Марион Барри: Вашингтонның экс-мэрі және құқық қорғаушысы

Former mayor of the District of Columbia
the former mayor of Washington, D. C

Marion Shepilov Barry (born Marion Barry Jr.; March 6, 1936 – November 23, 2014) was an American politician who served as mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999. A Democrat, Barry had served three tenures on the Council of the District of Columbia, representing as an at large member from 1975 to 1979, in Ward 8 from 1993 to 1995, and again from 2005 to 2014. In the 1960s, he was involved in the civil rights movement, first as a member of the Nashville Student Movement and then serving as the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Barry came to national prominence as mayor of the national capital, the first prominent civil rights activist to become chief executive of a major American city. He gave the presidential nomination speech for Jesse Jackson at the 1984 Democratic National Convention. His celebrity was transformed into international notoriety in January 1990, when he was videotaped during a sting operation smoking crack cocaine and was arrested by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials on drug charges. The arrest and subsequent trial precluded Barry from seeking re election, and he served six months in a federal prison. After his release, he was elected to the Council of the District of Columbia in 1992. He was elected again as mayor in 1994, serving from 1995 to 1999. Despite his history of political and legal controversies, Barry was a popular and influential figure in Washington, D. C. The alternative weekly Washington City Paper nicknamed him "Mayor for life", a designation that remained long after Barry left the mayoralty. The Washington Post once stated that "to understand the District of Columbia, one must understand Marion Barry".

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, 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.

Barry attended LeMoyne–Owen College, in Memphis, graduating in 1958. 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. 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." In 1958, at LeMoyne Owens, he criticized a college trustee for remarks he felt were demeaning to African Americans, for which he was nearly expelled. A friend of Barry's was the editor of the school newspaper, the Magician, and told Barry to run the letter in the paper. From there, the letter made it to the front page of Memphis' conservative morning paper. 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.

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. moved to Washington, D. C., to open a local chapter of SNCC. He was deeply involved in coordinating peaceful street demonstrations as well as a boycott to protest bus fare increases. Barry organized rides to work for those who needed them. The boycott cost the bus line thousands of dollars, and Barry proved his ability to organize. He also served as the leader of the Free D. C. Movement, strongly supporting increased home rule, as a Congressional committee exercised administrative rule over the district. Barry quit SNCC in 1967, when H. Rap Brown became chairman of the group. The group employed hundreds of teenagers to clean littered streets and alleys in the district. Barry and Treadwell had met while students at Fisk University, and they later met again while picketing in front of the Washington Gas Light Company. Barry and Treadwell married in 1972. Said Barry, "Why should blacks feel elated when we see men eating on the moon when millions of blacks and poor whites don't have enough money to buy food here on earth?" Barry said he wanted to steer the school board back to the "issues of education" and away from problems of personalities. After Barry was seated in 1972, He served as board president for two years, reorganizing the school system's finances and building consensus on the board. In response to the 1972 blaxploitation film Super Fly, Barry quickly formed a protest group named Blacks Against Narcotics and Genocide (BANG). Barry said the film was harmful to black youth, and that it glorified drug abuse. BANG called for a boycott of the film. Barry advocated for a larger budget for education and raises for teachers. Barry also supported the appointment of Barbara Sizemore as the district's superintendent, making of the District of Columbia the country's first major urban area with a woman as School Board Superintendent. When the Senate held up annual payments to the district because of debate over whether the federal government should continue to pay for holding the district's partisan elections, Barry called for public hearings on the matter. He also commented, "Since it is a known fact that the majority makeup of an elected government will be black, the conferees' agreement indicates to me that some members of Congress are saying that black people cannot be fiscally responsible, and therefore, have to have a predominantly white Congress overseeing how our monies are spent." during the two day 1977 Hanafi Siege in which hostages were held by the terrorists. This was finally defused by the FBI and Muslim ambassadors. Barry recovered from his injury.

Having credentials as an activist, legislator, and "hero" in a hostage crisis, as well as an early endorsement from The Washington Post, Barry ran for mayor in 1978 after Walter Washington, the district's first mayor, fell out of political favor. In the Democratic primary, the real contest in the heavily Democratic, black majority city, Barry ran with the campaign slogan "Take a Stand" and the promise to improve the "bumbling and bungling" District of Columbia administration. He won the Democratic primary election against his main rivals Mayor Washington and council chairman Sterling Tucker. The vote was so close that final tally was in doubt for over two weeks. Ultimately, Barry narrowly won the nomination, with Washington relegated to third place. Barry defeated his Republican opponent Arthur Fletcher and two other minor candidates in a landslide general election in November. He took office in January 1979 as the city's second popularly elected mayor since the restoration of home rule in 1973.

Barry's first four years in office were characterized by increased efficiency in city administration and government services, in particular the sanitation department. Barry also instituted his signature summer jobs program, in which summer employment was made available to every school age resident. At the same time, Barry straightened the city's chaotic finances and attacked the deficit by introducing spending controls and laying off ten percent of the city's workforce. Each year of his first term saw a budget surplus of at least US$13 million. District of Columbia political reporter Jonetta Rose Barras characterized the first Barry administration as "methodical, competent, and intellectually superior." Barry was personally touched by a number of "mini scandals". He had travels with finances he often kept secret. He was first reported to be using cocaine at downtown nightclubs. He won 82% of the vote in the November 11 general election against Republican candidate E. Brooke Lee. Barry's second term was much more troublesome than his first. Though Washington experienced a massive real estate boom that helped alleviate the city's fiscal problems for a time, Much of the disparity was caused by Barry's policy of combating unemployment by creating government jobs; the city government's payrolls swelled so greatly that by 1986, nobody in the administration knew exactly how many employees it had. In 1984, Barry's one time lover Karen Johnson was convicted of cocaine possession and contempt of court for refusing to testify to a grand jury about Barry's drug use. Barry's second four years in office had some high points, including the District's entry into the open bond market with Wall Street's highest credit rating, For the third time, Barry received the endorsement of The Washington Post but "with far greater reservations and misgivings" than at any time in the past. By this time, Barry was openly suffering from the effects of longstanding addictions to cocaine and alcohol; he would later admit that he lost control of his drug habit soon after being sworn in for a third term. as did territorial wars among drug dealers; in 1988 there were 369 homicides in the District of Columbia, the most ever in the city. That record was broken when the next year had 434 homicides, and it was broken again in 1990 with 474 homicides, making the District of Columbia's murder rate the highest in the nation. The District of Columbia government's employment and deficits grew as city services suffered; in particular, there were frequent press reports of deaths occurring because police lacked cars to get to crime scenes, and EMS services responded slowly or went to the wrong address. Moore was an FBI informant when she invited Barry to the hotel room and insisted that he smoke freebase cocaine before they had sex, while agents in another room watched on camera, waiting for Barry to accept her offer. During the videotaped arrest, Barry says of Moore, "Bitch set me up I shouldn't have come up here g d bitch". Barry was charged with three felony counts of perjury, 10 counts of drug possession, and one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to possess cocaine, even though the cocaine belonged to the government informant. The criminal trial ended in August 1990 with a conviction for only one possession incident, which had occurred in November 1989, and an acquittal on another. The jury deadlocked on the remaining charges. Six or seven jurors (of whom two were white and the rest black) believed that the evidence against Barry was overwhelming and that he had displayed "arrogance" during the trial. Against these, five black jurors were convinced that the prosecution had falsified evidence and testimony as part of a racist conspiracy against Barry, and even disputed factual findings that had not been contested in court. After scolding the jurors for not following his instructions, presiding judge Thomas Penfield Jackson declared a mistrial on the remaining charges. As a result of his arrest and the ensuing trial, Barry decided in June 1990 not to seek re election as mayor. After his arrest and through his trial, Barry continued as mayor. He even ran as an independent for an at large seat on the council against 74 year old incumbent Hilda Mason. Mason, a former ally who had helped Barry recuperate after the 1977 shooting, took the challenge personally, saying, "I do feel very disappointed in my grandson Marion Barry." Mason was endorsed by a majority of the council members and by Jesse Jackson, who was running for shadow senator. Barry was sentenced to six months in federal prison shortly before the November election, which he lost—the first and only electoral loss of his career—receiving 20 percent of the overall vote, but doing well among the voters of Ward 8. His wife and son moved out of the house later that month. In October 1991, Barry surrendered himself at a correctional facility in Petersburg, Virginia. While serving his time, Barry was accused of letting a woman perform oral sex on him in a prison waiting room, a charge Barry denied. Barry was transferred to another federal prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania. In May 2013, after Toronto mayor Rob Ford was videotaped smoking what was reported to be crack, parallels were made with the similarity to the 1990 incident. Barry denied any similarity, stating: "Unless he was entrapped by the government, it's not similar."

Barry was released from prison in 1992, and two months later filed papers to run for the Ward 8 city council seat in that year's election. Barry ran under the slogan "He May Not Be Perfect, But He's Perfect for D. C." He defeated the four term incumbent, Wilhelmina Rolark, in the Democratic primary, winning 70 percent of the vote, saying he was "not interested in being mayor", and went on to win the general election easily.

Despite his earlier statements to the contrary, observers of Barry's council victory expressed beliefs that he was laying ground for a mayoral run in 1994. Indeed, Barry fulfilled expectations when he formally announced his candidacy for mayor on May 21, 1994, and was immediately regarded as a serious challenge to the unpopular incumbent mayor, Sharon Pratt Kelly. Despite much opposition, including an abortive effort to recall his 1992 council election, Barry won a three way Democratic primary contest for mayor with 48% of the vote on September 13, pushing Kelly into last place. The victory, coming after Barry's videotaped crack use and conviction shocked the nation, carried front page headlines in newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe. Though facing a credible challenge from Republican councilmember Carol Schwartz, who received the endorsement of The Washington Post, Barry was victorious in the general election with 56% to Schwartz's 42% of the vote. Not only was this easily the strongest showing by a Republican mayoral candidate since the restoration of home rule, but it was also the first time since then that a Democratic candidate for mayor had dropped below the 60 percent mark. It would not occur again until Muriel Bowser won the 2014 general election with 54% of the vote.

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. 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." The next two years were dominated by budgetary and policy battles between Barry and the control board—along with Chief Financial Officer Anthony A. Williams—for power over the District of Columbia's operation. The conflict was ultimately settled when in 1997 the Clinton Administration and Senator Lauch Faircloth agreed on legislation that rescued the city from its financial crisis but stripped Barry of all authority (including hiring and firing) over nine district agencies, making them directly answerable to the control board. Barry was left with control of only the Department of Parks and Recreation, the public libraries, and the Board of Tourism, as well as the ceremonial trappings of his office—a condition he characterized "a rape of democracy". Barry declined to run for a fifth term in office in June 1998, stating his belief that Congress would not restore full home rule while he was mayor. He was succeeded by city CFO Anthony A. Williams.

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. In July 2007, Marion Barry was chosen as one of fifty wax statues to debut in the Washington D. C. franchise of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum. Barry was chosen by a majority of Washington residents and tourists from Tussauds' "Top 10 Wish List," in a contest that pitted him against Cal Ripken Jr., Al Gore, Denzel Washington, Carl Bernstein, Halle Berry, Martin Sheen, Marilyn Monroe, Nancy Reagan and Oprah Winfrey. Barry ran for re election in 2008 and easily held off all five challengers in the Democratic primary: Ahmad Braxton Jones, Howard Brown, Chanda McMahan, Sandra Seegars and Charles Wilson. No Republican or Statehood Green candidates filed to run in the Ward 8 council race.

In May 2009, Barry voted against a bill committing Washington, D. C. to recognize same sex marriages performed elsewhere. During his 2008 reelection campaign, Barry had told members of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city's largest LGBT political group, "I don't think you should make [supporting the bill] a litmus test. But if a bill like that were to come up, I would vote for it." Following his May 2009 vote against recognizing gay marriages, Barry was criticized for what activists believed to be an apparent flip flop. Barry said his position had not changed and warned that the council needed to move slowly on this issue. Citing his belief that the local African American community was overwhelmingly opposed to gay marriage, "All hell is going to break loose", Barry said. "We may have a civil war. The black community is just adamant against this."

On October 28, 2005, Barry pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor charges stemming from an IRS investigation. The mandatory drug testing for the hearing showed Barry as being positive for cocaine and marijuana. On March 9, 2006, he was sentenced to three years' probation for misdemeanor charges of failing to pay federal and local taxes, and underwent drug counseling. In 2007, federal prosecutors sought to have his probation revoked for failure to file his 2005 tax return. U. S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson refused, saying that prosecutors had not proved that the failure was willful, even if Barry was aware he had missed the deadline. According to Judge Robinson, sentencing Barry to jail without proving that he willfully failed to file his taxes would contradict precedent set by the United States Supreme Court. According to one prosecutor, Barry had not filed his taxes eight of the last nine years. Barry said the reason he did not file his taxes was because of distractions from his medical problems, although he noted that there is "no excuse" for not filing. At that point, a kidney donor had been identified, but the operation had yet to be scheduled. The same day, Barry was admitted to Howard University Hospital to prepare for a kidney transplant the next day. Barry was released from the hospital on February 27, but he was readmitted on March 2 due to large amounts of air in his abdominal cavity and also due to Barry's complaints of serious pains, both of which were caused by the combination of medications Barry was taking after the operation. Barry was released from the hospital on March 6. On April 17, 2009, the prosecution withdrew their request to revoke Barry's probation. On September 9, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service filed a notice of federal tax lien against Barry because of $3,200 of unpaid federal income taxes for 2010. Barry attributed the lien to poor communication between the Internal Revenue Service and his representatives.

On September 10, 2006, Barry was stopped by Secret Service Uniformed Division police officers after stopping at a green light and running a red light. According to a Secret Service spokesman, the police officers pulled over his car, smelled alcohol, and administered a field sobriety test. Barry pleaded not guilty to the charges. Prosecutors offered Barry a deal to drop the charge of driving under the influence in exchange for a guilty plea from Barry; he declined. A judge found him not guilty of the charges. After looking up Barry's record, the police officer told Barry that his license had been suspended and ticketed Barry for operating a vehicle on a suspended license, despite Barry's insistence to the contrary. On August 2, 2014, Barry was in a traffic accident in the district, which his spokesperson blamed on a "hypoglycemic attack" due to his diabetes. At the time of the accident, Barry had $2,800 in unpaid tickets for speeding and parking violations accumulated since 2012.

On July 4, 2009, Barry was taken into custody by the Park Police after political consultant Donna Watts Brighthaupt, his ex girlfriend, claimed he was stalking her. Barry was arrested and charged with "misdemeanor stalking". Following an interview with authorities, he was released on citation and told he must appear before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on July 9. However, all charges were dropped on July 8. An investigative report by a special counsel said that Barry had personally benefited from a contract that he had awarded to his then girlfriend Donna Watts Brighthaupt. The report stated that Barry had awarded a contract to Watts Brighthaupt, who then repaid money owed to Barry with the proceeds of the contract. The report also said that Barry had impeded the investigation by refusing to respond to questions and by telling witnesses not to respond to questions and not give subpoenaed documents to the special counsel. Barry responded to the special counsel report by claiming he had violated no written rules or procedures on such contracts and that there was no conflict of interest. Barry apologized for his "very, very poor judgment."

At a party celebrating his primary victory for his D. C. council seat on April 3, 2012, Barry said, "We've got to do something about these Asians coming in, opening up businesses, those dirty shops. They ought to go, I'll just say that right now, you know. But we need African American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too." Several other council members, Mayor Vincent Gray, and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton criticized Barry's comments. Five Asian American members of the Maryland General Assembly also called on Barry to apologize in a statement, saying, "At best, Mr. Barry's attack on Asian Americans is deeply troubling, and at worst it is race baiting." Barry apologized for his comments, saying in a written statement, "It is to these less than stellar Asian American businessmen in Ward 8 that my remarks were directed, not the whole of Asian businessmen in Ward 8 or the Asian American population." While apologizing to Asian Americans for his previous comments, Barry used the anti Polish slur Polack.

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

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).

In June 2009, a documentary of Barry's life was released at Silverdocs. The documentary was released in August 2009 on HBO. A 1993 survey of historians, political scientists and urban experts conducted by Melvin G. Holli of the University of Illinois at Chicago ranked Barry as the eleventh worst American big city mayor to have served between the years 1820 and 1993. In April 2014, in the midst of a contentious mayoral race in Newark, New Jersey, the future victor Ras Baraka was asked by Rutgers University professor and Newark city historian Clement A. Price to choose his role models as mayor. In response, Baraka named Barry and Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, Mississippi. In November 2023, Good Hope Road SE, which ran through Wards 7 and 8 in Anacostia, was renamed as Marion Barry Avenue SE.