Founded in 2015 by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, ROTB was born out of the North Carolina Forward Together Moral Movement, which built grassroots power to combat immoral and illegal policies on labor rights, voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights, healthcare, criminal justice, and other policies that negatively impacted poor and marginalized communities in the state. Today, we sustain a national moral movement united across race, class, gender identity, sexuality, ethnicity, faith, and other divisions, with the goal of repairing the breaches caused by centuries of systemic oppression and injustice in our country. 

We reclaim the language of morality from religious extremists and challenge the position that the preeminent moral issues are prayer in public schools, abortion, and property rights. Instead, we declare that the concerns of our faith traditions are how our society treats the people impacted by systemic oppression. Our approach is informed by our faith traditions and the Constitution, which require us to confront injustice through sustained action. We center the voices of those most directly impacted and train moral advocates to engage in moral analysis, moral articulation, and moral activism to combat regressive policies affecting the most vulnerable communities.

 Our work is also informed by the models of organizing that have shifted American public policy throughout history, particularly the grassroots anti-slavery movement that birthed the First Reconstruction of the 19th Century and the Second Reconstruction of the Civil Rights Era. We believe that America is in the midst of a Third Reconstruction initiated, as before, by a powerful and diverse coalition and once again threatened by extremist forces opposed to establishing a fully representative democracy. Through our work, we hope to guide this nation in implementing a moral public policy agenda (Third Reconstruction Agenda) that fully addresses the needs of over 140 million poor and low-wealth people in America. We believe that a multi-issue and multi-identity moral movement is the key to transforming our nation.