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Mr. James Campbell Date: 1942 - 1949 Vol. No.1 HOME OF THE ORIGINAL MONTFORD POINT MARINES www.montfordpointmarines.org Press Release Original Montford Point Marine Mr. James Campbell July 31, 1925 - January 29, 2021 James Campbell is 95 years old, and it’s time for his Eliza Davis, whipped by the slave which presented one-act He also served on the advisory board of the College of favorite local artist to paint his portrait. master in the years before the Civil plays by Tennessee Williams, Charleston’s School of Education, and was chairman War, a scene she witnessed when Thornton Wilder andof the education committee for the Charleston branch So one afternoon Colin Quashie visits Campbell at his she was perhaps 14 or 15 years others in the sanctuaries of of the NAACP. Mary Faith Marshall, director of the James Island home to ask a few questions, to get to know old. “It made me stop my play and churches and the gymnasiums Center for Health Humanities and Ethics and director the veteran activist better, to accumulate the ideas that just look,” he said. The Campbells of YMCAs. The troupe of the Program in Biomedical Ethics at the University ultimately will fuel his brush strokes. were members of the NAACP. eventually evaporated, but by of Virginia School of Medicine, remembers Campbell They contributed to an African then, Campbell was immersed from her days leading the nascent bioethics program Quashie paints in a realistic style. He likes to include aid fund. They kept themselves in the civil rights movement. at MUSC. the wrinkles and signs of arthritis, the manifestations of informed and ensured their five Awestruck In 1958, he came history on the human form. He captures on canvas his children (Jim was the oldest) across a newspaper headline She and her colleagues wanted someone on the subject’s penetrating gaze in such a way that a viewer can visited the Dart Library. Jim would he liked, “Heed their rising committee who could provide an outsider’s perspective. recognize interior thought, consciousness, soul force. sneak away sometimes to swim voices,” and thought it would “Jim was just the perfect person,” she said. “He was such Perhaps that’s why Campbell chose Quashie. The two or fish, but the smell of pluff mud make a good button. Campbell a delightful man, but he also brought the community to men have something else in common: a refined injustice would give him away. “You stinkin’ visited Bayard Rustin of the table, which is really important. Ethics consultants detector. They are both animated by the distressing to high heaven!” his mother would the Southern Christian are mostly clinicians who work in hospital and are politics of social division and dedicated to exposing and admonish. Leadership Conference at his acculturated to that life, we see things through lens that’s condemning it. Harlem office with his offering. Rustin liked the idea but too narrow. Jim helped us ensure we had a broader view Young Campbell’s mother and his Aunt Sadie pushed not the slogan and ended up changing the text, Campbell of the issues at hand and the people involved.” This was Campbell retired from the New York City school him to learn, and eventually pushed him out of the dirt said. Jack O’Dell was there and invited Campbell to help especially important given the scandal underway at system and returned to Charleston in 1991, at 67 streets of Gadsden Green and onto a sturdier, if winding, out in the office. O’Dell, a SCLC adviser and strategist MUSC at the time. The institution was being sued for years old. Already he had accumulated more life path that led him far away from Charleston. “They put and known leftist, was looking for a new place to live. its policy of testing pregnant African American women experiences than most. He had helped to integrate ideas in my head about going away to school,” he said. Campbell had just moved into a big rent-controlled for drug use. The lawsuit, Ferguson v. Charleston, the U.S. military, serving as a Montford Point Marine Voorhees Normal and Industrial Institute in Denmark, apartment, a fifth-floor walk-up at 135th Street and St. eventually was appealed to the Supreme Court, which during World War II; he had worked in the civil rights along with its students who hailed from Detroit, Nicholas Avenue, and was happy to rent a room to his decided in favor of the women. Marshall, armed with movement befriending luminaries such as Jack O’Dell, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Columbia, opened new friend. It was largely through O’Dell that Campbell advice she received from Campbell, was subpoenaed Bayard Rustin, Malcolm X and Bob Moses. He had his eyes. And his English teacher, Mrs. Catherine gained full access to the freedom movement and and she condemned the racially motivated practice in worked in the theater and contributed to the influential Booker, encouraged him to discuss ideas, interpret exercised his political intellect. Campbell, meanwhile, her testimony, which cost her her job. “(Jim) was the Freedomways journal co-founded by W.E.B. and Shirley texts, think critically. She opened young Campbell’s was becoming fascinated with Malcolm X, who by soul of the consult service and the ethics committee,” she Graham Du Bois. He had also lived nine years in mind. Teaching and learning In 1942, his senior year 1963 was in an increasingly strained relationship with said. “He gave folks a lot of courage, and a spine that Tanzania, teaching and gaining a clearer understanding at Voorhees, he was drafted. He wanted to join the the Nation of Islam. “I was starting to pay attention,” they needed.” It was Campbell who nominated Marshall of post-colonial politics in that part of the world. Air Force, but when he learned it was segregated, he Campbell recalled. “I was impressed with his ability to for the Charleston NAACP’s Pathfinder Award. “That is joined the 52nd Marine Defense Battalion instead and speak to the working class.” After a 1964 rally in Harlem, the most important honor I have ever gotten in my life, After his return home, Campbell kept busy mentoring prepared for war in the Pacific theater. He awakened to he introduced himself. “I was impressed by how quiet and that’s because of Jim Campbell,” she said. Daron young people, assisting Moses and Dave Dennis the violence of the world, drew connections between and polite he was.” Soon, Campbell, was designing the Lee Calhoun II, an administrator at the Avery Research by advancing their Algebra Project initiatives in Nazi and Japanese tyranny and the African American program for what he and Malcolm called a Liberation Center who coordinates programming and the Race Lowcountry schools, joining the bioethics committee experience. He was about to ship out for the planned School, where small groups of students could learn and Social Justice Initiative, called Campbell a mentor at the Medical University, working with local labor Japanese invasion when the U.S. dropped two atomic about the African liberation movement, capitalism’s and role model who demonstrates the importance of leaders to improve working conditions. “You turn the bombs, ending the war in the Pacific. After he was impacts and the power of enlightened thought. research-based activism. “Jim Campbell is the guy who pages of American history and his name is not on any discharged, he passed his GED tests and enrolled at made me the activist I am today,” Calhoun said. So when page, but he was present,” notes Bobby Donaldson, Morgan State University in Baltimore, though his One day, not long after Malcolm’s house had been the Avery received an anonymous donation in 2019, it professor of African American history at the University education was interrupted when he was called back to firebombed, Campbell invited Malcolm to breakfast so used the money to bolster the Racial and Social Justice of South Carolina. “Talk about Malcolm X, Jim knew active duty during the Korean War. Again, he saw no he could meet Jack O’Dell. They chatted casually about Initiative grant program, which provides students with him well. Fannie Lou Hamer, Langston Hughes. How action. Rather, he took courses, read books and became this and that. Campbell asked Malcolm about his family. financial awards and opportunities to learn teaching many people have letters from Langston Hughes in their “anti-war,” he said. At Morgan he majored in English “Brother, let me give you Betty’s telephone number, literacy, grant writing, social justice work, interviewing collection?”Indeed, James Campbell walks the walk. and minored in theater, finding his way to the stage of because you are someone I want her to stay in touch techniques and more, Calhoun said. the Arena Players and, eventually, securing an audition with,” Malcolm said, concerned for his wife and sensing On the path at the famed Actor’s Studio in New York City. He didn’t his days were numbered. About one week later, he was The student recipients would be called “Campbell Growing up in Charleston, in a cottage on President get in, but the idea of acting on Broadway took hold. murdered at the Audubon Ballroom. Keeping busy Scholars.” “Not only has he lived so long, it’s been a Street that eventually was demolished to make way for After a couple of years of teaching in Baltimore, he left Campbell had been studying the writings of Julius journey, a Great Migration story,” Bobby Donaldson of the Septima P. Clark Parkway, or Crosstown Expressway, for the bright lights of the Big Apple in 1957, studied Nyerere, the Tanzanian anti-colonial activist and the University of South Carolina said.
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