William David Campbell, aka "Will B. Dunn", Dead at 88

 

On Tuesday morning in Nashville, Tennessee, William David Campbell died.  Many of you aren't familiar with this man. I have quoted him a few times in my sermons and I have shared a few of his exploits with you. This is how the New York Times announced his death: "Will D. Campbell, Maverick Minister and Civil Rights Stalwart, Dies at 88".

He was born July 18, 1924 in Amite County, Mississippi. In addition to his activism, Campbell also was 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.

Will Campbell, the son of a farmer, was ordained as a minister by his local Southern Baptist congregation at age 17. He attended Louisiana College, then enlisted in the Army during World War II. After the war, he attended Wake Forest College, 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.

In 1957, while working for the National Council of Churches, Campbell participated in two notable events of the Civil Rights Movement: he was one of four people who escorted the black students who integrated the Little Rock, Arkansas, public schools; and he was the only white person present at the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Despite these efforts, Campbell never considered myself an activist. His uncompromising theology led him to keep his distance from political movements. He insisted that "anyone who is not as concerned with the immortal soul of the dispossessor as he is with the suffering of the dispossessed is being something less than Christian" and that "Mr. Jesus died for the bigots as well". These convictions sometimes caused friction between Campbell and other civil rights figures—for example, when Campbell ministered to members of the Ku Klux Klan and when he visited James Earl Ray in prison after the 1968 assassination of Campbell’s friend Dr. King. He remarked in 1976, "It's been a long time since I got a hate letter from the right. Now they come from the left."

In 1988 Will Campbell wrote a work of fiction called The Convention, a thinly veiled exposition of the conflict between fundamentalists and moderates in the Southern Baptist Convention. It was a book that spoke directly to me. It gave me a great deal to chew on as I thought about the denomination and my part in it. It really was one of the chinks in the armor of my resistance in leaving the Southern Baptist Convention. I did leave for a while in 1990. My return was a mistake. I should of listen to Will. I will miss him.