by a fever. He died of typhoid pneumonia on January 26, 1896, at his family's home. He was survived by his parents and his wife. Campbell was interred at Beech Grove Cemetery in Pomeroy. Following his death, his wife taught in Pomeroy and then at Kentucky State Normal School for Colored Persons (later known as Kentucky State University) from 1902 until 1903. She relocated to St. Louis, where she died of tonsillitis in 1909. Legacy Campbell was among the first African-American poets to write in the African-American vernacular dialect. While Paul Laurence Dunbar is credited with popularizing verse in the African-American vernacular dialect, Campbell published his dialect poetry prior to Dunbar. African-American author and educator J. Saunders Redding stated, "Campbell's dialect is more nearly a reproduction of plantation Negro speech sounds than that of any other writer in American literature... Campbell's ear alone dictated his language." Civil rights activist and writer James Weldon Johnson described Campbell's dialect as "idiomatically and phonetically ... nearer to the Gullah or the West Indian dialect". Historian Jean Wagner argued that Campbell "had his own highly original talent and was in no sense a borrower". Wagner further stated that Campbell "reveals the upsurge, among blacks, of a racial consciousness that chafes under every yoke". Actor Richard Berry Harrison used Campbell's poems when he delivered dramatic readings. The Meigs County Historical Society and the Ohio Historical Society erected a historical marker honoring Campbell in Pomeroy in 2007. In 1973, West Virginia State College honored Campbell by naming its vocational building Campbell Hall. When the college transitioned its former home economics cottage into a conference center, it named the facility the Campbell Conference Center after Campbell. In 2019, the Meigs County Historical Society unveiled a Meigs County Bicentennial Marker at the site of Campbell's primary school, Kerr's Run Colored School, and concluded the unveiling ceremony with a reading from one of Campbell's books. Campbell was portrayed by actor George Dale Jr. in the 2020 film River of Hope, which tells the story of Samuel I. Cabell and his wife Mary Barnes Cabell and of how their children helped to found West Virginia State University. Selected works Books Poems "A Night in June" "Mobile-Buck" "Ol' Doc' Hyar" "The Gobble-un Gets Him" References Explanatory notes Citations Bibliography External links 1867 births 1896 deaths 19th-century African-American people 19th-century American educators 19th-century American essayists 19th-century American male writers 19th-century American newspaper