The Southern Historical Association's 1998 conference was held November 12–14 in Birmingham, Alabama. Consistent with long-established patterns, the conference featured panels chiefly focused on colonial-era issues: slavery, the Civil War, regional cultural and social history, and southern politics. Still, one session and several individual papers presented research in southern labor history. Reflecting the conference's location at the hub of Alabama's industrial heartland, the panel addressed coal miners' contests with organized operators, first in unionizing drives surrounding World War One and later during the long 1977–1978 United Mine Workers' strike.