Marion Barry: Hero Or Fool? It Depends On Who You Ask

Former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry died on Sunday. As reported in the Inquisitr, Barry collapsed while walking to his home after being discharged from the hospital earlier in the evening. Barry leaves behind a legacy as one of the most interesting political figures in American history.

According to the New York Times, President Obama on Sunday called Barry’s career “storied” and “tumultuous.” Attorney General Eric Holder said that Barry was “a complicated man.” When the name “Marion Barry” is mentioned, all of those words and more come to mind, but those who knew him used other words to describe him as well.

Former D.C. council member Carol Schwartz, who ran for mayor against Barry on two occasions, told the New York Times that he was a good friend.

She added, “Such a personality, even in spite of his foibles.”

The image of Marion Barry that seems to come to mind for most Americans outside of the District of Columbia is the 1990 video showing the mayor using crack cocaine

The Washington Times says, “The indelible image of Mr. Barry was crafted on the night of January 18, 1990, when FBI agents and D.C. police officers set up a sting at the Vista International Hotel on Thomas Circle. The grainy videotaped image of Mr. Barry smoking crack cocaine became emblematic of the violent drug epidemic that was ravaging the district and urban America.”

But inside the District, Marion Barry has a different legacy. Barry represented an area east of the Anacostia River on the city council at various times since 1975. To the residents of that area, as well as to many other residents of Washington, Barry was a hero, a legend in his own time.

D.C. resident George Brown, 61, told the New York Times, “Over all, he brought attention to the city. And that attention made it a better city because what happened was, over all, good and bad, he showed that people did have willpower to make things better in their way in their time.”

Richard Cohen wrote an extensive remembrance of Barry in the Washington Post. In it, he says that Barry was very smart, but could also be very stupid. For him, Cohen says that Barry was “a gift.” He describes how Barry’s escapades gave him almost unlimited topics for stories.

“I was writing a local column in The Post, trying to make something out of a pallid collection of county executives and school superintendents and all of a sudden, in 1978, came the luridly newsworthy Barry. He reorganized the city government and purged the bureaucracy (sometimes along racial lines) and, oh yes, smoked dope and did cocaine and boozed it up and chased women –and it seemed everyone knew it. My phone smoldered with hot tips.”

Lloyd Grove tells how his first contact with Barry came after the mayor dialed a wrong number and left a “flirtatious” message on the voicemail of Grove’s girlfriend. Apparently Barry was trying to arrange a date with a woman who was not his wife.

Grove writes at the Daily Beast, “Since I was toiling away at the time as a gossip columnist for The Washington Post, I immediately called him back. ‘You’re not going to write about this, are you?’ Hizzoner asked in a pleading tone — an extremely rare posture for a man who in the past had swaggered with an air of invincibility.”

Reading various commentaries on Marion Barry’s life, a picture emerges of a complex man who was a master of what is often called “retail politics.” Even after his death, a tradition will continue in Ward 8, Barry’s old ward. Three thousand turkeys will be handed out in Barry’s name for Thanksgiving.

Charles Moreland, a close friend of Barry, told Lloyd Grove, “I know a woman who says Marion Barry could crawl down the street buck-naked, and she would still vote for him.”

Hated by many in the national media, but loved by many who knew him best, Marion Barry was a politician the likes of whom Washington may never see again.