We will discuss the groundbreaking exhibition, which documents the importance of Black workers’ activism in New Orleans from the late 19th century through the present. It highlights waterfront workers, domestic workers, teachers, sex workers, hotel workers, industrial workers, and others, who pushed for fair working conditions and racial equality.

This roundtable will also emphasize our rewarding and challenging collaborative research process, which included scholars, students, community leaders, labor organizers, and artists. We’ll address the logistics of shared production and promotion—from design and construction to funding and event programming. The roundtable will feature several of our team members, including Denise Augustine, a Creole Storyteller, culture-bearer, researcher, and member of our community advisory board; Max Krochmal, a Professor of History and the Director of Justice Studies at the University of New Orleans; Matt Olson, Senior Researcher at the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice; and D. Caleb Smith, an Assistant Professor at Mount Holyoke College, whose research analyzes the first anti-discrimination cases in Louisiana in the 1960s and 1970s. Mary Niall Mitchell, the Gordon Mueller Professor of Public History and the Director of the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies at the University of New Orleans, will moderate.