His father often told young Edmund of his own childhood living next to Robert E. Lee, who served as the college's president after the American Civil War, and how he rode behind the former General on his horse, Traveller.
In the 1930s, Campbell served on the Arlington County Public Utilities Commission, which succeeded in reducing gas and electric rates.
The Byrd organization refused to support him because of his desegregation advocacy; Campbell lost by 332 votes to Republican Joel T. Broyhill, a segregationist and World War II veteran.
As an attorney, Campbell successfully argued a case which overturned a Virginia law prohibiting racially integrated seating in public places.
[1] During Massive Resistance, Campbell represented Norfolk parents and schoolchildren in federal court, which led to the three-judge decision in James v. Almond on January 19, 1959, which with a Virginia Supreme Court decision on the same day (both eventually accepted by Governor J. Lindsay Almond), led Norfolk and Arlington to desegregate their schools (peacefully) in early February, 1959.
The United States Supreme Court in Davis v. Mann agreed, leading to the famous "one man, one vote" rationale.
After a funeral service at St. Peter's Church in north Arlington, he was interred in the family plot in Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery in Lexington, Virginia.