Veteran of the military and social protest, Charleston activist joins Washington march

’It’s important to stay in the fight’

by RON MENCHACA

A young Marine stares confidently at the camera, partially committed to a smile,
brown eyes frozen in the mental dance common among ambitious young people plotting
a course in life.

Charleston native James Campbell peers down at the picture, taken in 1944 shortly
after he was drafted for World War II, and shakes his head.

Now 79, bearded and gray, the lifelong educator and labor and civil rights activist
can’t help but reflect on a simpler time.

The social conditions then were far from perfect for him and other blacks —
the military was not immune to the pervasive racism in the civilian world —
but the common cause against fascism transcended race and class.

"World War II was the last great war for noble purposes. It was the last great war where the world came together," Campbell said. "The wars since have been wars for the reordering of colonialism and imperialism."

His indictment includes virtually every conflict since the big one, including the current war in Iraq, which he feels was waged under false pretenses. "Young people are spending the coin of their lives on the basis of a lie," he said.

It’s the type of statement one might expect, given the "Kerry-Edwards" campaign sign in the yard before Campbell’s low-slung brick home on James Island.

It’s also a sentiment likely to be chanted today in Washington, D.C., where Campbell is among about 150 South Carolinians taking part in the "Million Worker March."

Campbell boarded one of four charter buses in Charleston late Saturday for a 10-hour, overnight trip to the rally. He said he gets cramped on such long rides, but he’s not ready to abandon the struggle he’s been engaged in for decades. Too many issues crowd the table, he said. Too many workers are without adequate health care; too many jobs move overseas; too many young people die in war because military service seemed their best way out of dead-end towns.

He can’t quit now.

COMBINING FORCES

Today’s march is part anti-war rally and part organized labor demonstration aimed at mobilizing the base of the Democratic party in the final weeks before election day.

Organizers say the causes are inextricably linked because young people from America’s poor and middle class make up the bulk of the fighting force.

"The labor movement is working very hard for Kerry," said Donna Dewitt, president of the S.C. AFL-CIO. "He wasn’t the choice of a lot of unions in the beginning, but we’ve come together."

Dewitt said it matters little that South Carolina, a right-to-work state, has a reputation for squashing union activity. "The solidarity is difficult to see sometimes in a right-to-work state. But I think the greatest thing we can do is take them to Washington. It will mobilize our folks to come back and be active."

Among those scheduled to attend are civil rights activists Jesse Jackson and Martin Luther King III and entertainers Danny Glover and Dick Gregory.

A million attendees might be wishful thinking, Dewitt said. Still, tens of thousands of teachers, postal workers, dockworkers, truckers, steel workers, bus drivers and others are expected to take part. Their demands include an end to the war in Iraq and better conditions and pay for American workers.

Anti-war demonstrators, usually the bread and butter of such gatherings, are more than happy to share the stage, and resources, with organized labor. Michael Berg, a Columbia peace activist, said labor unions have deeper pockets and well-established networks for spreading information and boosting voter turnout.

The Carolina Peace Resource Center, which Berg helps run, usually can’t afford to rent charter buses to national events unless it collects a fee from every rider.

For this rally, the International Longshoremen’s Association in Charleston picked up the tab. The bus ride is free.

"That would have been half the yearly budget for our group," Berg said.

STILL FIGHTING

Campbell rode a bus to the nation’s capital with the rank and file of the Charleston dockworkers union.

The labor group adopted him a few years ago and relies on his advice and wisdom.

His professorial mannerisms command attention. When he rummages his memory for the answer to a question, he clasps his hands in front of his face and lowers his head.

In an interview before the trip, Campbell leaned back in a fluffy white armchair and interspersed his words with quotes from Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois. He stopped midsentence, jumped to his feet and darted to the kitchen to tend something on the stove.

Campbell served as a foot soldier in the civil rights and labor movements. He helped establish an early teachers union in New York and taught school in the Bronx.

He licked envelopes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s Harlem office in the weeks before the historic 1963 March on Washington. When King delivered his "I have a dream" speech, Campbell was in Mississippi registering voters. He listened to the address over an old radio and shuddered under the power of what he heard.

Later, Campbell would work with Malcolm X, establish a black theater group, protest the Vietnam War and teach school in Tanzania.

Today, Campbell serves on the local ILA’s retiree chapter and volunteers on an ethics consultation panel at the Medical University of South Carolina.

For many of the younger dockworkers who rode from Charleston, today’s rally is their first experience in large-scale demonstration.

Campbell remembers the impact the early rallies had on him. "The rallies and demonstrations are the great seminars of education," he said. "This country was educated by street demonstrations in the 1960s."

Charleston ILA President Ken Riley said he organized the trip to expose younger members to a mass gathering the likes of which most have seen only in schoolbooks and movies. Riley, a national figure in the labor movement and one of the scheduled speakers today, brought along his 11-year-old son, Kenny Riley II. "I want him to understand how we got some of the workers benefits we have. It didn’t come easily. We had to struggle to get there. He reads about the civil-rights struggle in school, but I want him to know that it’s not over."

Today they march alongside a living link to that history as Campbell returns to the hallowed ground where his generation laid the foundations of peaceful protest.

"I’ll do it as long as I can," Campbell said. "It’s important to stay in the fight."

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