Reverend Doctor William Barber II (born August 30, 1963) is a Protestant minister and political leader in North Carolina (NC). He is a member of the national Board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), for whom he is also Chair of the NAACP's Legislative Political Action Committee. He was awarded the 2006 Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Esq. Award for legal activism, the highest award in the NAACP for legal redress for advocacy, he was the 2008 recipient of the Thalheimer Award for most programmatic NAACP State Conference, and in 2010 he won the National NAACP Kelly M. Alexander Humanitarian Award. Since 2006 he has been president of the NAACP's North Carolina state chapter—the largest in the Southern USA and the second-largest in the country.Barber has served as pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, in Goldsboro, NC since 1993. He has led "Moral Mondays" civil-rights protests in NC, beginning in April 2013. 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... He built a statewide interracial fusion political coalition that has not been seriously attempted since 1900," as quoted by Lori Wiggins in The Crisis magazine, January 2011. 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 NC] as Gov. 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.Gov. Beverly Purdue awarded him the Order of the Long Leaf Pine in 2009—a North Carolina citizenship award presented to outstanding North Carolinians who have a proven record of service to the state. He is the author of several articles, a self-published book titled Preaching Through Unexpected Pain; and his second book, titled Forward Together: A Moral Message for the Nation, is scheduled for publication on October 30, 2014 with Chalice Press (ISBN 0827244940 and ISBN 978-0827244948).Barber was elected president of the NAACP’s youth council at age 15, president of his high school’s student body at 17, and student government president at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) at 19. Barber received his bachelor’s degree in political science from NCCU, cum laude; a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University; and a doctorate from Drew University with a concentration in public policy and pastoral care. He is married to Rebecca McLean Barber; they have five children.
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