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.
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