In death, Washington remembers its ‘ mayor for life’
Taunts and tributes: Controversial mayor mocked by some, mourned by many
The late Mayor- for- Life of Washington, Marion Barry, Jr., was on everyone’s mind in death. It had been only a few days since his sudden demise at the age of 78, and already plans had been announced to stage a Fridaynight saturnalia of Go- Go music (“for mature adults only”) in his honour, to rename the University of the District of Columbia, to shuttle his remains through all eight of the city’s wards in a royal- blue Cadillac hearse, to stage a music- and- video sendoff at a church called the Temple of Praise, to invite tens of thousands of citizens to a civic memorial service at the convention centre, and then, finally, to deposit his mortal dust in the Congressional Cemetery beside John Philip Sousa and J. Edgar Hoover.
“This is not an occasion that any of us, obviously, looks forward to,” said the sitting but soon- to- be- ex- mayor, Vincent Gray, who, emulating his extraordinary predecessor, is facing federal criminal charges.
On the night after Marion Barry died, a few dozen people gathered in front of his house. Someone released a pair of white doves and a pastor said, “Marion rode this thing called life till the wheels fell off.” Barry had checked himself into hospital the day before with blood and kidney problems. They sent him home and he collapsed on the sidewalk. He was a duly elected councillor for the city’s poorest riding when he perished on Nov. 23.
The taunts and tributes cascaded. White America, it seemed, would remember Marion Barry Jr., as the nightowling, crack- smoking, racebaiting, sidewalk- parking, tax- avoiding, graft- shovelling tomcat who served three terms as mayor in the 1980s and then won a fourth term after doing six months in prison, thanks to a hidden- camera drug sting.
But African- American Washington knew and loved a different man — a passionate advocate for the least and poorest who demanded that blackowned businesses receive their fair share of government contracts, who created decent jobs for tens of thousands of men and women, and who reacted to Neil Armstrong’s bootprints on the Sea of Tranquillity by asking, “Why should blacks feel elated about seeing men walk on the moon when millions of poor blacks and whites don’t have enough money to buy food to eat on earth?”
On day eight after this city’s incorrigible icon fell, there was a small but emotional gathering on the steps of the municipal office building. The throng included a former member of the city council who is serving time in a halfway house, having pocketed grant money meant for disadvantaged children. A collection was taken up for the departed mayor’s son Christopher — “his only living seed,” a mourner wailed — who had been incarcerated in recent months over various substance and vehicular matters.
People ran their hands over an ( empty) casket draped in Kente cloth. An activist named Al- Malik Farrakhan urged the audience to adopt Barry’s flamboyant, above- the- law machismo and to stop behaving like what Farrakhan labelled “faggots” and “females.”
Now it was day eleven and the sun hadn’t yet come up when a handful of us formed a line on Pennsylvania Avenue. We had come to view the earthly residue of a son of dirt- dark Mississippi who, as a young activist, had risked his life for the civil rights of his brothers, and who, gaining power, had preened and laboured and thundered and triumphed and robbed the people whom he served.
A half- hour before the doors were scheduled to open, there were about 120 people in the queue and 117 of them were black. A retired technical sergeant in the U. S. air force was just ahead of me.
“When I was growing up, he made sure that everyone had a summer job,” she said. “He was not just another politician. He was touchable. He was real. He was one cool dude.”
The sergeant told me that she had lined up only once before to see a dead man. That was Ronald Reagan; she had camped outside the Capitol all night to view his casket, and she wasn’t even a Republican.
“I partied a couple of times with Marion Barry at clubs uptown,” she said. “He loved the ladies, that’s for sure.”
“Did you smoke crack with him?” I teased her. “That stuff’s crazy,” the sergeant said.
I spotted the entertainer and human- rights paragon Dick Gregory entering the building and he and I talked a while about Marion Barry’s place in the freedom- movement pantheon.
“He was the first who hired dark- complected persons and women,” the 82- year- old Gregory said, a succinct epitaph.
“One other thing about black people,” Gregory said, “is that we’re always late.”
“Marion Barry was on time this morning,” I noted.
“He had no choice,” Dick Gregory said.
Now the signal was given and we pressed into the vestibule to see a closed coffin heaped with red roses and a framed portrait of one of the most indomitable and important civic leaders in this country’s history. I turned to see my friend the Air Force sergeant crying.
“Where are all the white people?” I asked her.
“In the mornings,” she answered, “white people got some place to be.”