Will D. Campbell

Will Davis Campbell (July 18, 1924 – June 3, 2013) was a Baptist minister, activist, author, and lecturer. Throughout his life, he was a notable white supporter of civil rights in the Southern United States. In addition to his activism, Campbell was also a noted author, particularly with his autobiographical work Brother to a Dragonfly, a finalist for the National Book Award in 1978. He was the late cartoonist Doug Marlette's inspiration for the character "Will B. Dunn" in his comic strip, Kudzu.

Campbell was born in Amite County, Mississippi, United States, the son of a farmer. He cited his family with raising him culturally tolerant even though his family church has Bibles emblazoned with a Ku Klux Klan symbol. He was ordained as a minister by his local Baptist congregation at age 17. He attended Louisiana College, then enlisted in the Army during World War II where he served as a medic. After the war, he attended Wake Forest College (BA, English), Tulane University, and Yale Divinity School.

Though he held a pastorate in Louisiana from 1952 to 1954, Campbell spent most of his career in other settings. In 1954, he took a position as director of religious life at the University of Mississippi, only to resign it in 1956, in part because of the hostility (including death threats) he received as a supporter of integration.

He subsequently took a position as a field officer for the National Council of Churches, where he had his closest contact with the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, Campbell left the NCC to become director of the Committee of Southern Churchmen, which provided a home for his activism in the subsequent years. This organization published a journal, Katallagete, the title of which is the New Testament Greek for the Pauline phrase "be reconciled," a reference to 2 Corinthians 5:20. The journal featured articles about politics and social change, as understood through the lens of the Christian faith, particularly the neo-orthodox movement, which Campbell became acquainted with at Yale. Edited by James Y. Holloway of Kentucky's Berea College, Katallagete was published from 1965 until the early 1990s; the CSC relinquished control of the journal to Campbell and Holloway in 1983. By 2005, Campbell described this last organization in the past tense as “nothing ... a name and a tax exemption and whatever I and a few other people were doing on a given day," and he continued his work on a personal basis among his network of acquaintances including Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Dick Gregory, Jules Feiffer and Studs Terkel.

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