William Warren Barbour (July 31, 1888 – November 22, 1943) was an American Republican Party politician who represented New Jersey in the United States Senate from 1931 to 1937 and again from 1938 until his death in office in 1943.

[3] Around this time, both Theodore Roosevelt and "Gentleman Jim" Corbett wanted him to take up the mantle of "the great white hope" and fight Jack Johnson, the reigning professional heavyweight champion.

[5] Militarily, he served as a member of the New York National Guard for ten years, being stationed on the Mexican border in 1916, and attaining the rank of captain.

On December 1, 1931, New Jersey Governor Morgan F. Larson appointed Barbour, a Republican, to the United States Senate to fill the vacancy created by the death of Dwight W. Morrow.

In April 1943, along with many other Congressmen and Senators, Barbour may have attended a performance of We Will Never Die, a pageant written by Ben Hecht and produced by the Bergson Group to commemorate two million European Jews who had already been murdered.

While President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not meet with the rabbis, Senator Barbour, along with a handful of Congressional colleagues, met them on the steps of the United States Capitol and expressed his commitment to their cause.

His support of the rabbis, however, and his subsequent actions in the Senate did much to increase political and public awareness of and compassion for the victims of the Nazi genocide.

Divorced at the time of his death from Elysabeth Cochran (née Carrere) Barbour (who married, in 1947, Sir William Lawrie Welsh), he was survived by three children and, subsequently, ten grandchildren.