b. 1917
Archie Green (1917- ) is an eminent scholar in the area of occupational folklore. He has worked in a variety of capacities as a folklorist--archivist, field worker, professor, and public sector advocate. He is best known for his work with labor materials and early "hillbilly" music recordings.
Archie (Aaron) Green grew up in southern California, began college at UCLA, and then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley from which he was graduated in 1939. After working in the shipyards in San Francisco, serving in the Navy in World War II, and becoming active in several labor organizations, Green returned to academia. He received his M.L.S. from the University of Illinois and his Ph.D. in folklore from the University of Pennsylvania.
Green joined the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1960 and served there as librarian and later jointly as an instructor in the English Department until 1972. At the same time, he was producing albums, conducting fieldwork, teaching, lecturing, and writing articles. He was active in the John Edwards Memorial Foundation (now Forum) from its inception and lobbied Congress to pass the American Folklife Foundation Act, which it did in 1976 establishing the Center for American Folklife.
Green retired as professor emeritus from the University of Texas at Austin in the early 1980s to his home in California, where he continued to work on research and other projects. He received an honorary degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1991.
"Biographical Note," Archie Green Papers Inventory (#20002), Southern Folklife Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill