James Edwin Campbell (poet)

19th-century illustration of Pomeroy, Ohio, from the Ohio River

James Edwin Campbell was born on 28 September 1867 in the Kerr's Run section of Pomeroy, Ohio,[2][3][4] to James Edward Campbell and his wife, Aletha "Letha" Esther Starks Campbell.[4][5][6] Campbell's parents were both born across the Ohio River in Virginia (present-day West Virginia) prior to the American Civil War.[4][5] Campbell had two older brothers, Charles William Campbell and John C. Campbell.[4][5] Campbell was raised in Kerr's Run, which was part of Pomeroy's First Ward.[7][8] He was a childhood playmate of future West Virginia state auditor J. S. Darst.[8] Darst cited Campbell as a person who rose to prominence in spite of his early unfavorable environment, and he described the "Bloody First" ward of Pomeroy as "tough".[8] Campbell completed his primary education from first to eighth grade at Kerr's Run Colored School,[5][7] and his secondary education at Pomeroy Academy, where he graduated in 1884.[2][3][9]

Campbell commenced his career in education in Buck Ridge, Ohio (along the Ohio River), where he served as a teacher for two years.[2][9][10] He also taught in Rutland, Ohio, for some time.[5] Campbell assessed West Virginia as a place for the advancement of African Americans due to the state's economic opportunities offered by the development of the coal and oil industries.[2] He was hired by Christopher Payne to serve as the editor of The Pioneer newspaper, which was owned by Payne.[2][10] In 1887, Payne also hired Campbell to replace him as the editor of the West Virginia Enterprise in Charleston.[11] In reporting Campbell's selection as the Enterprise editor, The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer described Campbell as "an educated young Ohioan" that was "highly spoken of."[11]

In addition to his newspaper work, Campbell was also a gifted public speaker.[5] In May 1889, he delivered a lecture entitled "Race Antagonism" at the Simpson Methodist Episcopal Church in Wheeling.[12][13] The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer remarked that Campbell possessed "a natural gift of oratory, and his address was brimfull of eloquence, besides being instructive and worthy of attention."[13] His lecture earned enough profits for the church to purchase a new Sunday school library.[13]

Campbell was selected by the Point Pleasant Board of Education as the principal of the Point Pleasant Colored School in Point Pleasant in 1891, succeeding Luta Freeman.[14][15][16] Under Campbell's leadership, the school relocated to a four-room, two-story brick building, which had been vacated by a white school.[14][17] Following this relocation, the school was renamed Langston Academy in honor of African-American educator John Mercer Langston.[14][16][18] Campbell served as principal of Langston Academy until 1892, when he was succeeded by Ida Wilson.[14]

Portrait of Campbell from the Biennial Report of the State Superintendent (1893)

On 1 April 1892, the Board of Regents of the West Virginia Colored Institute selected Campbell to serve as the institute's inaugural principal.[19][20][21][lower-alpha 1] Located in Farm, West Virginia (present-day Institute), near Charleston, West Virginia Colored Institute had been founded in 1891 under the Morrill Act of 1890, to provide West Virginia's African Americans with education in agricultural and mechanical studies.[22][23] While Campbell was not a college graduate, his qualifications included his thorough secondary education, his knowledge gained through extensive reading, his published work of poetry, and his experience in school administration.[1][20]

Prior to Campbell's selection as principal, an act of the West Virginia Legislature appropriated $10,000 for the purchase of a farm on which to construct a building for the institution.[24] A committee empowered by the legislature purchased 30 acres (12 ha) along the Kanawha River, near an unincorporated community known as Farm, which was once part of the estate of Samuel I. Cabell and his wife Mary Barnes Cabell (a former slave).[24][25][26] The institute's first building was completed in April 1892, and received by the school's Board of Regents on 20 April.[24][27] Campbell formally opened the institute on 26 April 1892.[28]

West Virginia Colored Institute commenced an experimental term on 3 May 1892 with 20 students enrolled.[29][30][31] The school's original curriculum consisted of the equivalent of a high school education, and included agriculture, horticulture, mechanical arts, domestic science, vocational training, and teacher preparation.[22][30] Campbell contacted Booker T. Washington, and asked for the nomination of a Tuskegee Institute graduate to fill the position of West Virginia Colored Institute's Superintendent of Mechanics.[32] Washington requested that Tuskegee graduate James Munroe Canty write a letter to Campbell.[32] Canty was hired by Campbell as the institute's Superintendent of Mechanics, and he arrived in Institute on 3 January 1893.[32] By June 1893, the faculty consisted of Campbell, serving as principal and professor mathematics; Byrd Prillerman, serving as professor of English; Canty, serving as professor of mechanics; and Campbell's wife, Mary Lewis Champ-Campbell, serving as instructor in music, painting, and drawing.[33] In 1893, Campbell was awarded an honorary Bachelor of Philosophy degree from Shaw University.[34]

As the institute's principal, Campbell provided guidance to West Virginia's African-American coal miners in assisting their children in acquiring an education.[20] Campbell faced opposition to his leadership of the institute,[10] and he resigned as principal in 1894,[20] and was succeeded by John H. Hill.[31][35] Throughout his tenure at the institute, Campbell resided in Fleming Hall.[1]

Campbell and West Virginia's African-American educators established the West Virginia Teachers' Association in 1891 to encourage interest in their work and cooperation throughout the state's African-American teaching corps.[36] The aim of the association was "to elevate the character and advance the interest of the profession of teaching, and to promote the cause of popular education in West Virginia."[37] Campbell spoke at the association's annual second meeting in Parkersburg in 1892.[37] At the association's third annual meeting in Parkersburg in 1893, Campbell was named president of the association.[37] However, he was absent when the association's fourth annual meeting was held in Montgomery in 1894.[38]

Front cover of Driftings and Gleanings (1887)

From an early age, Campbell exhibited a talent for writing poetry and stories.[39] Early in Campbell's writing career, he wrote simple poems in the African-American vernacular dialect,[20] some of which were published in newspapers and magazines.[20] One of his earlier poems, "The Pariah's Love", was written in the style of Thomas Moore's Lalla-Rookh.[39]

Campbell continued to write poetry and stories at his leisure throughout his careers as a schoolteacher and school administrator.[39] In 1887, he published his first book of poems, Driftings and Gleanings, which was a volume of poetry and essays in standard American English.[3][5][20] Following his resignation from the West Virginia Colored Institute, Campbell relocated to Chicago in the summer of 1895, where he became a staff member of the Chicago Times-Herald.[3][20][39] Campbell reportedly confided in a friend, "Life is too uneventful in a little village. I want to get out into the great world."[39] According to historian Wilhelmena S. Robinson, Campbell's career as a newsman was "his chief contribution to the literary world".[20]

Campbell continued to publish his own poems and articles, and he participated in a group publication of the literary magazine, Four O'Clock Magazine.[3][5] In 1895, he published his second book of poetry, Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere, which was a collection of poetry in the southern African-American vernacular dialect.[20] The introduction to his second book of poetry was written by Richard Linthicum, editor of the Chicago Sunday Times-Herald.[20] Linthicum wrote that Campbell had "caught the true spirit" of African Americans in the Antebellum South in "characteristic verse".[20] According to the Poetry Foundation, Campbell's 1895 book "is often praised as one of the finest collections of dialect poems of the 19th century, managing to mix realism and folk wisdom with authentic, rhythmic dialect."[3]

Campbell married Mary Lewis Champ (12 July 1868 – 18 October 1909)[40] on 4 August 1891 in Harrison County, Ohio.[5] Champ was the daughter of Joseph L. Champ, an educator and former principal of African-American schools in Jefferson County, Ohio, and Parkersburg, West Virginia, and his wife Eveline Thompson Champ.[5] Mary Lewis Champ enrolled in Oberlin College in 1887, and graduated from the college's Literary Course in 1890.[5][40][41] Champ was also a poet and educator in her own right,[5][41] and she taught in Wheeling for one year prior to marrying Campbell.[40]

Portrait of Campbell from Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere (1895)

Campbell wrote his last poem, entitled "Homesick", on 7 December 1895.[39] The poem was published in The Chicago Conservator, and detailed his longing for the "quiet of the home place".[39] While visiting his family's home in the Kerr's Run section of Pomeroy, Ohio, for the Christmas holiday, Campbell became ill with symptoms of a common cold, followed by a fever.[3][39] Campbell died of typhoid pneumonia on 26 January 1896 at his family's home in Kerr's Run.[3][42][43] He was survived by his parents and his wife Mary Lewis Champ-Campbell.[5] Campbell was interred at Beech Grove Cemetery in Pomeroy.[44][45] Following Campbell's death, his wife Mary Lewis Champ-Campbell taught in Pomeroy,[41] and at Kentucky State Normal School for Colored Persons (later known as Kentucky State University) from 1902 until 1903.[40] She relocated to St. Louis, where she died in 1909.[40]

Campbell was the first African-American poet to write in the African-American vernacular dialect.[3][9] While Paul Laurence Dunbar is credited with popularizing verse in the African-American vernacular dialect, Campbell published his dialect poetry prior to Dunbar's success.[3][5] African-American author and educator J. Saunders Redding stated, "Campbell's dialect is more nearly a reproduction of plantation Negro speech sounds than that of any other writer in American literature ... Campbell's ear alone dictated his language."[9] Civil rights activist and writer James Weldon Johnson described Campbell's dialect as "idiomatically and phonetically, is nearer to the Gullah or the West Indian dialect.[9] Historian Jean Wagner argued that Campbell "had his own highly original talent and was in no sense a borrower."[10] Wagner further stated that Campbell, "reveals the upsurge, among blacks, of a racial consciousnes that chafes under every yoke."[10] Actor Richard Berry Harrison used Campbell's poems when he delivered dramatic readings.[20]

The Meigs County Historical Society and the Ohio Historical Society erected a historical marker (Marker Number 19-53) in Campbell's honor in Pomeroy in 2007, with funds from the William G. Pomeroy Foundation.[5][6][46] In 1973, West Virginia State College honored Campbell by naming its vocational building Campbell Hall.[47] When the college transitioned its former home economics cottage into a conference center, it named the facility the Campbell Conference Center after Campbell.[1][48] In 2019, the Meigs County Historical Society unveiled a Meigs County Bicentennial Marker at the site of Campbell's primary school, Kerr's Run Colored School, and concluded the unveiling ceremony with a reading from one of Campbell's books.[7]

Campbell was portrayed by actor George Dale Jr. in the 2020 film River of Hope, which tells the story of Samuel I. Cabell, his wife Mary Barnes Cabell, and how their children helped to found West Virginia State University at the location of their family's farm.[49]

• Works by James Edwin Campbell at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)