Biography
D. Caleb Smith is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department at Tulane University where his major fields of research include Modern America (since 1865) and Black Internationalism (since the Cold War). Since his arrival at Tulane in 2017, he has served as an instructor for two courses: Modern African American Freedom and Topics In Community Engagement. Smith is a past recipient of the Andrew Mellon Graduate Fellowship In Community Engagement and H.T. Memorial Library Fellowship. He has also received a small research grant from the American Society for Legal History. Prior to attending Tulane, Smith taught 11th grade U.S. History at Clinton High School in Clinton, Mississippi.
Research
“Between Legal Advances and Industrial Ruins: Black Aluminum Workers After the 1964 Civil Rights Act,” is a labor and legal history of Louisiana’s modern black freedom movement. By using archival documents, newspaper collections, and oral histories, Smith illuminates the voices and experiences of black workers in the bayou state as they looked to the law to fight workplace discrimination. Specifically, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited workplace discrimination on grounds of race, sex, and national origin. Smith’s dissertation explains how black laborers in Louisiana and throughout the nation shaped the law through complaints. In doing so, he incorporates the legal aid of Louisiana attorneys such as Nils Douglas of the Congress of Racial Equality and Richard Sobol of the Lawyers Constitutional Defense Committee. The CORE and LCDC collaboration were responsible for black labor victories in Bogalusa, Chalmette, Harvey, and New Orleans, Louisiana.
