Campbell was born near Waldron, in Scott County, Arkansas, on November 16, 1888, the first of six children born to Edward and Elizabeth Campbell. He was named after his uncle, Samuel Doak. Upon graduating from high school, he became a licensed teacher, but left after one year to attend Ouachita Baptist College in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. He was an intercollegiate debater, orator, and distance runner. He was president of his graduating class and obtained a Bachelor of Arts in music and speech in 1911.
Family life
Doak Campbell was married to Helen Gray Smith from May 28, 1913, until her death in 1938. They had two children: Doak S. Campbell, Jr., and Elizabeth Caroline Campbell. Son Doak Jr. married Mary C. in 1938 ; they had two children. Daughter Caroline married Donald Broermann in 1940; they had three daughters. Doak Campbell was married to Edna Simmons from 1941 until his death in 1973. During his tenure as president of Florida State University, Edna Campbell fulfilled her responsibilities as the wife of a college president with insight and vigor.
Career
In 1916, Doak S. Campbell began teaching chemistry at Central College, in Conway, Arkansas. In 1920, he became president of the school. While serving in this role, Central College transformed from a failing four-year college to a respectable, though now defunct, two-year junior college. Later in the 1920s, Campbell began attending George Peabody College for Teachers at Vanderbilt University, receiving a Master's degree in 1928 and a Ph.D. in 1930, at which time he was hired onto the school's faculty. He became dean of the graduate school at Peabody in 1938, and remained in that position until accepting the presidency of Florida State College for Women in September 1941. While at Peabody, Campbell was also a member of the State Board of Education and the Board's Middle Tennessee Committee and came under criticism for his handling of an academic freedom and tenure case in which a tenured teacher had been fired without stated cause. A great boom in enrollment, driven by World War II veterans and the G.I. Bill, forced Florida to create new facilities for them. As a result, the Legislature changed Florida State College for Women to Florida State University effective May 15, 1947. The change from a women's school to a coeducational school in 1947 was a substantial one in the school's history, bringing a great expansion in staff, enrollment, and plant, and it required great effort from the faculty and Campbell's administration to carry out smoothly.
Position on "racial" integration
During Campbell's presidency, and influenced by the Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954, Florida came under increasing pressure to integrate its university system. At that time, only white students were admitted to Florida State or the University of Florida. Campbell has been described as strongly opposed to the admission of African-American students to Florida State, although Campbell's grandson disputes this. According to James Schnur, "Campbell exacted deference from the campus community, suppressed the liberal editorial policy of the semi-weekly Florida Flambeau newspaper, and refused to tolerate any breach of racial segregation. He forced the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors to cancel a regional conference at FSU when he learned that black faculty members from the neighboring Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University planned to attend." At the same time, Tallahassee was racially uneasy because, following the successful Montgomery bus boycott of 1956 and the Supreme Court caseBrowder v. Gayle, local activists, including some students, boycotted Tallahassee buses seeking to integrate them as well. The Florida Board of Control, which ran the state's universities, warned students not to get involved in "the Tallahassee integration dispute". Campbell had no hesitation in expelling a graduate student who spoke "urging support of a Negro candidate for the Tallahassee City Commission against the white incumbent", and who invited African students to an FSU party. He required the student newspaper, the Florida Flambeau, to devote less space to integration. He went on record denying that he had said that there would eventually be Negro students at FSU. Early in 1957 Campbell resigned as president; a new president, Bernard Strozier, who would begin intercollegiate football at FSU, had been chosen by the Board of Control by June, with FSU run by an interim president until Strozier could begin in September. Some stories say Campbell retired. In 2020 there was a student petition to remove his name from Doak Campbell Stadium. Campbell retired from his position on June 30, 1957, but remained in the Tallahassee area as president emeritus of Florida State until his death on March 23, 1973.
Legacy
Campbell supported a sports program at Florida State, and encouraged the construction of a football stadium. The stadium was completed in 1950, and named Doak S. Campbell Stadium in his honor.
