Career
He fought for retirement benefits, against the low wages and the racial discrimination of the black laborers of Panama and the West Indies in the Canal Zone. Gaskin took his campaign to the President of Panama and successfully lobbied for highly beneficial clauses (retirement benefits and equal pay for equal work) in the Remon-Eisenhower Treaty of 1955. Gaskin was also the principal of the Louisiana Boca School.
In 1946 he founded the Teachers" Union.