James Edwin Campbell (poet)

James E. Campbell
1st President of the West Virginia Colored Institute (now West Virginia State University)
In office
1892–1894
Succeeded byJohn H. Hill
Personal details
Born(1867-09-28)September 28, 1867
Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio, U.S.
DiedJanuary 20, 1896(1896-01-20) (aged 28)
Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio, U.S.
Professionpoet, educator, administrator

James Edwin Campbell (September 28, 1867–January 26, 1896) was an African-American poet, editor and short story writer who became the first president of the West Virginia Colored Institute (after 1929, "West Virginia State College" and since 2004 West Virginia State University).

Early and family life

Campbell was born on September 28, 1867, in Pomeroy, Meigs County, Ohio to Aletha ("Letha") Esther Starks and her husband James Edward Campbell, both of whom had been born across the Ohio River in what was then Virginia before the American Civil War.[1] He had two older brothers, Charles William Campbell (b. 1862) and John C. Campbell (b. 1864)[2]

According to James Weldon Johnson, little is known about Campbell's early life, which he kept private even from his closest associates. He attended public schools in Pomeroy, graduating from the Pomeroy academy in 1884.

On August 4, 1891, Campbell married Mary Lewis Champ, in Harrison County, Ohio. Mary Champ was the daughter of Eveline Thompson Champ and Joseph L. Champ, a teacher and former principal of the Afro-American schools of Jefferson County, Ohio and Parkersburg, West Virginia. Mary Lewis Champ-Campbell graduated from Oberlin College in 1890, and was also a poet in her own right.

Career

Campbell taught in Rutland in his home Meigs County, Ohio. He moved to Chicago and wrote for daily newspapers there in the 1880s and 1890s, including the Chicago Times-Herald. He also became a public speaker and participated in a group publication, the Four O'Clock Magazine, a literary magazine that was quite popular for a time.

Campbell returned to Ohio and became involved in Republican Party politics, then became Principal of the Langston School in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. After the second Morrill Act in 1890 established land grant colleges for African American students in states that practiced racial segregation, West Virginia's legislature decided to establish one for its African American citizens.

J. Edwin Campbell served as the first president of West Virginia Colored Institute (now West Virginia State University) from 1892–1894. His wife, Mary Champ-Campbell, was appointed as Instructor of Vocal Music and Drawing in 1892. His successor, lawyer and teacher John H. Hill, oversaw the university's first commencement, would resign to fight in the Spanish–American War and later return to teach.

In 1887, Campbell published Driftings and Gleanings a volume of poetry and essays in standard English. Eight years later he published a collection of Black dialect poems, Echoes from the Cabin and Elsewhere, well before Paul Lawrence Dunbar popularized dialect and the Harlem Renaissance. Many of his poems are written in the dialect of his subjects or the vernacular of the time, as well as standard English.[3][4]

Death and legacy

Campbell died of pneumonia on January 26, 1896, while visiting family near Kerr's Run (a tributary of the Ohio River) in Meigs County, Ohio. He was survived by his parents and wife. He is buried at the Beech Grove cemetery in Pomeroy.[5] Ohio has erected a historical marker in his honor in Pomeroy.[6]

References

  1. ^ Wagner, Jean (translated by Kenneth Douglas). Black Poets in the United States: From Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston Hughes. University of Illinois Press, 1973: 129. ISBN 0252003411
  2. ^ findagrave no.
  3. ^ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/james-edwin-campbell
  4. ^ https://mypoeticside.com/poets/james-edwin-campbell-poems
  5. ^ https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/123832861
  6. ^ https://www.wgpfoundation.org/historic-markers/james-edwin-campbell/

Further reading

  • The African-American Registry
  • James Weldon Johnson, ed. The Book of American Negro Poetry, 1922
  • John C. Harlan's History of West Virginia State College

External links


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