W. Miller Barbour: A Lancaster County Leader For Human Rights

Join historian Eric Schubert for a fascinating presentation on W. Miller Barbour (1908–1957), a Lancaster County leader whose work in social work, civil rights, and community activism helped lay the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement. A graduate of Elizabethtown College and one of the first African American college football players in Lancaster County, Barbour went on to earn an advanced degree in social work and became a leader in efforts to combat gang violence and promote racial and economic justice through his work with the National Urban League in Denver and Los Angeles.

Although Barbour died in 1957 before the passage of major civil rights legislation, his work anticipated many of the reforms and social changes that would define the movement in the decades that followed. This program sheds light on the life of a remarkable but often overlooked local leader whose impact reached far beyond Lancaster County.

Eric Schubert is an internationally recognized genealogist and forensic genetic genealogist. A graduate of Elizabethtown College with a B.A. in History and a graduate of Millersville University of Pennsylvania (2026) with an M.A. in History, he is currently on the Board of Directors of The Historic Preservation Trust of Lancaster County. Eric’s journey helping individuals through genealogy began at the age of ten and has led to countless reunifications and solved cold cases. Features include People Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Morning America, and more. As a White-House Historical Association Next-Gen Leader, his public history work and nationally-featured research focuses on topics like Presidential history, as well as local biography of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He has researched the life of W. Miller Barbour extensively, alongside research teammate and fellow Elizabethtown College alumni Abigail Sholes.