American Caldron

About the Book

This collection of short stories and essays goes back to 1952 when the story, “Occupational Hazard” was published by Decade of Short Stories, a little magazine at Canoga Park, California.  “Majority At Sea,” a short story was published by The Crisis Magazine of the NAACP in 1968.  The latest story, “The Marine” was published in 2004 by AIM  AIM—America’s Intercultural Magazine at Maywood, Illinois.  Included are some stories which are published here for the first time.  The story “The $4.50 Brief Case,” was published by The Labor Paper at Racine, Wisconsin in 2003. 

          The essay, “The Folklore of Preferential Treatment,” was mentioned by Coretta Scott King in her syndicated newspaper column in 1985.  Smallwood read this in the Detroit Free Press, a copy of which students at Wayne State University in Detroit, put on the bulletin board.  Ms. King''s column was titled, “It’s a bit late to protest preferential treatment.”  My essay “The Folklore of Preferential Treatment,” was presented to plant managers and other executives at the Ford Motor Company’s World Headquarters at Dearborn, Michigan at a luncheon meeting.  This same essay was published with other essays by the Michigan Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under the title: “Michigan Consultation: Focus on Affirmative Action in 1998.”  It was presented in 1996 at the Westin Hotel, Renaissance Center, Detroit, Michigan to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Regional Office, Chicago, Illinois.  

          Two other essays were responses to reports from the Bureau Of Urban Affairs in New York and the Comptroller General’s, General Accounting Office Report.  At the time Smallwood was the Civil Rights & Urban Affairs Director at the regional office in New York of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

About the Author

Kenneth W. Smallwood was born in Newark, New Jersey.  He is a graduate of the Newark College of Arts And Sciences of Rutgers University in New Jersey.  He served in the U.S. Army in occupied Japan.  He worked for the Veterans Administration, the Civil Service Commission, the Small Business Administration, the Department of Labor, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Labor Relations Board. 

     He worked as an investigator, staffing specialist, hearing officer, organizational development specialist, account executive, examiner, and director.  In 1970 he was loaned from the SBA to the Port of New York Authority at the request of the New York Regional Training Center, Personnel Management Training Institute of the U.S.Civil Service Commission.   Smallwood helped  train the personnel staff for the building of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center which was destroyed by terrorists on September 11, 2001.  The successful, coordinated program was the first interagency  venture 

          With EPA he monitored the North River Waste Treatment Control Plant construction for EEO, then the largest competitively bid non-military project in U.S. history.  He is a former chairperson of the Federal Executive Board’s Equal Employment Opportunity Committee in New York City.

          He was a consultant to Walbridge Aldinger Company, the Ohio and the Florida State Departments of Transportation, Vector Data Systems, Security Bank and Trust, Clayton Group Services and Giffels-Webster Engineers.  From 1985 to 1997 he was a commissioner on the Administrative Civil Service Commission/Pension Board of Southfield, Michigan.  In 1988 he was one of the founders with an iron worker and a sheet metal worker of the Detroit Area Minority Construction Workers Task Force formed to fight the racism in the construction industry.

          Smallwood lives with his wife Lillian Marie in Southfield, Michigan.  They have a daughter Susan, her husband Theodore and two grandchildren in Tennessee, and a son, Mark and his wife Christine in Michigan.

          In 200l, 1stBooks library now AuthorHouse, published his comic novel, The Right and The Leftt, about  the National Labor Relations Board.