November 13, 1931 — March 29, 2025
The Reverend Dr. Joan Brown Campbell passed peacefully on March 29, 2025. She was 93.
Joan was born in November 1931, in Youngstown, Ohio. Following graduation from Boardman HS she attended the University of Michigan where she earned honor as the school’s top woman debater and graduated with a degree in Speech and English. She met and married Paul Barton Campbell, who was studying law at the University of Michigan Law School.
Their first child, Jane Louise Campbell, was born in 1953 in Ann Arbor. Jane became a successful and dedicated politician and public servant. She was elected to several prominent offices, culminating in her election in 2001 as the first female mayor of Cleveland, in 2001. She is currently President/CEO of the United States Capitol Historical Society and resides in Washington, DC, and Cleveland.
While raising her family in Shaker Heights, Joan’s faith led her to become deeply involved in social issues in the Cleveland area. Her home became a crossroads for various activists, particularly those involved in the quest for racial justice and the end to the Vietnam war. She worked hard to help Clevelanders elect Carl Stokes the first black mayor of a major American city in 1967.
They had two more children, Paul Jr., whose career was spent as a senior director of the International Baccalaureate, a global nonprofit, and James W., a family doctor with a specialty in geriatrics. He recently retired as the director and founder of the MetroHealth Senior Health and Wellness Center and a professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University.
After she and Paul divorced in 1974, Joan devoted her energies to the ecumenical movement. At age 49, she became an ordained minister in the National Baptist Church. Soon after, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) recognized her ordination. She was later also ordained by the American Baptist Church.
Joan was the first woman to serve as the assistant executive director of the Greater Cleveland Interchurch Council; the first woman to serve as the executive director of the US office of the World Council of Churches; the first ordained woman to serve as the General Secretary of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA; and the first woman to serve as the director of religion at the Chautauqua Institution.
In these various roles, Reverend Campbell participated in several high profile causes and events. She led a delegation to meet with Pope John Paul II to present him with a copy of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. She was part of the delegation led by President William Clinton to attend the funeral of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel. Along with her friend, Reverend Jesse Jackson, she traveled to Belgrade during the Balkan wars and negotiated the release of imprisoned American soldiers.
Along with the renowned astronomer Carl Sagan, Joan helped cofound the National Religious Partnership for the Environment. She served as an election observer when Nelson Mandela was elected as the first black president of South Africa. Towards the end of her tenure at the National Council of Churches, a young Cuban boy named Elian Gonzalez survived a shipwreck and ended up in the home of relatives in Miami. Working with the Clinton administration, the Cuban government, and the Cuban churches, she helped negotiate Elian’s safe return to his family in Cuba.
Archbishop Tutu called Joan “a woman of courage and compassion. She helped put an end to the evil of apartheid.”
Joan was inducted into the Ohio Civil Rights Hall of Fame and the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame. She received 14 honorary degrees from institutions including Monrovia University in Liberia.
In 2017, at age 86, Joan married the Reverend Albert Pennybacker, who had been both her long-time mentor and partner in engaging organized religion in a collective response to injustice. “Penny” predeceased her in 2022.
Besides her three children, Joan is survived by eight grandchildren and four great grandchildren with a fifth on the way.
In lieu of flowers or gifts, her family suggests gifts to the African American Heritage House at the Chautauqua Institution and/or the James W Campbell, MD Endowment in Geriatric Medicine through the MetroHealth Foundation.
A memorial service will be held Sunday April 27 at 4p in Plymouth Church of Shaker Heights, 2860 Coventry Rd [44120]. The service will be live streamed from the Plymouth Church website and on YouTube.
• • •• • •
