THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512100083
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
LENGTH: Medium: 54 lines
Edmund D. Campbell, the lawyer who helped argue the landmark ``one man, one vote'' case and fought Virginia's ``massive resistance'' to school integration in the 1950s by taking the case of Norfolk children who had been locked out of classrooms, died Thursday at his home in Arlington. He was 96.
Campbell was formerly a partner of, and, in later years, counsel to the Washington-based law firm now known as Jackson & Campbell.
Over the years, he was involved in a score of cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
In 1962, Campbell gave the closing argument in the U.S. Supreme Court case that established the right of all citizens to equal representation in their legislatures. Campbell had challenged Virginia's apportionment, arguing that Arlington and Fairfax were shortchanged.
Campbell was also active in the 1950s battles when Virginia engaged in massive resistance to the Supreme Court's ruling that public schools must be desegregated.
One suit that he was involved in was brought by a group of 26 parents and students in Norfolk challenging Virgnia's anti-integration laws.
Eventually, after the state - confronting pressure to integrate - had shut down public schools in Norfolk and in two other Virginia communities, federal judges ruled that the anti-integration laws were unconstitutional.
``I felt that my life and my career as a lawyer was on the line (but) I wanted to take the case,'' Campbell said years later. ``I wanted to do something that I felt was the right thing to do.''
Campbell also successfully challenged a Virginia law barring integrated seating in public places in 1957.
Campbell was born in Lexington, Va., received a bachelor's degree from Washington and Lee University, a master's degree in economics from Harvard and his law degree in 1922 from Washington and Lee's law school, where he was first in his class.
He married Esther Butterworth in 1926. She died in 1934.
He is survived by his second wife, the former Elizabeth Pfoul, whom he married in 1936; three sons, the Rev. Edmund D. Campbell Jr. of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., the Rev. Benjamin P. Campbell of Richmond and H. Donald Campbell of Arlington; a daughter, Virginia Campbell Holt of Phoenix; eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The Associated Press and The New
York Times.
by CNB