Charles William Camp

1944 - 2024

Charles William Camp

February 12, 1944 - September 23, 2024

Sacramento, California - Charles William ("Bill") Camp laid down his megaphone on September 23rd, 2024 after a brief but courageous attempt to undergo treatment at UC-Davis Medical Center for a glioma in his brainstem. With him at the time was his wife, Candace ("Catherine") Camp (née Cudlip).

Bill was born on February 12, 1944, in Anderson (SC) to Edmond Weyman Camp, Jr., M.D. and his wife Julia (née Thompson), the youngest of four children. He attended the public schools, graduating from Boys High School in 1962.

He followed his older brother, Nath Thompson ("Tom") Camp, to Millsaps College. It was there that he got his first taste of civil rights work, which included organizing theater outings to a production of Othello, and a Joan Baez concert, at Tougaloo College, the local HBCU; also documenting white supremacist radio broadcasts in the aftermath of President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Bill left Millsaps after he was threatened with murder by the local White Citizens' Council. He transferred to the University of Oregon where he completed his bachelor's degree in Sociology under the tutelage of Professor Art Pearl.

During summers in college Bill traveled out to the West Coast with his best friends, Doug Teddards and Johnny Lawrence, working briefly as a roughneck in the oil fiends in Santa Barbara before following the harvest and getting a hands-on introduction to the farmworker conditions he had read about in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath.

He pursued graduate education first in Sociology at Duke University. There he made a name for himself running square dances on the weekends with the Red Clay Ramblers, a local bluegrass band. He also helped organize a union among the custodial staff on campus. Due in part to Bill's creativity in bringing student support to the strike, the union was able to successfully negotiate a contract with management. However, Bill was promptly thrown out of the PhD program at the direction of the university's executive leadership, leaving with his master's degree. He then transferred back to UofO to pursue a doctorate in Education, before leaving to take up work with the Community Action Programs sponsored by President Johnson's Great Society efforts, in Shasta County.

It was in Redding that Bill met the love of his life, Catherine, when they organized together a successful effort to place the Head Start program under the control of a parent-run organization instead of the county Superintendent of Education. They married on St. Patrick's Day in 1973, in a ceremony officiated by Catherine's then 5-year old son John Benjamin ("Ben") Barr, who capped the happy event by showing off his knife trick. Their second son, Bayliss, was born a year later. It was during this time also that Bill and Catherine helped found a commune (Big Wheels Ranch) on 40 acres of apple orchard and grazing land in the Cascade country east of Redding. Big Wheels formed the basis for a sense of community and a set of connections that remained vital sources of friendship and joy for Bill's entire life.

Catherine and Bill moved to the Sacramento area in 1977, where Bill obtained a position as an elections inspector for the Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB). Bill's background as a white Southerner allowed him entrée into certain contexts and conversations that otherwise would have been problematic for someone whose job it was to ensure that workers' rights were honored by potentially hostile employers. But it was his deep reading of Alinksy's work on organizing that prompted him to successfully disrupt those processes by which growers had been able to frustrate union-organizing by the farmworkers, through techniques as simple as moving ballot boxes out into the fields where the laborers could vote free of intimidation by their employers.

Bill was always active in Democratic Party politics, and an early advocate of inclusion in the big tent and power-sharing with new groups, not just LGBT+ persons and new Americans, but younger activists of all stripes. Bill was always recruiting, sponsoring, and mentoring people to be active participants in the great game of politics; encouraging them to challenge the process and make our community better, fairer, and more just.

From the ALRB, Bill transitioned first to a position as a consultant on labor issues with California State Senator David Roberti's office and then later to work as the Director for the Committee on Political Education for the California State Federation of Labor. In and alongside these positions he continued his active political work, taking time off to help run campaigns for local and state candidates both in Sacramento and elsewhere in California, and to serve a term on the board of the Sacramento City Unified School District. It was through this work that he forged his strongest friendships, while making his mark building up progressive political institutions.

Bill was also creative at making political work fun. In collaboration with a group of friends who worked in various positions in California state government (the so-called Grits-Off Potluck Steering Committee), Bill helped found a long-running fundraiser for Loaves & Fishes, the local soup kitchen and services center for the unhoused. Every year that the Grits-Off ran, Bill made sure to call a Virginia Reel as part of the event.

Bill was a committed family man. He made sure to attend every performance he could of his older son Ben Barr's singing career, as well as the singing performances of his grandson Beck Barr, and the martial arts exhibitions of his granddaughter Lizzie Barr. He also made quite a name for himself as a sponsor of the Sacramento Gem and Mineral Society's youth group, an effort born partly out of his younger son Bayliss's interest in geology but really as an excuse to go on all kinds of wild excursions to hunt for Clear Lake diamonds, jade on the Central Coast, obsidian in the Cascades, and smoky quartz in the Black Rock Desert.

The capstone of Bill's career was serving as the Executive Secretary of the Sacramento Central Labor Council, a position from which he could combine all his commitments to racial justice, immigrant inclusion, LGBT+ equality, feminism, and most of all, primary to every analysis he ever made of any political problem, economic justice for workers.

In partnership with his brother Tom, Bill made trips for several years to the Garifuna Coast region of Honduras as part of a medical mission team. This work resulted in infrastructure and public health improvements that endure to this day. It was there that he first made connections to doctors trained at the Latin American School of Medicine, which resulted in the founding of the organization that became Building Relations with Cuban Labor. This latter group was the focus of his activism in retirement, and has resulted not just in several trips to celebrate May Day in Havana, but proclamations, petitions, and the building of sustained pressure to normalize relations with our neighbors, relatives, and friends in Cuba.

It was also in retirement that Bill began building a vineyard on a ranch he called "Camplands," in eastern Shasta County. He saw the fruits of this labor just before his final illness, with the bottling of three cases of sauvignon blanc. Generous to the end, Bill made sure that every nurse on the floor of the ICU received a bottle.

All his life, Bill built up rather than tore down, gave rather than took, sponsored, nominated, and mentored others. His legacy is a set of organizations and institutions that are stronger because of his leadership, dedicated to advancing a progressive vision of social justice for all, but most especially for the working class. And while Bill may no longer be with us, the work does not stop. As he put it so succinctly: "We've got the rest of our lives. So don't forget we're having fun."

Bill is survived by his wife, Catherine; his two sons and their spouses, Ben Barr (Maria) and Bayliss Camp (Drew Sutton); his five grandchildren, Beck, Elizabeth, and Parker Barr; Owen Sutton, and Ezra Camp; his sister, Julia O'Neil, and a far-flung set of nieces and nephews whose graduation trips out to see the wonder and promise of California he sponsored for many years.

Bill will be remembered first at a secular celebration of his life and legacy on Friday, October 18th, at 5 p.m., at the Mohanna Family Ranch in El Dorado Hills. A formal memorial service will be held the following morning, on Saturday October 19th, at 11 a.m., at First United Methodist Church of Sacramento. All are welcome at both events. Bill's ashes will be interred in the family plot, in a joint service for the remains of his older brother Tom, at the Oxford (GA) Historical Cemetery. The latter service will occur in conjunction with the annual Camp Family reunion in July 2025. Donations in Bill's memory can be made to Loaves and Fishes (SacLoaves.org), or to Building Relations With Cuban Labor (BRWCL, 4035 2nd Ave., Sacramento, CA 95817).