Marion Barry, former D.C. mayor, dies
Many viewed him as a pariah after infamous crack cocaine video, arrest
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, Barry was exposed as a drug user himself.
Barry died Sunday at 78. His family said he died at United Medical Center, after being released from Howard University Hospital on Saturday. No cause of death was given, but his spokeswoman said he collapsed outside his home.
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.
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.
Barry’s early years in office were marked by improvement in many city services and a dramatic expansion of the government payroll, creating a thriving black middle class in the city. He established a summer jobs program that gave many young people their first work experience and earned him political capital.
The city’s drug-fueled decline in the 1980s and 1990s mirrored Barry’s battles with his person- al demons, leading to the infamous hotel room arrest on Jan. 19, 1990. A video of the arrest, which showed him smoking crack cocaine, was widely distributed to the media and made him infamous worldwide. Federal authorities had been investigating him for years for his alleged ties to drug suspects.
His arrest and subsequent conviction — a jury deadlocked on most counts, convicting him of a single count of drug possession — was a turning point for Barry.
A six-month term in federal prison was hardly the end of Barry’s political career. But it forever changed how it was perceived. To some, he was a pariah and an embarrassment.
But to many residents, particularly lowerincome blacks, he was still a hero, someone unfairly persecuted for personal failures.
Barry returned to the D.C. Council in 1992. Two years later, he won his fourth and final term as mayor. His political triumph was short-lived.
In 1995, Congress stripped him of much of his power and installed a financial control board. He decided against seeking a fifth term.