A young Barry with Dr. King*
Following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Black people throughout the United States snapped. Witnessing a man nationally considered a symbol of peace and hope brutally murdered became the trigger for what is known as the ‘King assassination riots’. In major cities, from Baltimore and Chicago, to smaller cities like Wilmington, Detroit, Black people across the nation unleashed their pent up rage regarding racism in the United States.
In DC in particular, there was an estimated $25 million in property damages, and innumerable businesses were forced to close. Black residents made up 50% of the city’s population in 1960, that number sky-rocketed to over 70% in 1970, due in part to the flight of white residents following the 1968 rebellions.
With certain sections of DC in a ruin-like state, millions of dollars in property damage, and the resultant injuries and deaths following the rebellions, the city was in desperate need of a strong Black leader.
Enter Marion Barry, a man who would become as beloved as he became notorious, whose vision set in place many of the safety nets low-income residents in DC are able to use to their benefit now.
Once, when speaking with a former colleague about Marion Barry, she decided Google search the phrase ‘DC mayor’. One of the search options in the bars below went on to read ‘DC mayor smokes crack’. Anyone who is remotely aware of the sting operation the FBI orchestrated with Barry’s ex-girlfriend Hazel ‘Rasheeda’ Moore would immediately understand this search option had been referring to Barry.
Before going into Barry’s history, I’d like to write my personal experiences with Barry; I’ve had the opportunity to cross paths Barry twice in my life.
Once, when David Catania set out to enact laws that would potentially have parents arrested for the accumulative tardies and absences of their children from school, I, alongside a cadre of young people in a youth program I had been apart of during my teens, decided to testify against this law before the DC Council.
While in support of the law initially, after hearing the testimony of four young Black men, Barry became vehement in his opposition to Catania’s law, changing his opinion immediately after our testimony.
Then, as an eighteen year-old just stepping into the political sphere, having my voice acknowledged by, both, a politician and an elder was a foundational moment in such a strange, turbulent, and developmental time in my life.
What may have been a year later, I attended a community gathering about the injustices the US government had committed against a group of men known as the Cuban Five.
Held at St. Stephen’s church in Columbia Heights, the drawing point for this gathering was the opportunity to hear legendary activist Angela Davis speak. People of various backgrounds participated in that evening’s event, filling the church and enduring DC’s infamous humidity to get a chance to share
Photo of Barry with wife and child being honored at the gala of the Gertrude Stein Democratic club, a gay political organization*
space with Davis.
After Davis spoke, Barry revealed himself to the crowd; strutting to the podium area in a full suit in spite of the heat. At the sight of Barry, the event’s attendees exploded into hand claps, cheers, and camera flashes. Standing beside Davis, Barry seemed content and majestic.
Of course, me at eighteen had no knowledge of Barry outside of stories I had been told by my mother and other adults. Me at seventeen had no ability to comprehend the significance of the man before me.
Born in Mississippi and raised in Memphis, Tennessee, Barry was raised by his mother and step-father alongside nine other children. Demonstrating an aptitude for political organizing and resistance early on, Barry, in his memoir, recalls rallying his fellow Black paper boys to hold their employer accountable to taking them on a trip for meeting a sales quota.
Not only did Barry possess a knack for political action and leadership, Barry also harbored a deep hunger for education. Graduating from LeMoyne-Owen College in 1958, Barry acquired a Master of Science degree from Fisk University and went on to pursue a Ph.D in chemistry from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. A dissertation away from receiving his doctoral degree, Barry, experiencing discrimination as the only Black person in his program and sensing the political urgency of the times,
gave up pursuing his studies to take on more responsibilities with SNCC and other civil rights organizations.
SNCC, also known as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is regarded as one of the most influential political organizations active during the Civil Rights era. Birthed from student-sit in protest and a meeting organized by activist Ella Baker, SNCC had been involved in nearly every historical political action against injustice in the South during its time.
From 1960 to 1961, Barry operated as chairman of SNCC, in fact, Barry was the organization’s first chairman. Familiar with positions of leadership, Barry had also been appointed the president of his college’s chapter of the NAACP. It is likely that Barry’s tenure as president of the LeMoyne Owen’s chapter of the NAACP allowed him to develop the skills necessary to work as chairman of SNCC.
Following his eventual departure from his Ph.D program, Barry held leaderships positions within numerous organizations in the field of racial justice, his work eventually taking him up North. At the request of Civil RIghts leader James Forman, Barry moved to DC to begin, and manage, the city’s chapter of SNCC.
While often considered Washington, DC’s first Black mayor, Barry doesn’t actually hold that official title. Before Barry’s term as mayor of the District, Walter Washington, holding a law degree from Howard University, became DC’s first Black mayor in 1971.
Before his mayoral campaign in 1978, Barry co-founded an organization known as Pride Inc. Pride Inc. gave jobs to people of all ages work opportunities in the field of public sanitation. Some sources report that Pride Inc. employees were being paid the equivalent of more than $700 per week for their labor. Pride Inc. was, essentially, the prototype for Barry’s Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP), often cited as the first job experience for many DC youth.
Not only did Barry create groundwork for DC youth to acquire opportunities to work during, and before, his tenure as mayor, Barry also enacted legislation that would benefit poor and working-class DC resid
A photo of Barry bearing his autograph*
ents as well. Barry signed into law the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA laws), which, after a change made by the DC Council last year, only gives the tenants of multi-family apartment units the right to purchase a property once the owner decides to sell the unit.
Often overlooked is Barry’s enthusiastic support of the LGBT community during the early years of his political career in Washington. Amidst cultural myths of heterosexual Black men being the ‘most homophobic’ members of our society, I believe it important to place Barry in league with Dr. Huey P. Newton and other heterosexual Black men who have spoken out against homophobia.
None of this is to say Barry deserves a pass for some of the more disturbing allegations against him, such as stalking and, even, multiple accounts of sexual assault dating back to his time at SNCC.
What I am attempting to do is create space of all of Barry’s personas to be held and considered; Barry the ‘rapist’’, Barry the ‘good samaritan’, Barry the ‘mayor for life’, Barry the ‘civil rights activist’, and Barry the ‘substance abuser’. Before we apply any values judgement upon Barry’s character, may we first ask ‘Who was Marion Barry?’
*I am grateful for the Special Collections Office at George Washington University’s Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library for allowing me the opportunity to look through their archive of Marion Barry’s 1978 mayoral campaign
