[2] He is the president and senior lecturer at Repairers of the Breach and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival.

[1][7] In 1984, he met a first-year NCCU student, Rebecca McLean, at a march in support of Jesse Jackson's presidential campaign; they married three years later.

[9] Beginning in April 2013, Barber led regular "Moral Mondays" civil-rights protests in North Carolina's state capital, Raleigh.

[11] An article in the Michigan State Law Review,[12] "Confronting Race: How a Confluence of Social Movements Convinced North Carolina to Go where the McCleskey Court Wouldn't" credits him with bringing together a statewide political coalition.

Barber and his lawyers contend that the ban is unconstitutional, because the state constitution guarantees citizens the right to assemble to communicate with their legislators.

Barber was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Occidental College preceding his speech (which was also livestreamed) to students, alumni, and community members in Thorne Hall.

In 2018, Barber was named a MacArthur Fellow for "building broad-based fusion coalitions as part of a moral movement to confront racial and economic inequality".