Campos, who had been HIV-positive for the past 10 years, was the co-executive director of Queers for Economic Justice and a prominent figure within the country's social-activist and "artivist" communities. He wrote the anthology It Ain't Truth If It Doesn't Hurt, and wrote openly on blogs and in magazines about being HIV-positive, having a mixed-race heritage and battling an addiction to crystal meth, Advocate.com noted.

Campos' great-great uncle was the Black historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the second Black man to be awarded a doctorate from Harvard University and the founder of Black History Month.