The Tragic Operatic Life of Marion Barry, In Seven Acts

Jim Burroway

November 23rd, 2014

From The Blade (Washington, D.C.), June 1978, page 4.

From The Blade (Washington, D.C.), June 1978, page 4.

Former Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Barry died very early this morning of cardiac arrest. F. Scott Fitzgerald is often misquoted as saying that there are no second acts in American life. Barry had at least seven acts in his American life, depending on how you count them. I’ll count them this way:

Downtown Itta Bena, Mississippi. (Source.)

Downtown Itta Bena, Mississippi. (Source.)

Act 1: He born in 1936 in Itta Bena, Mississippi, the third child of ten. Early jobs included picking cotton, bagging groceries, and selling newspapers in Memphis, where the family moved after his father died when he was four.

Marion Barry as a teenager. (Source.)

Marion Barry as a teenager. (Source.)

Act 2: He became an activist while he was still in  high school selling newspapers. He entered a contest for the newspaper which awarded a trip to New Orleans to anyone who added fifteen new customers to their route. He and a couple other black paperboys reached their goal, but they weren’t allowed to go on the trip. The paper said that New Orleans was segregated and it couldn’t afford two busses. When Barry organized a boycott, the paper offered a compromise: a trip to St. Louis, which was not segregated. Barry accepted the deal and the boycott was called off.

Act 3. Barry attended LeMoyne College in Memphis, where he became president of the campus NAACP. He earned a Masters in organic chemistry from Fisk University in Nashville. He had been accepted at the University of Kansas for a doctoral degree in 1960, but he quit the program when he was elected the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1965, he moved to Washington, D.C. to open a SNCC chapter there. The District was more than half black, but they had no political representation. In 1967, he quit SNCC and co-founded Pride, a program to provide job training for unemployed African-Americans, and which provided relief services to neighborhoods devastated by the 1968 riots following Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

Marion Barry in a hospital bed after being shot by Nation of Islam extremists. (Source.)

Marion Barry in a hospital bed after being shot by Nation of Islam extremists. (Source.)

Act 4. Barry entered politics when he won a seat for the D.C. school board in 1971. The board unanimously elected Barry president in 1972. When the District was given Home Rule in 1974, Barry was elected to the District’s first Home Rule city council. In 1977, he was shot near the heart while defending the District Building from radical breakaway terrorists from the Nation of Islam. His fame as an activist, legislator, and now hero of a hostage crisis catapulted him to the mayor’s race in 1978 with the campaign slogan, “Take A Stand.”

Barry won an upset victory in a three-way Democratic primary race — the de facto race for mayor — with the strong backing of the Gay Activists Alliance (GAA) and the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club. During his first term, he appointed more than twenty openly-gay people to city government and other positions, including a gay activist to the first District Police Citizens Advisory Board. In 1980, Barry established the Civilian Complaint Review Board to monitor police activity, partly in response to a call from the GAA. In 1981, the D.C. City Council unanimously votes to decriminalize sodomy, but Congress overturned the action under pressure from the Moral Majority.

mayor-marion-barryThat brief synopsis of the Barry Years through 1978 obviously is written with gay blinders on. He worked tirelessly, particularly in his first term, to address the needs of the disenfranchised throughout the city. He also became vigorously pro-business and is credited with planting the seeds for what would become a downtown renaissance. His first term in office was characterized by increasing efficiency in city services, making great strides in straightening out the city’s chaotic finances, and instituting an expansive summer jobs program. Barry was also criticized for a series of financial scandals, minor scandals in his first term which grew to major and explosive scandals in his second and third term. Increased patronage, racial divisiveness, and an exploding crime rate also marked his second and third terms. By 1990, Washington. D.C was the nation’s murder capital. But Barry’s growing drug addiction left him unable to see the problems beyond his nose. “Outside of the killings, D.C. has one of the lowest crime rates in the country,” he said.

Marion_Barry_smoking_crack

Act 5: Rumors of Barry’s cocaine use began circulating as far back as his first term. They came to the forefront in 1990 when he was arrested with a former girlfriend at the Vista Hotel after being captured on video and audio smoking crack cocaine in an FBI sting operation. The arrest gave late night comedians one of the most enduring lines in comedy: “Bitch set me up.” He was charged with eleven counts but was convicted of only one, a misdemeanor possession charge. He was acquitted on one count and hung on the remaining nine. He served six months in prison.

Barry being sworn in as Mayor in 1994. (Source.)

Barry being sworn in as Mayor in 1994. (Source.)

Act 6: When he was released in 1992, he immediately declared his re-entry in politics. He won the Ward 8 seat under the slogan, “He May Not Be Perfect, But He’s Perfect for D.C.” When he won the mayoral election in 1994, the Washington Post dubbed him “Mayor for Life.” By then, the city’s finances were a basket case. Much of the problems could be traced to his own mismanagement in the 1980s, but not all of them. After all, the District has to not only function as a city, but also as a state: minting license plates, running a Medicaid program and other “state” health services, operating prisons and a complete judiciary, and so forth. Barry proposed the Federal government taking over the “state” services, but the newly elected Republican Congress created a Financial Control Board which took several of the city’s operations out of the Mayor’s hands. Barry was left with nothing but oversight of Parks and Recreation, libraries and the tourism board.

Act 7: Barry left the Mayor’s office in 1998, and worked at an investment banking firm. God help them. But in 2004 he returned to politics and was elected again to the Ward 8 seat on City Council. Again, his tenure on city council was plagued by drug charges, traffic stops, and failures to file tax returns. Despite Barry’s strong support for gay rights earlier in his career and a promise he made to the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club when he ran for re-election in 2008, he was the lone vote against a bill to provide marriage equality for D.C.’s same-sex couples in 2009. After the bill was passed, Berry told reporters, “All hell is going to break lose. We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this.” When the new law went into effect, same-ex couples celebrated while the rest of the city shrugged.

As I write this, it occurs to me that Barry’s life would make a great opera — a tragic opera of a man of unlimited promise who was brought down by powerful enemies. Almost all of those enemies were Marion Barry. A whole aria could be written around his surprise at being robbed at gunpoint in his kitchen in 2006: “There is a sort of an unwritten code in Washington, among the underworld and the hustlers and these other guys, that I am their friend.”

(Note: I can’t claim originality to the idea that Barry’s life was operatic. The seed for that idea was planted in my mind by a tweet a few weeks back by Randy R. Potts about Lyndon LaRouche.)

Dave H

November 24th, 2014

Barry even made headlines while he was in prison. He was caught being fellated by a female visitor and transferred to a different prison for the remainder of his term.

Timothy Kincaid

November 25th, 2014

He earned a Masters in organic chemistry from Fisk University in Nashville.

A bit ironic, don’t you think?

Leave A Comment

All comments reflect the opinions of commenters only. They are not necessarily those of anyone associated with Box Turtle Bulletin. Comments are subject to our Comments Policy.

(Required)
(Required, never shared)

PLEASE NOTE: All comments are subject to our Comments Policy.

 

Latest Posts

The Things You Learn from the Internet

"The Intel On This Wasn't 100 Percent"

From Fake News To Real Bullets: This Is The New Normal

NC Gov McCrory Throws In The Towel

Colorado Store Manager Verbally Attacks "Faggot That Voted For Hillary" In Front of 4-Year-Old Son

Associated Press Updates "Alt-Right" Usage Guide

A Challenge for Blue Bubble Democrats

Baptist Churches in Dallas, Austin Expelled Over LGBT-Affirming Stance

Featured Reports

What Are Little Boys Made Of?

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

Slouching Towards Kampala: Uganda’s Deadly Embrace of Hate

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

Paul Cameron’s World

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths

At last, the truth can now be told.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

Daniel FettyThe FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.