At the 1986 Wyoming Conference on English, a group of graduate students and part-time and tenure-line faculty formulated a statement known as the Wyoming Resolution, a rallying cry to improve composition teachers' pay, benefits, and working conditions. Adopted by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in 1987, the Wyoming Resolution called for CCCC to set professional standards for postsecondary teachers of writing, to create a grievance process, and to establish a procedure for institutional censure if compliance was not met. Only the first goal of the resolution was met, and for many, the professional standards statement to follow--the CCCC "Statement of Principles and Standards for the Postsecondary Teaching of Writing"--signaled that the profession was becoming less interested in the working conditions of contingent faculty than in the professional concerns of the growing number of tenure-track researchers and writing program administrators (WPAs). Even so, the Wyoming Resolution came to symbolize the beginning of the discipline's serious attention to late 20th-century labor issues in writing instruction. Ironically, the Wyoming Resolution is often ignored or treated only briefly in histories of composition studies. Drawing on their recent interviews with various scholars who were involved, the authors review the history of the highly significant Wyoming Resolution and analyze its subsequent impact on conditions for contingent faculty. (Contains 4 notes.)