Marion Barry
Former Mayor of the District of Columbia
| Date of Birth | : | 06 Mar, 1936 |
| Date of Death | : | 23 Nov, 2014 |
| Place of Birth | : | Itta Bena, Mississippi, United States |
| Profession | : | Actor, Politician |
| Nationality | : | American |
Marion Shepilov Barry was an American politician who served as mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and from 1995 to 1999. Barry, a Democrat, had served three terms on the Council of the District of Columbia, serving as an at-large member from 1975 to 1979. , in District 8 from 1993 to 1995, and again from 2005 to 2014.
In the 1960s, she participated in the civil rights movement, first as a member of the Nashville Student Movement and then as the first president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Barry rose to national prominence as mayor of the national capital, becoming the first prominent civil rights activist to become chief executive of a major American city. He gave Jesse Jackson's presidential nomination speech at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. His celebrity became international notoriety in January 1990, when he was caught on video during an undercover operation smoking crack and was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation officials. Investigations (FBI) for drug charges. The arrest and subsequent trial prevented Barry from seeking re-election, and she served six months in federal prison. After his release, he was elected to the Council of the District of Columbia in 1992. He was again elected mayor in 1994, a position he held from 1995 to 1999.
Early life
Marion Barry was born in rural Itta Bena, Mississippi, the third child of Mattie Cummings and Marion Barry. His father died when he was four years old, and a year later his mother moved the family to Memphis, Tennessee, where her employment prospects were better. His mother married David Cummings, a butcher, and together they raised eight children. Growing up on Latham Street near South Parkway, Marion Barry attended Florida Elementary and graduated from Booker T. Washington High.
The first time Barry noticed racial issues was when he had to walk to school while the white students were assigned a school bus to ride. The schools were segregated, as were public facilities. He had a number of jobs as a child, including picking cotton, delivering and selling newspapers, and bagging groceries. While in high school, Barry worked as a waiter at the American Legion post and, at age 17, earned the rank of Eagle Scout.
Marion Barry first began his civil rights activism when he was a paperboy in Memphis. The paper he worked for organized a contest in which any boys who gained 15 new customers could win a trip to New Orleans. Barry and a couple of the other black paperboys reached the quota of 15 new customers yet were not allowed to go on the trip to New Orleans, a segregated city. The paper said it could not afford to hire two buses to satisfy Mississippi's segregation rules. Barry decided to boycott his paper route until they agreed to send the black paperboys on a trip. After the paper offered the black paperboys a chance to go to St. Louis, Missouri, on a trip, because it was not a segregated city, Barry resumed his paper route.
1955–1970: Education and civil rights activism
Barry attended LeMoyne–Owen College, in Memphis, graduating in 1958. In his junior year, the racial injustices he had seen started to come together. He and his friends went to a segregated fairground in Memphis, and went at a time reserved for whites, because they wanted to see the science exhibit. When they were close to the exhibit, a policeman stopped them and asked them to leave. Barry and his friends left without protest. At that time, Barry did not know much about his race, or why they were treated poorly, but he resented the incident. Barry became more active in the NAACP chapter at LeMoyne-Owens, serving as president. It is sometimes said that his ardent support of the civil rights movement earned him the nickname "Shep", in reference to Soviet politician Dmitri Shepilov, and then Barry began using Shepilov as his middle name. But Barry stated in his autobiography that he chose the name with regard to his middle initial S, which had initially stood for nothing, after having found Shepilov's name in newspapers: "I had picked out 'Shepilov' as a middle name because it was the only one that I knew and liked."
Master's degree, Nashville Student Movement, SNCC
Barry earned an M.S. in organic chemistry from Fisk University in 1960. He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. While in graduate school at Fisk, Barry was arrested several times while participating in the Nashville sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters and other Civil Rights Movement events. After graduating from Fisk, Barry continued to work in the Civil Rights Movement, focusing on the elimination of the racial segregation of bus passengers.
Doctoral studies
Barry began doctoral studies at the University of Kansas, but soon quit the program. He contemplated law school to help with his activism, but decided against it, because the delayed admission would mean that he would have to take a year off from school. Had he taken a year off, there was a chance of his being drafted into the military, and he did not want to be drafted.
Working for SNCC
As head of SNCC, Barry led protests against racial segregation and discrimination. After he left McComb, Barry lobbied the state legislatures to try to convince them to vote to make the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) the recognized Democratic party of Mississippi in the 1964 Democratic National Convention. In a protest of their continuing disenfranchisement, African Americans had organized this party to prove that blacks wanted to vote and conducted a trial election. Barry slept on the boardwalk in Atlantic City the night after speaking to the New Jersey Legislature.
After he left the New York legislature, James Forman asked Barry to go to Washington, D.C. to manage SNCC's office. At the time, over half of the population of the District of Columbia was black; however, the District of Columbia was administered as a special federal district, not as a state, and therefore did not have voting representation in Congress.
1995–1999: D.C. Mayor fourth term
Barry was sworn into office on January 2, 1995, and was almost immediately confronted with a financial crisis. The budgetary problems of his previous administrations had only increased during Kelly's term, with city officials estimating a fiscal 1996 deficit between $700 million and $1 billion. In addition, city services remained extremely dysfunctional due to mismanagement. One month into his term, Barry declared that the city government was "unworkable" in its present state and lobbied Congress to take over the areas of its operation that were analogous to typical state government functions. Wall Street, which Barry had convinced just after his election to continue investing in municipal bonds, reduced the city's credit rating to "junk status." Instead of implementing Barry's proposals, the newly Republican Congress (who had come to power on promises of decreasing federal spending) placed several city operations into receivership and created the District of Columbia Financial Control Board to assume complete authority over the city's day-to-day spending and finances, including overrule of the mayor's fiscal decisions.
2000–2014: D.C. Council
After leaving office, Barry performed consulting work for an investment banking firm. On March 6, 2002, Barry declared his intention to challenge at-large council member Phil Mendelson in the Democratic primary. Within a month, he decided against running, after an incident in which U.S. Park Police found traces of marijuana and cocaine in his car.
On June 12, 2004, Barry announced that he was running in the Democratic primary for the Ward 8 council seat, a position he held before becoming mayor. Barry received 58% of the vote, defeating the incumbent council member, Sandy Allen, on September 14, 2004. Barry received 95% of the vote in the general election, giving him a victory in the race to represent Ward 8 in the council.
During the 2006 mayoral election, Barry endorsed Adrian Fenty despite Linda Cropp hiring many members of Barry's former political machine. Barry has publicly clashed with Fenty over D.C. United's proposed soccer stadium in Barry's Ward 8. Barry was the stadium's most outspoken supporter on the council, whereas Fenty attempted to distance himself from his initial support for the project.
Personal life
Barry married Effi Slaughter, his third wife, just after announcing his candidacy for mayor in 1978. The couple had one son, Marion Christopher Barry, who died of a drug overdose on August 14, 2016. During his first three terms as mayor, Barry lived and raised his family at 3607 Suitland Road SE in the Anacostia section of DC. The Barrys separated in November 1990, soon after he was caught on videotape smoking crack cocaine with an ex-model and propositioning her for sex. They divorced in 1993, but she returned to Washington and supported him in his successful bid for a city council seat in 2004. Effi died on September 6, 2007, after an 18-month battle with acute myeloid leukemia.
Barry married Cora Masters on January 8, 1993. Masters was a political science professor at the University of the District of Columbia and his former spokeswoman.
Death
Barry died at United Medical Center in Washington, D.C., on November 23, 2014, from cardiac arrest, aged 78. Following three days of memorial observances, he was buried on December 6 at Washington's Congressional Cemetery.
A private monument to Barry was erected over his grave and unveiled on November 22, 2016. The event was attended by current and former D.C. Council members, former mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly, and about 150 other dignitaries, family members, and friends of Barry. The memorial, conceived and largely designed by Cora Masters Barry and Marion Christopher Barry, was carved by nationally prominent sculptor and engraver Andy Del Gallo and manufactured by Eastern Memorials (a D.C.-based funerary monument company).
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