Our Beloved Bill Camp passed away October 29. 2024. As our past President of GLJI, we continue to mourn and miss his astute insights and loving support. He will always be included as our Honorary Board Member. RIP our dear friend and brother of Grantland. Bill Camp was
born in 1944 in the ‘cotton mill’ town of Anderson, South Carolina in the red
hills of the Piedmont. He attended
Millsaps College from 1962-64 in Jackson, Mississippi. After participating in
some early activities supporting racial integration, he was selected for
assassination by the Mississippi State White Citizens Council, the true power
in the State, who ran the State death squads. He got across the border before
sundown and enrolled in the University of Oregon, in Eugene, Oregon. He graduated in 1966.
He enrolled in a PH.D. program in Sociology at Duke
University. In 1968, he played a lead
role in organizing student support for a strike by black workers at Duke. The maids and janitors were receiving less
than minimum wage. The strike was successful, and he was expelled from Duke.
He returned
for two more years of graduate work at the University of Oregon and then began
work in the Community Action Agency in Redding, California. He took the lead
role in organizing the votes by the Head Start Patent Advisory Board. They
voted to leave the County Superintendents Office and created the
national model for parent participation nationally in Head Start.
After
being unemployed in Redding for my organizing work, he and his wife Catherine moved
to Sacramento. He worked for the state agency that guaranteed the
organizing rights of farm workers called the Agricultural Labor Relations Board
for 10 years. He ran elections to recognize bargaining rights of farm workers
and investigated illegal actions by growers. He played a key role in
bringing to conclusion the first collective bargaining contracts for lettuce
workers in the Imperial Valley. He was ultimately eliminated by Gov. Deukmejian for
reporting to the press the illegal conduct of his appointment to run the
Prosecutorial Division of the agency. He worked as one of the labor liaisons of
Senate pro Tem David Roberti for 6 years and took a lead role in mobilizing
union volunteers for campaigns.
After
the State Senate, he worked as the assistant to Jack Henning and later Art
Pulaski doing political work for 9 years.
He became the CAO or Executive Secretary of the Sacramento Central Labor
Council for 15 years. Our CLC became a
powerful voice for working class members during my tenure. He retired in December, 2014.
Bill served on the Executive Board of the Sacramento Central Labor Council, and was an elected member of the editorial board of the newspaper published by the
Sacramento Central Labor Council. He also served as Chair of the Policy
Committee on the Statewide California Workforce Investment Board, appointed by
Governor Jerry Brown.
