Kenneth Campbell

Kenneth Campbell
Image source: Ebony Herald, March 1976

In the spring of 1976, Kenneth Campbell, a political science major with a minor in journalism, was named editor-in-chief of Ebony Herald, a student newspaper. Unlike Maurice Huntley, the previous editor, Campbell was not an athlete, a black Greek, or a legislator in student government. He was, however, a member of Alpha Phi Gamma, the honorary journalism fraternity on campus. Commenting on the paper’s mission, Campbell stated, “The Herald can be a voice of the whole black populous at ECU rather than just the opinions of a few students…. Probably the greatest function this paper can serve is to inform the black students, and other readers what blacks at ECU are accomplishing. We are not all athletes or cardplayers. The Herald needs to focus more on the academic side of student life.”

During his tenure as editor, Campbell sought to give a stronger voice to SOULS (Society of United Liberal Students) and to the Office of Minority Affairs. By serving as a voice for the black student body, Campbell hoped that the Ebony Herald would help to recruit more black students to ECU. In Campbell’s view the Ebony Herald was “our biggest outlet for showing the potential black ECU students what ECU blacks have, and what ECU blacks are doing.”

Campbell forthrightly explained the paper’s predicament in his opening editorial: Ebony Herald was under fire because it had not published issues on a regular basis. One SGA legislator, with considerable support, sought to defund the paper for this reason. In the end, critics of Ebony Herald settled for a reorganization of the paper that included bringing in a new editor, and placing the paper’s staff under the supervision of a Board of Directors.

During his tenure as editor, Campbell contributed twenty-three lengthy pieces, usually featured on the paper’s front page. His writings dealt with black history, the role of blacks in the bicentennial, discrimination on campus, black enrollment, black retention, the role of SOULS, African issues, black student-inmates, black studies, and Stevie Wonder’s latest album, Songs in the Key of Life. In elevating the level of content and quality, Campbell spurred Ebony Herald’s renaissance during his year as editor-in-chief. By far, he was the most talented, perceptive, and prolific editor in the paper’s brief history. And Campbell’s work gained recognition off campus as well: his last piece, “Black Press Speaks For Blacks,” won first place in a Howard University journalism contest.

Following graduation, Campbell worked as a reporter for the Niagara Falls Gazette in New York, and then completed a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York City. Campbell returned to his home state for his doctorate, finishing his Ph.D. in Mass Communications at UNC-Chapel. Along the way, he worked as a journalist for the Greensboro News & Record, the Miami Herald, the St. Petersburg Times, the Boston Globe, and the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Campbell began his teaching career at North Carolina A&T University, a historically black university in Greensboro, but later, in 1988, joined the faculty at the University of South Carolina’s School of Journalism and Mass Communications, becoming that school’s first African-American tenure-track faculty. Along with teaching and research, Campbell served as director of the school’s Southeastern Multicultural Newspaper Workshop, a summer program training minorities for professional work in journalism.

Campbell’s research focus as a professor of journalism has been on media coverage of racial issues and African-Americans, as well as the media’s presentation of African-Americans. In recognition of his work towards transforming and diversifying journalism, the University of South Carolina MLK Day planning committee honored him with the 2018 Social Justice Award, “given to individuals who exemplify the philosophies of Martin Luther King Jr.”

Sources

Citation Information

Title: Kenneth Campbell, Editor-in-chief, Ebony Herald

Author: John A. Tucker, PhD

Date of Publication: 6/25/2019

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