Former D.C. Mayor Barry dies
WASHINGTON — A controversial and tireless advocate for the nation’s capital who created jobs for generations of black families, Marion Barry was the ultimate District of Columbia politician, though his arrest for drug use in the midst of a crack cocaine epidemic often overshadows his accomplishments.
The former four-term mayor will long be remembered for one night in 1990 when he was caught on video lighting a crack pipe in an FBI sting operation. In an instant, the then-mayor of the capital city was exposed as a drug user himself.
Barry, 78, died Sunday at the United Medical Center, after having been released from a hospital a day earlier. His spokeswoman, LaToya Foster, said he collapsed outside his home.
Barry died naturally of heart problems caused by high blood pressure, and his kidney disease was a contributing factor, the D.C. medical examiner said. Barry had a kidney transplant several years ago.
Barry first made a name for himself in the South as a leader in the civil rights movement and brought his fierce advocacy to D.C. to support the fight to free the city to manage its own city affairs, not Congress. That legacy was remembered Sunday at the White House.
“Marion was born a sharecropper’s son, came of age during the Civil Rights movement, and became a fixture in D.C. politics for decades,” President Barack Obama said. “During his decades in elected office in D.C., he put in place historic programs to lift working people out of poverty, expand opportunity and begin to make real the promise of home rule.”
Barry was born March 6, 1936, to Marion and Mattie Barry, in the Mississippi Delta and was raised in Memphis, Tenn., after the death of his father.
Barry’s work in the civil rights movement brought him to Washington. He was elected to city council in 1974. Four years later, Barry defeated incumbent Mayor Walter Washington in the Democratic primary and went on to easily win the general election.
