Brrrrinnnggg. Brrrrinnnggg. “Max?” asked the raspy voice on the other end of the line. I answered in the affirmative. “This is Becky Moeller.” It’s not every day that you get a call from the president of the Texas AFL-CIO. I gulped. “I’ve got some people here that you need to meet.” Moeller was in her car heading home from a convention of the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), a gathering in which she had joined veteran African American union activists from across the state in lamenting the fact that the public remained unaware of their decades of struggle for both economic and racial justice. She had told the group about the Civil Rights in Black and Brown Oral History Project (CRBB), a collaborative effort that I direct, and she had promised them that I would help them preserve and share their stories. “You’d better get out to Tyler and...

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