Marion Barry

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.

Barry attended LeMoyne–Owen College, in Memphis, graduating in 1958.

In his junior year, the racial injustices he had seen started to come together.

He and his friends went to a segregated fairground in Memphis, and went at a time reserved for whites, because they wanted to see the science exhibit.

When they were close to the exhibit, a policeman stopped them and asked them to leave.

Barry and his friends left without protest.

At that time, Barry did not know much about his race, or why they were treated poorly, but he resented the incident.

Barry became more active in the NAACP chapter at LeMoyne-Owens, serving as president.

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.

But Barry stated in his autobiography that he chose the name with regard to his middle initial S, which had initially stood for nothing, 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.

While a senior and the president of the NAACP chapter, Barry heard of Walter Chandler—the only white member on LeMoyne-Owen's board of trustees—making comments that black people should be treated as a "younger brother not as an adult".

Barry wrote a letter to LeMoyne's president objecting to the comments and asking if Walter Chandler could be removed from the board.

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.

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.

Barry earned an M.S. in organic chemistry from Fisk University in 1960.

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.

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, where her employment prospects were better.

His mother married David Cummings, a butcher, and together they raised eight children.

Growing up on Latham Street near South Parkway, Marion Barry attended Florida Elementary and graduated from Booker T. Washington High.

The first time Barry noticed racial issues was when he had to walk to school while the white students were assigned a school bus to ride.

The schools were segregated, as were public facilities.

He had a number of jobs as a child, including picking cotton, delivering and selling newspapers, and bagging groceries.

While in high school, Barry worked as a waiter at the American Legion post and, at age 17, 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.