Joseph Caleb was a powerful union leader of the early 1970s. He was widely known and respected by business and political leaders as president of Laborer’s International, No. 478- in 1970, the mostly African American union. Caleb is citied for helping to raise the ranks of the union from 400 or more than 6,000 members strong.

Caleb, whose philanthropic acts endeared him to many grassroots residents, was highly regarded and very effective in organizing community services projects. He became chairman of the Model City Advisory Board, which set policy for the federally funded program that addressed the needs of a blighted neighborhood that included parts of Liberty City and Brownsville. Dade County’s Model City programs laid the groundwork for local citizen participation in policies and programs.

In 1972, at the age of 33, he met an untimely death. However, his fight for a multi-purpose services center was carried on by his colleagues. His epitaph reads: “The good men do lives on.” The Joseph Caleb Community Center is named in his memory. The center celebrates its 20^th Anniversary this year.

The Caleb Center was completed in January 1976, but opened for business in September of 1977. It is the largest of eleven neighborhood center in Dade County. The center houses a number of agencies including a library, a day care center, courtrooms, the Office of Emergency Assistance, Health and Rehabilitative Services, Big Brothers and Sisters, Food Stamps, Driver Licenses Agency, the State Attorney’s Office and the Black Archives History and Research Foundation of South Florida, Inc.