D. Caleb Smith

D. Caleb Smith (Ph.D. Tulane University, 2023) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Critical Race and Political Economy. Smith earned his MA in history from Jackson State University (2016) and a B.S.Ed. in social science education from Delta State University (2014). At Mount Holyoke College, he regularly offers courses in twentieth century United States history, African American history and labor history.

Aside from instruction, he is currently completing his first book, Been On the Shop Floor Too Long: Affirmative Action, Black Workers and the Quest for Economic Justice. This book stands at the intersection of civil rights, labor, legal and southern history. Been on the Shop Floor Too Long uses the experiences, expectations, and struggles of Louisiana’s Black workers in telling a national story of the progress, pitfalls and shortcomings of federal equal employment opportunity mandates from the Eisenhower to Johnson administrations. His second book project which is tentatively titled High Tide or Low: Biracial Cooperation, Crime, and Racial Discrimination at the Port of Orleans, 1953-1985 explores the solidarity and friction within interracial unionism, racketeering and embezzlement as well as the Black longshoremen fight for fair employment at the New Orleans waterfront.

His scholarship can be found in African-American Activism and Political Engagement: An Encyclopedia of Empowerment, Africana Annual, American Journal of Legal History, Labor History, Left History, Louisiana History, and Southern Spaces. His research has been supported by the American Council for Learned Societies, the American Society for Legal History, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the Five College Consortium, the New Orleans African American Museum, the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South and the Southern Historical Association.