Ben Nighthorse Campbell, ’57 Physical Education, a decorated U.S. Air Force veteran and three-time U.S. national judo champion who captained the 1964 Olympic judo team, later served in the United States Senate and House of Representatives, becoming one of the highest-ranking Native American officeholders in U.S. history. He also became the first and only American Indian to chair the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs.

Born Benny Marshall Campbell on April 13, 1933, Campbell was in and out of foster care while his mother, Mary Vierra, a Portuguese immigrant, battled tuberculosis and his father, Albert Campbell, a Cheyenne, struggled with alcoholism. In the 1940s, his parents reunited and opened a grocery store. Though Campbell was a talented artist and jewelry maker, he left high school as a junior to enlist in the U.S. Air Force in 1951 and served in Korea as an air policeman during the Korean War, leaving active duty in 1953.

He began studying the Japanese martial art of judo while serving in the Korean War, though he’d first learned of the sport from fellow farmworkers as a child. He left the service in the 1950s to attend San Jose City College on the GI Bill before transferring to San José State, where he studied judo under the legendary Yoshihiro Uchida, ’47 Biological Science, ’04 Honorary Doctorate. Campbell captained the San José State team, where he won the NCAA Pacific Coast Championship four times. In the early 1960s, Campbell continued his studies of Japanese and judo in Japan, where he won 48 of 50 tournament matches, earned a gold medal at the Pan American Games in 1963, and joined the first U.S. judo team at the 1964 Olympics.

In 1968, Campbell first visited the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana, where he took the middle name Nighthorse and enrolled as a tribal member. He was inducted into its council of chiefs in 1982.

Campbell led a series of entrepreneurial ventures, including training and breeding championship horses, designing and selling American Indian motif jewelry through Nighthorse Jewelry Designs, and flying small planes. His political career began when Campbell wandered into an open meeting of Democratic leaders in Colorado and, somewhat by accident, agreed to run for a seat in the state legislature.

He served in the Colorado General Assembly from 1983-1986, then was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1987. He was the only Native American to serve during his tenures in the House of Representatives (1987-1993) and the U.S. Senate (1993-2005). Campbell also chaired the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission) and received honors, including the Ellis Island Medal of Freedom and Japan’s Order of the Rising Sun.

Among Campbell’s crowning achievements was the establishment of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., which opened in 2004. At the museum’s opening he described it as “a monument to the millions of Native people who died of sickness, slavery, starvation and war.”

Campbell died on Dec. 30, 2025, on his Colorado ranch at the age of 92. He is survived by his wife of 59 years, Linda Price, their son Colin, daughter Shanan, and four grandchildren.

In recognition of Campbell’s years of public service, SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson honored him with a posthumous honorary doctorate at his celebration of life on April 13 in Ignacio, Colorado.