: The Making of Working Class Hero. Papers include correspondence, articles, lyric sheets for labor and protests songs, scripts for labor skits, and etymologies of labor terms and slang such as "scissorbill." Subjects addressed in the papers include folklorist and labor historian Archie Green (1917-2009), Green's nonprofit organization Fund for Labor Culture and History, labor unions and union comradery, the Socialist Songbook, and folk musician Joe Glazer (1918-2006) known as "Labor's Troubadour."