He was controversial, he was colorful, and you never knew what he was going to say next. He rose as high as the mayor’s chair and fell as low as federal prison. He was shot by terrorists, hailed as “mayor for life,” jailed in protesting for civil rights, and made “the bitch set me up” a meme before most people had even heard of the term.
He was the man everyone in the District of Columbia seemed to have an opinion on: Marion Barry.
The former four-term D.C. mayor, who served three terms as District councilman, died early Sunday morning. He was 78.
In a career of ups and downs, he had been both loved and reviled, sometimes by the same people at different times.
The New York Times said this:
“Mr. Barry was a charismatic yet confounding politician. Admirers saw him as a Robin Hood who gave hope to poor black residents. His detractors saw a shameless rogue who almost ruined the city by stuffing its payroll with cronies and hacks and letting services decay. Indisputably, he was a political Lazarus with a gift for convincing his followers that their hopes and disappointments were his, too.”
The Washington Post recalled him as “the most influential and savvy local politician of his generation.”
Born in the Mississippi Delta, Barry first began to protest for civil rights while a student at what is now LeMoyne-Owen College in Memphis. Later, while earning his master’s degree at Fisk University, he took part in the Nashville sit-ins, being arrested multiple times, and joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which would become one the most influential organizations in the Civil Rights movement.
SNCC would bring Barry to D.C., where he would first get involved in politics as a member of the local school board, and later as a city councilman.
When Barry was first elected mayor in 1978, he brought with him to the mayor’s office the dreams of many: A man who had gone to jail to fight for equal rights for black Americans would now run one of America’s largest cities. He delivered the speech to nominate Jesse Jackson for president at the 1984 Democratic National Convention in San Francisco — a sure sign of rising political star on the national stage.
But his star fell, and hard. By 1990, the nation’s capital was seen by many Americans not as a shining city on a hill but a crime-ridden, drug-filled symbol of urban blight, with a city government that many derided as a lost cause.
It was that year that Barry was arrested after being videotaped smoking cocaine in a hotel room, and after that, he said he would not run for re-election as mayor. A federal judge gave him a six-month sentence, and many said it was the end of his political career.
But they were wrong. Telling people “he wasn’t perfect but was perfect for D.C.,” Barry was re-elected to a fourth term as mayor in 1994. He returned to the D.C. Council in 2004.
“Marion was born a sharecropper’s son, came of age during the Civil Rights movement, and became a fixture in D.C. politics for decades,” President Obama said in a statement. “As a leader with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Marion helped advance the cause of civil rights for all. During his decades in elected office in D.C., he put in place historic programs to lift working people out of poverty, expand opportunity, and begin to make real the promise of home rule.
“Through a storied, at times tumultuous life and career, he earned the love and respect of countless Washingtonians, and Michelle and I extend our deepest sympathies to Marion’s family, friends and constituents today.”
