William (Wilbur) Miller Barbour (1908-1957), Elizabethtown College Class of 1932, was the first African American to graduate from Middletown High School, Dauphin County; the second African American student to graduate from Elizabethtown College and the First African American student athlete to play college football in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Barbour was mentored by his English professor, the President of Elizabethtown College, the Reverend Dr. Ralph W. Schlosser, Elizabethtown College Class of 1907 and Ira Herr the College's Athletic Director. Dr. Schlosser taught at Elizabethtown College for 63 years from 1907-1970 and Ira Herr coached at Elizabethtown College for 33 years from 1928-1961. Through these mentors Barbour learned the ideals of social justice and peacemaking. Barbour was already committed to working toward racial social justice and human rights through his lifelong involvement in the African Methodist Episcopal Church (Ebenezer AME in Middletown, PA was his home parish) and its distinguished history of advocating for civil rights. Barbour worked as a social worker addressing African American gang violence in North Philadelphia in the 1920s and 1930s. Barbour was the First Executive Secretary for the National Urban League in Denver, Colorado and the First Director of the National Urban League Western Field Office in Los Angeles, California. In the 1930s and 1940s, Barbour was a human rights activist focused on establishing racial economic justice in the years before the American Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968). Barbour defined the two main goals of the Civil Rights Movement ending racial discrimination and segregation in (1) employment and (2) housing. The culmination of Barbour's racial economic justice efforts was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), and all his social racial economic justice goals were achieved through Lyndon Johnson's Great Society civil rights legislation.

RUN TIME: 75 min