MacArthur Foundation | Urban Faith

Pastor and activist William J. Barber II wins MacArthur ‘genius’ grant

The Rev. William J. Barber II, president of the N.C. state chapter of the NAACP and architect of the protests known as “Moral Monday,” speaks during a Bible study at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. in this June 24, 2015, file photo. Barber, pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Goldsboro, N.C., and founder of Repairers of the Breach, a leadership development organization, was named one of this year’s MacArthur fellows by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation on Oct. 4, 2018. In 2017, Barber began a series of “Moral Monday” rallies outside the North Carolina state Capitol to protest laws that suppress voter turnout. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

The Rev. William J. Barber II, architect of the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina and leader of the resurgent Poor People’s Campaign, has won a MacArthur “genius” award.

Barber, 55, pastor of Goldsboro, N.C.’s Greenleaf Christian Church and former president of the state’s NAACP chapter, has long been viewed as a rising star in progressive activist circles.

At the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, he brought the audience to its feet with a speech that charged Republicans with misusing faith for political purposes and espoused social justice concerns as essential to American democracy.

Earlier this year Barber resurrected the Poor People’s Campaign, first organized by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. before his death to lift up issues of poverty, racism and voter suppression through a series of rallies and demonstrations. The 40-day campaign culminated with a demonstration on the National Mall in Washington in June.

Barber was unavailable for comment on Thursday (Oct. 4) according to a spokesperson, because he was arrested in Chicago while participating in a “Fight for $15” rally convened by fast food and other workers demanding higher wages and the right to unionize.

“Merging moral and activist traditions, Barber is providing a faith-based framework for action that strengthens civic engagement and inspires the country to imagine a more humane society,” the MacArthur Foundation said of Barber. As one of 25 recipients of the so-called genius award, Barber will receive a grant of $625,000 paid over five years.

The Rev. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, speaks at the event on the National Mall on June 23, 2018. RNS photo by Adelle M. Banks

Barber is one of 25 MacArthur Fellows announced Thursday (Oct. 4) by the Chicago-based foundation. They include a composer, several artists, a poet, a mathematician, a psychologist, a computer programmer and a community organizer.

It is not the first time the MacArthur Foundation has awarded its prestigious fellowships to a clergy person. The Rev. J. Bryan Hehir, a Roman Catholic priest and now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, won the award in 1984.

In a YouTube video prepared for the official announcement, Barber said: “My drive comes from a number of places. My father early on taught me that the only purpose of life is to make a difference in the lives of others and to stand up for what is right and just and full of love and full of compassion.”

In 2013, Barber began a series of demonstrations called “Moral Mondays” intended to challenge local Republican measures to cut unemployment benefits, health care funding and environmental regulations. Police estimated weekly attendance of more 2,500 on the lawn of the state legislative building. More than 900 demonstrators were arrested when they tried to enter the state Capitol.

The rallies, which became weekly events, were credited with helping defeat then Republican governor, Pat McCrory, and elect Democrat Roy Cooper.

With his bearlike stature and thundery oratory, Barber lent the movement the feel of a church revival. Demonstrations began with prayer, and Barber’s speeches were inflected with biblical references to Pharaoh, Goliath, good and evil.

MacArthur’s webpage said it awards fellowships to “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction.”

Dylan Penningroth: Unearthing Hidden Facets of Black History

BLACK HISTORY DETECTIVE: Northwestern University professor Dylan C. Penningroth was named one of 2012’s MacArthur Fellows. His ‘Genius Award’ will facilitate his ongoing study of ways that African American slaves participated in the legal realm of public life, even before emancipation. (Photo: Courtesy of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation)

The annual announcement of the MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant” Award winners always offers us a moment to pause and marvel at the richness and unconventionality of the intellectual and artistic game changers among us. They are scientists and poets, musicians and mathematicians, filmmakers and neurosurgeons. Their backgrounds are as varied as their vocations. But they all share a common creative brilliance. Each of the 23 award recipients, chosen for their unique intellectual contributions to society and culture, was awarded an unrestricted $500,000 grant to celebrate and support their work. (Ah, wouldn’t it be nice if the MacArthur judges were fans of UrbanFaith?)

For those of us who follow such things, each year there are usually one or two winners who especially stand out among the honorees and grab your interest. Last year, for me, it was Jeanne Gang, the Chicago-based architect whose adventurous and eco-friendly designs led the MacArthur judges to observe that she challenges “the aesthetic and technical possibilities of the art form.”

Of the 23 honorees announced this week, it was the work of historian Dylan Penningroth that caught my immediate attention. Penningroth, a 41-year-old associate professor of history at Northwestern University, explores the concepts of property ownership as it related to African American life under slavery and during the era following slavery’s abolition. “I study the ownership of property by slaves,” he says in a video at the MacArthur website. “I wanted to figure out how was it that slaves were able to own property when they themselves were property.”

Consequently, Penningroth has spent thousands of hours digging into historical court records, sermons, and slave narratives to piece together the antebellum and post-antebellum experience of black Americans. His research reveals a surprisingly robust participation of African American slaves in public life — owning land, getting married, making contracts, suing people. Penningroth explains, “The thing that studying law during this period has shown me is that African Americans were in it. They were participating in it. … As long as those claims didn’t threaten white supremacy, many whites were perfectly happy to let them make those claims.”

By studying this obscured aspect of the African American experience, Penningroth is breaking new ground in American history and revealing important antecedents to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. Chicago Tribune culture critic Howard Reich keenly recognizes this dimension. He writes of Penningroth’s work, “Though at first glance this might seem like merely a historical curiosity, in fact it points to a people strategizing under oppressive circumstances and setting the stage for expanding their rights in the 20th century.”

Penningroth also draws important connections between the early participation of African Americans in the law and the gradual development of the black church. According to Penningroth in the Tribune interview, the descendants of freed slaves “used the law to build the independent black church. We think of the church as the seed of the civil rights movement, and it was that. But the church was also a legal institution.” Though whites owned the church buildings during the slavery era, once emancipation arrives, the law allows black people to “build this religious institution, which is so central to black history,” adds Penningroth. “At the same time, building the black church pulls them into the law.”

As Penningroth continues his research, no doubt with added impetus from his newly conferred MacArthur grant, his work bears watching. “This fellowship is enormously important to me,” he says, clearly grateful. “It’s going to make it possible for me to take a story that might otherwise be limited in time and space and make it a bigger story.” A story that sheds new light not only on African American history, but American history.