Early Years
Barbour was born in Yazoo City, Mississippi, where he was raised as the youngest of three sons of Grace LeFlore (née Johnson) and Jeptha Fowlkes Barbour, Jr. Barbour is a descendant of Walter Leake, who was Mississippi's third governor as well as a U.S. senator. His father, a lawyer, died when Barbour was two years old. Haley's father who was a Circuit Judge had an inmate to assist him when Judge Barbour became ill. Leon Turner, who was given a posthumous pardon by Barbour in the closing days of his administration, had helped to raise him.
Barbour attended the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, but skipped the first semester of his senior year to work on Richard Nixon's 1968 election campaign. At the age of twenty-two, he ran the 1970 census for the state of Mississippi. He enrolled at the University of Mississippi School of Law, receiving a Juris Doctor (J.D.) degree in 1972.
Subsequently, Barbour joined his father's law firm in Yazoo City.
Read more about this topic: Haley Barbour
Famous quotes related to early years:
“I believe that if we are to survive as a planet, we must teach this next generation to handle their own conflicts assertively and nonviolently. If in their early years our children learn to listen to all sides of the story, use their heads and then their mouths, and come up with a plan and share, then, when they become our leaders, and some of them will, they will have the tools to handle global problems and conflict.”
—Barbara Coloroso (20th century)