agricultural educator and government worker, was born Thomas Monroe Campbell in Elbert County, Georgia, the son of William A. Campbell, a Methodist minister and tenant farmer. Little is known about his mother, who died when Tom was five years old. Left to fend for themselves after their mother's death, Tom and his younger sister ate raw sweet potatoes and whatever else they could scavenge. Their father's work as an itinerant preacher caused him to spend much of his time away from home, and Tom's four elder siblings were “hired out”—three worked in the households of white families and one worked for the doctor who had cared for their mother while she was ill.
Criticized by his neighbors for neglecting his children, William Campbell remarried His new wife whose name is not known was a widow with three children of her own William Campbell stopped traveling and focused on ...
