William Barber II
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The Reverend William Barber II |
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Barber (right) speaking at a Moral Mondays rally in 2013
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| Born | August 30, 1963 |
| Nationality | American |
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| Occupation | Protestant minister, activist |
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William J. Barber II (born August 30, 1963) is a Protestant minister and political leader in North Carolina. He is a member of the national board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the chair of their Legislative Political Action Committee. Since 2006 he has been president of the NAACP's North Carolina state chapter, the largest in the Southern United States and the second-largest in the country. Barber has served as pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in Goldsboro, North Carolina since 1993.
Beginning in April 2013, Barber led regular "Moral Mondays" civil-rights protests in North Carolina's state capital, Raleigh.The Wall Street Journal credited Barber's NAACP chapter with forming a coalition in 2007 named Historic Thousands on Jones Street People's Assembly (HKonJ), composed of 93 North Carolina advocacy groups. "With this changing demographic, we had to operate in coalition," Barber was quoted as saying. Historian and professor Timothy Tyson named Barber "the most important progressive political leader in this state in generations", saying that he "built a statewide interracial fusion political coalition that has not been seriously attempted since 1900".. An article in the Michigan State Law Review, "Confronting Race: How a Confluence of Social Movements Convinced North Carolina to Go where the McCleskey Court Wouldn't", credits him with bringing together a statewide political coalition. He "has become as well known [in North Carolina] as [Governor] Pat McCrory and Republican leaders of the House and Senate," according to a 2013 Huffington Post profile of him. He is active at the highest levels of the NAACP, e.g. traveling with the NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous to meet with Georgia prison officials.
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