Rev Dr. William Barber, II

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REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER, II

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REV. DR. WILLIAM J. BARBER, II PRESIDENT OF THE North Carolina- NAACP

"'We' is the most important word in the social justice vocabulary. The issue is not what we can't do, but what we CAN do when we stand together. With an upsurge in racism/hate crimes, criminalization of young black males, insensitivity to the poor, educational genocide, and the moral/economic cost of a war, we must STAND together now like never before."

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Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II was born in Indianapolis in 1963, two days after the March on Washington for jobs and freedom. His parents, young but seasoned activists, made a conscious decision to relocate to Eastern North Carolina having been had been recruited to help integrate the state’s public schools. Dr. Barber transitioned from a northern city to a segregated kindergarten in the rural South, his father served as the first African-American in the department of general science and physics at Washington County’s white high school, while his mother became its first black office manager.

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President of the North Carolina NAACP and convener of the Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) Peoples Assembly Coalition, a broad alliance of more than 140 progressive organizations with over 2 million memberships to champion a 14 point anti-racism, anti-poverty, anti-war agenda, Dr. Barber is very much in the national spotlight. Dr. Barber and this coalition has aided in the passage of the Racial Justice Act of 2009, which allowed death row inmates to appeal their sentences on the grounds of racial bias in the court system; and successfully advocated for voting reforms such as same-day registration and early voting, and has re-framed marriage equality as a civil rights issue and helped mobilized black churches to support a ballot initiative in 2012.

In opposition to regressive policies pushed by the governor and state legislature including draconian cuts to Medicaid, unemployment benefits, and public education funding, Dr. Barber has mobilized the Forward Together Moral Monday Movement, a multi-racial, multi-generational movement of thousands for protests at the NC General Assembly the people’s house, and around the state. Hundreds, including Dr. Barber himself, have also engaged in non-violent civil disobedience to expose what the politicians in North Carolina are trying to do in the dark.

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Rev. Dr. Barber graduated Cum Laude from North Carolina Central University (NCCU) in Durham, N.C., receiving a B.A. in Political Science. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University, was a Benjamin Mays Fellow and a Dean scholar. Dr. Barber has a Doctoral degree from Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, with a concentration in Public Policy and Pastoral Care and he has received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from N.C.C.U. The Honorable Governor Beverly Purdue presented Dr. Barber with the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, North Carolina’s highest citizenship award presented to outstanding North Carolinians who have a proven record of service to the state.

Dr. Barber has served as the Executive Director of N.C. Human Relations Commission, State of North Carolina, an adjunct instructor at N.C. Wesleyan, North Carolina Central University and Duke Divinity School, has served on the trustee boards of two colleges and is an MIT Mel King Community Fellow for Community and Economic CoLab.

Rev. Dr. William Barber, II was re-elected to the NAACP National Board in 2011 and appointed as the National NAACP Chair of the Legislative Political Action Committee. Under his leadership, the NAACP developed a new 21st Century voter registration/voter participation system. In NC this system registered more than 442,000 new voters and provided access to 1.5 million voters.

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Since Dr. Barber became President he has led fundraising efforts for the NC NAACP raising more than $2 million of new money and has increased NC NAACP staff from one to seven persons. Dr. Barber led the North Carolina NAACP State Conference to national recognition when he accepted the Juanita Jackson Mitchell, Esq. Award for legal activism, the highest award in the NAACP for Legal Redress for Advocacy. In addition, the NC NAACP became the recipient of the Thalheimer Award for most programmatic NAACP State Conference and in 2010 Rev. Dr. Barber won the National NAACP Kelly Alexander Award.

Dr. Barber has written one book entitled, “Preaching Through Unexpected Pain”, and several articles and is currently working on his second book. He has been featured on Wall Street, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, Crisis Magazine, and has spoken, preached and lectured around the country.

Dr. Barber’s membership affiliations have included Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, and Prince Hall Mason, 33°.Scotish Rite, and Shriners. He has received many awards for his work fighting for justice, social change, and for speaking truth to power. By the grace of God, Rev. Dr. Barber, along with local, state, and national NAACP leaders, has helped to lead the fight for voter rights, just redistricting, health care reform, labor and worker rights, protection of immigration rights, and reparation for women survivors of Eugenics, release of the Wilmington Ten and educational equality. Rev. Dr. Barber has been arrested three times for civil disobedience as he stood for educational, economic and equal justice. Dr. Barber was selected as one of theGrio’s 100 in the class of 2013.

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Some of Rev. Dr. William Barber’s other accolades and accomplishments are: The NC NAACP is the largest state conference in the south - second largest in nation; Dr. Barber stood with Georgia’s NAACP State President to secure the release of Mr. John McNeil, a man, husband and father who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentence to life in prison; Dr. Barber has help lead the North Carolina NAACP in filing Title VI filing against the Wayne and Wake County School Broads in the fight against re-segregation and inequality; Dr. Barber fought and helped to secure over millions of new dollars for low wealth and disadvantaged students.

Barber lives in Goldsboro, where for 20 years he has pastored at Greenleaf Christian Church. In 1995, Greenleaf’s moderate-sized congregation conducted a social demographic analysis of the two-mile circle surrounding the church where they found high levels of poverty and under-employment. The congregation invested $1.5 million into community development, purchasing the surrounding land and leveraging resources back into the community which resulted in more than 60 homes for low to moderate income families, a 41 unit senior citizens’ home, and a 90 student pre-school academy. They’ve also built a community center that houses an academic afterschool program, a computer lab for both youth and adult training, and an HIV/AIDs information and testing center. Dr. Barber has led in the efforts along with other clergy and community leaders in The Stop the Funeral Initiative and the Drug Dealer/Gang Member Redemption Conference focused on reducing drug and gang violence in Wayne County.

As a result of Rev. Dr. Barber’s lead on this initiative, RBPCDC is embarking on a new effort, the 2nd Chance Education and Job Training program aimed at providing education and job training for formerly incarcerated individuals and others with significant barriers to employment.

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ABOUT THE NORTH CAROLINA NAACPFounded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities. The North Carolina Conference of NAACP Branches is 70 years old this year and is made up of over 100 Adult, Youth and College NAACP units across the state, convenes the more the 150 members of the Historic Thousands on Jones Street (HKonJ) Peoples Assembly Coalition, and is the architect of the Moral Monday & Forward Together Movement.

NAACP VISION STATEMENTThe vision of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights and there is no racial hatred or racial discrimination.

NAACP MISSION STATEMENTThe mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and discrimination.

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HISTORY OF THE NORTH CAROLINA NAACPThe National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded on February 12, 1909, the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. A multi-racial group of activists answered ''The Call'' for a national conference in response to a vicious episode of white racist violence against Black people in Mr. Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois.

The racist attack came 10 years after the prototype of such attacks, the ugly racist coup d'état in Wilmington, N.C. in 1898. The Wilmington terrorism had been condoned and covered over by racist histories, and no one was brought to justice for it. This set the stage, throughout the next decade for similar attacks across the South. When these pogroms reached Lincoln's hometown, it sparked enough outrage among some white progressives to put out a call to action which said, in part: "We call upon all the believers in democracy to join in a national conference for the discussion of present evils, the voicing of protests, and the renewal of the struggle for civil and political liberty."

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HISTORY OF THE NORTH CAROLINA NAACP (CONTINUES)Many distinguished leaders responded to this Call, including Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, and William English Walling. With many years of hard work, they and hundreds of thousands of other members have built the NAACP into the oldest and largest civil rights organization in the United States.

The NAACP's mission has remained constant for its first century: to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination. It advances its mission through the press, through non-violent mass petitioning for redress of grievances; through the ballot, through lobbying and through the courts. In the face of 100 years of covert and overt racial hostility and violence, including murders and bombings, NAACP leaders and members have steadfastly and courageously used legal and moral persuasion.

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HISTORY OF THE NORTH CAROLINA NAACP (CONTINUES)The NAACP has effectively used political pressure, marches, demonstrations, lobbying and litigation as both the voice, and the shield, for Americans of color for 100 years, accomplishing fundamental changes in America. Perhaps the NAACP's best-known victory, coming after decades of struggle, is the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Teams of NAACP lawyers risked their lives in the South preparing the way for the NAACP general counsel, Thurgood Marshall, and his colleagues, to finally overturn the legal foundation for Jim Crow. Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 Supreme Court decision that was the legal basis for Jim Crow segregation and blatant oppression of people of color, set the stage for the Wilmington terrorist attack two years later.

A year after Jim Crow was ruled unconstitutional by Brown, in 1955, the secretary of the Montgomery Branch of the NAACP, a courageous young woman named Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined when she refused to give up her seat on a Jim Crow bus on her way home from work. Her act of courage was the catalyst for a well-organized bus boycott, the spreading of the idea of non-violent direct action against Jim Crow and more sophisticated forms of oppression, and soon the American South was the witness to the largest grassroots civil rights movement in the history of the country.

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HISTORY OF THE NORTH CAROLINA NAACP (CONTINUES)In North Carolina, in late 2005, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II became President of the North Carolina State Conference of Branches. Rev. Barber stood of others like strong State President, Kelly Alexander, Sr. In 1940, Alexander reactivated the dormant Charlotte NAACP Branch and in 1948 was elected President of the North Carolina State Conference, a post he held until October 1984. During his presidency, the Alexander home was bombed and his life threatened as he carried out his duties to the NAACP mission. Under his leadership, the N.C. NAACP Conference became the largest state conference in the nation, with over 120 branches and 30,000 members. In 1950 Alexander was elected to the National NAACP Board of Directors and he became a Life Member in 1954.

In 1976 he was elected Vice Chair of the National Board; in June 1983, he was named Acting Chair, and in January 1984, he was elected Chair of the National Board, the position Julian Bond now holds.

Kelly Alexander, Sr. was followed as the N.C. NAACP President by his son, Kelly Alexander, Jr.; who was then followed by Mr. Melvin "Skip" Alston, from Greensboro, and then Rev. Barber. The State Conference Presidents had the fine support of several hard-working Executive Directors, including Charles A. McLean, Carolyn Q. Coleman, Mary Peeler, Rev. George I. Allison, James Wiggins, and now Amina Josey Turner. Of course the heart and soul of the organization are the hundreds of grassroots members who daily challenge race discrimination in their communities, and maintained the state's NAACP Conference of Branches as one of the strongest in the South.

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HISTORY OF THE NORTH CAROLINA NAACP (CONTINUES)In his three years as State Conference President, Rev. Barber and Executive Director Ms. Turner, supported by the hard work and volunteering of the State Executive Committee and local Branch leaders, have helped reenergize and strengthen the Conference into the largest State Conference in the South that has been repeatedly recognized by the National NAACP for its activism.

Many observers believe the NAACP's Million Voter March, which helped bring 1,200,000 voters of color to early voting last October through Election day, was a critical factor in practically every competitive race on the ballot, from the President on down. Just as important has been the NC NAACP's joining hands with predominantly White and Latino organizations to build exciting new political alliances around a People's Agenda that reverses the State's historic priorities toward to focus on the needs of ordinary people of all colors. This political alliance is called the Historic Thousands on Jones Street: The Peoples General Assembly Coalition, named after the annual People's Assembly in front of the State Legislature on the Saturday nearest the NAACP's birthday.

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On Saturday, February 14th, 2009, the NC NAACP marked its 100th anniversary by bringing historic thousands of North Carolinians of all colors and races to its third annual People's Assembly on Jones Street. They will speak with one voice, advocating for the 14-Point People's Agenda of the HKonJ alliance to change the way North Carolina treats the poor of our state, the priorities of our state, and the political processes of our state.

On February 12, 2009, resolutions were introduced in the North Carolina legislature to honor the memory of those who founded the NAACP and the great service they have rendered to our nation and state, and congratulating the NAACP for its significant contributions to social change.

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It's Our Time! It's Our Vote!We are approaching an historic election year. North Carolina has suffered from a flood of immoral and unconstitutional policies supported and passed by our Governor and General Assembly over the past four years. This extreme and regressive agenda has hurt ALL North Carolinians. They have voted to deny us healthcare, defund our schools, suppress our votes, raise taxes on the poor, deny us equal protection under the law, hurt our environment, and more. Now it is our time to vote.

If you believe that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere; if you understand that what happens in North Carolina has implications for the future of the nation; if you are committed to building a moral movement to save the soul of our state and country, then we need you to get involved in the Forward Together Moral Movement's It's Our Time, It's Our Vote GOTV campaign.

http://www.naacpnc.org/its_our_time


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It's Our Time! It's Our Vote! – (Continues)

A Get-Out-The-Vote campaign can only bring us closer to a true democracy if it is long-term, issue-based and contextualized within on-going organizing to hold elected officials accountable once they take office. In a climate of voter suppression and spreading extremist ideology, our GOTV efforts must be comprehensive and include voter education, registration, mobilization, and protection. We must build an organizing infrastructure that will last far beyond 2016.

The North Carolina NAACP is partnering with Democracy North Carolina, faith leaders, and other HKonJ Coalition partners to organize local It's Our Time Get-Out-The-Vote committees across the state and mobilize over 3,000 faith communities to participate in It's Our Time Souls to the Polls campaign.If you as an individual, your organization, or your faith community would like to get involved in the It's Our Time, It's Our Vote campaign, please email [email protected] and write "It's Our Time" in the subject line.



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It's Our Time! It's Our Vote! – (Continues)

The 2016 Election is an important election for North Carolina. Positions up for election include:• President & Vice President of the US• Senior U.S. Senator • All US House of Representatives • All NC House of Representatives • All NC Senate Members• Governor• Lieutenant Governor• Attorney General• Council of State offices including • Secretary of State, Commissioner of Labor, Commissioner of Agriculture, etc.• At least 1 NC Supreme Court Judge• At least 4 Court of Appeals Judges• County Commissioners • District Attorneys • School Board Members• District & Superior Court Judges• Soil & Water Conservation District Supervisor



Rev Dr. William Barber, II

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