Clarice Marjorie Campbell

Background

Clarice Campbell was born on October 14, 1907 in Wasco, California, United States to the family of a businessman Wilton Oscar Thompson and a homemaker Grace Wright.

Education

Campbell attended the University of Southern California in 1925-1926 before interrupting her college education to become a wife and mother. Returning to college, she earned her undergraduate degree at the age of forty-two.

Clarice continued her education at Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts & Sciences (currently California State University at Los Angeles) for Master of Arts degree graduating in 1958. Campbell earned one more Master of Arts degree at the University of Mississippi in 1967 and later the Doctor of Philosophy in 1970 there again.

Career

When her husband, Harold, died in 1959, Campbell took a leave of absence from the Pasadena City Schools and volunteered to teach in exchange for room and board at Rust College, a historically black Methodist-affiliated school in Holly Springs, Mississippi.

During the 1961-1962 school years, Campbell taught at Claflin College in South Carolina and joined the board of directors of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, an organization that promoted school integration.

At the end of the 1963 school year, Campbell planned to join the Peace Corps to work overseas, but the murder of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People field secretary Medgar Evers in Jackson prompted her to change her mind. Instead, she moved to Mississippi to teach at historically black Tougaloo College, where she remained until 1965.

In 1965 she began work on a doctorate in history at the University of Mississippi, earning the degree five years later with a dissertation on the history of Tougaloo. She then returned to Rust to teach and serve as the chair of the history department. After retiring in 1978, she taught part time at Mississippi Industrial College, a private liberal arts school across the street from Rust. Campbell died in 2000.

Achievements

• Clarice T. Campbell was a progressive person of her time in the questions related to civil rights and social activism. That brought her an acknowledgement among the same ideas fellows in Mississippi and across the country.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Civil Rights Chronicle: Letters from the South

    (An outsider's correspondence that documents the fight for...)

    1997
  • Mississippi, the view from Tougaloo 1979

Politics

Campbell ended her lifelong affiliation with the Republican Party in 1968 over its civil rights stance and turned to Democrats.

Views

Clarice T. Campbell, a self-described “outside agitator” from California, promoted civil rights while teaching at black colleges in Mississippi and South Carolina. She also campaigned for the right of an elderly person to die at their time of choice with the aid of a physician.

Quotations: “I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but moving to Mississippi was not one of them. Reporters often quote the poster in my kitchen that says ‘Be a real revolutionary; practice your faith.’”

Membership

The character of organizations Clarice T. Campbell was a member of is mostly connected with her educational and social rights activities.

• American Association of University Women , United States

• Common Cause , United States

• Church of the Larger Fellowship , United States

• National Association for the Advancement of Colored People , United States

• Phi Alpha Theta , United States

Personality

Clarice T. Campbell was a compassionate person deeply involved in the lives of those surrounding her.

Interests

• walking, gardening

Connections

Clarice then Thompson married Harold Campbell. They had four children.

Father:

Wilton Oscar Thompson

Mother:

Grace Wright

Daughter:

Florence Ellen (Camie) Campbell Dolan Boggio

Daughter:

Charlotte Clarice Campbell Iiams

Son:

Donald Thompson Campbell

colleague:

Oscar Allan Rogers, Jr.

Oscar Allan Rogers, Jr. co-authored Mississippi: The View from Tougaloo with Campbell.

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 166 This volume of Contemporary Authors contains biographical information on approximately 300 modern writers.
  1998