The Samuel Gompers Papers collected, annotated, and made available, primary sources of American labor history. Founded by Stuart Kaufman in 1974, the project published two microfilm series of union records, twelve volumes of Gompers' papers, and a cumulative index. Until the project was completed in 2011, Peter Albert and Grace Palladino served as project directors. 

A member of the project since 1974, Peter produced the microfilm collection, The American Federation of Labor Records:  The Samuel Gompers Era. He has also edited sixteen collections of essays on the American Revolutionary Era and on Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement.

Grace joined the project in 1984. She is the author of Another Civil War: Labor, Capital, and the State in the Anthracite Regions of Pennsylvania, Dreams of Dignity, Workers of Vision: A History of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Teenagers: An American History, and Skilled Hands, Strong Spirits: A Century of Building Trades History. She also completed a history of the Sheet Metal Workers' International Association for the international union.

Over the years, a creative group of historians has contributed to the project as editors, NHPRC fellows, and graduate assistants including Joseph Bedford, Patricia Cooper, Janet Davidson, Ileen DeVault, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf,  Edwin Gabler, Michael Honey, Marla Hughes, Dolores Janiewski, Mary Jeske, Kate Keane, Jake Kobrick, Christina Larocco, Lizette La Savage, Rebecca Lord, Katherine Morin, Amy Rutenberg, Dorothee Schneider, and Kim Welch.