Talks & Entertainment

As a teenager, Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II recalls seeing Black mothers interviewed on TV whenever there was a story on food stamps or unemployment. Poverty, then as now, was depicted as an essentially Black problem. In White Poverty: How Exposing Myths About Race and Class Can Reconstruct American Democracy, Rev. Barber—a Protestant minister, social activist, professor, and a leading advocate for the rights of our nation’s poor—addresses white poverty as a hugely neglected subject that might just be the key to mitigating racism and bringing together tens of millions of working class and impoverished Americans.

Together with Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Rev. Barber contends that the millions of America’s lowest-income earners have much in common and provides one of the most sympathetic and visionary approaches to endemic poverty in decades. Rev. Barber is the founding director of the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at Yale Divinity School.  

Book signing to follow.