Barry, Marion

March 6, 1936

Civil rights activist and politician Marion Shepilov Barry was born to sharecroppers on a cotton plantation near Itta Bena, Mississippi. After his father's murder in 1944, Barry's mother moved the family to Memphis, Tennessee, and remarried. The family lived in poverty and often picked cotton in nearby Mississippi to earn money.

After graduating from high school, Barry enrolled at Le Moyne College in Memphis, where he became president of the campus chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In 1958 he graduated as a chemistry major and became a graduate student at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee.

At Fisk Barry led several successful student sit-ins against segregated facilities. His leadership led to his election in April 1960 as the first national chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He earned an M.S. in chemistry from Fisk that August and resigned as the chair of SNCC in November, although he remained a member of the group and participated on its executive and finance committees. Pursuing a doctorate in chemistry, Barry took courses at the University of Kansas (1960–1961) and at the University of Tennessee (1961–1964). He relinquished his graduate study to work full-time for SNCC.

In 1964 Barry was assigned to raise funds for SNCC in New York City; he was transferred to Washington, D.C., in June 1965, where he led protests against the Vietnam War, led a boycott against proposed fare increases on district bus lines, and helped organize the Free D.C. Movement aimed at placing control of the district's government in the hands of its black citizens. In August 1967 he helped establish Youth Pride, Incorporated, a self-help organization that created employee-owned businesses in the inner city and offered job training to poor black youths. After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and the subsequent riots in Washington, D.C., Barry worked to reform the city's economy in a way that would increase African-American control over some local businesses.

Barry's popularity as a political activist helped him get elected to the city's school board in 1971; he became president of the board a year later. In 1974, the first year in which a mayor and city council were elected under district home rule, Barry won a seat on the city council, where he fought against inner-city gentrification and wasteful municipal spending. Campaigning for mayor on these same issues in 1978 (and gaining public sympathy after an attempt on his life that March), Barry narrowly defeated incumbent African-American mayor Walter Washington for the Democratic nomination and won the election against Republican Arthur Fletcher. Barry was not the district's first African-American mayor; that distinction belonged to Washington, who was appointed mayor from 1967 to 1974 and elected mayor under home rule the following term. Barry's election was for many Washington citizens the culmination of the city's civil rights struggle.

Barry's three-term mayoral administration (1979–1991) was credited by many with successfully mediating group conflicts, balancing the city's budget, instituting a second financial accounting system, improving the city's bond rating, and enhancing delivery of city services.

At the same time, Barry's success was undercut by charges of fiscal mismanagement and corruption; in addition, there were allegations of cocaine use in his administration. In October 1990 Barry was convicted of cocaine possession and served a six-month prison sentence. The conviction sparked a controversy because the videotaped evidence against Barry suggested that he may have been the victim of entrapment. Barry and his followers charged the federal prosecutor, Jay Stephens, with conducting a racially biased prosecution. Barry's conviction split his constituency between those who remained loyal and those who felt he had outlasted his usefulness to Washington's black community.

As a result of the controversy, Barry did not run for reelection as mayor in November 1990, but he unsuccessfully ran for an at-large seat on the city council. His loyal followers returned him to a council seat in 1992, and with their support Barry entered the 1994 campaign to unseat incumbent mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly. Barry's cocaine conviction and questions about corruption in his administrations reduced his support among most whites and many middle-class African Americans, but he retained a large enough core of support among African Americans to win the election.

Following a controversial comeback campaign that played heavily on the theme of redemption, Barry was reelected mayor in November 1994, despite heavy opposition by whites and middle-class blacks. His last term was marked by scandals over political favoritism and the city's near-bankruptcy. During his fourth term, most of Barry's power was reassigned by Congress to a control board, and he did not seek reelection. In 2002 he sought a city council seat, but withdrew. Barry has been treated for prostate cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure. In 2004 he was elected to a city council seat.

See also National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)

Bibliography

Agronsky, Jonathan I. Z. Marion Barry: The Politics of Race. Latham, N.Y.: British American, 1991.

Janofsky, Michael. "Ex-Mayor Barry Rises from Ashes." New York Times, August 1, 1994.

Persons, Georgia, and Lenneal Henderson. "Mayor of the Colony: Effective Mayoral Leadership as a Matter of Public Perception." National Political Science Review 2 (1990): 145–153.

Zinn, Howard. SNCC: The New Abolitionists. Boston: Beacon, 1965.

manley elliott banks ii (1996)
Updated by author 2005