The Rev. William T. O’Connor papers date from 1922 to 1984 and measure 7.5 linear inches. The papers a split into two series: St. Ambrose College (1946-1984) and Labor Rights and Civil Rights (1922-1982).

The St. Ambrose series covers O’Connor’s career as a faculty member in St. Ambrose College’s sociology department. The series includes teaching materials for a labor seminar and materials related to O’Connor’s brother and fellow St. Ambrose faculty member, Rev. Edward O’Connor. The correspondence section of this series traces O’Connor’s contentious relationship with members of St. Ambrose College’s administration over his labor activism from the 1950s to his eventual forced departure from the college in 1966.

The Labor Rights and Civil Rights series focuses on O’Connor’s activism in the Quad Cities area through the 1950s and 1960s and includes newspaper clippings, correspondence with Quad City labor leaders, and three professional labor publications: Causes of Labor Unrest by A.F. Whitney, a Speaker’s Manual against Restrictive Labor Legislation, and Supplement to 1964 Labor Law Course. The bulk of the series is made up of bulletins authored by O’Connor that focus on labor rights and civil rights in the Quad Cities and social justice as it relates to the Roman Catholic Church’s Social Encyclicals. This run of bulletins is scattered but contains forty-five consecutive issues on the subject of racial injustice in Iowa from 1963. Also in this series are the results of a survey of Cook’s Point, a largely Mexican immigrant neighborhood in Davenport, Iowa, conducted by members of the St. Ambrose’s Human and Industrial Relations Club in 1949. The series continues with newspaper clippings about O’Connor and from pro-union newspapers, a 1959 report from Davenport, Iowa’s Committee on Human Rights, and documentation of an investigation into whether O’Connor was denied membership to the Rock Island Arsenal Golf Course because of his activism.