Marion Barry

Marion Barry married Mary Treadwell, who was the co-founder of ‘Pride, Inc.’ in 1972. They separated five years after their marriage.

He got married to Effi Slaughter in 1978 and divorced her in 1993. The couple had one son, Christopher Barry.

Marion Barry was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi, and was the third of his ten siblings. His father passed away when he was only four and only a year later, his mother moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and remarried again.

From a very young age, Barry did a number of jobs to make ends meet, including selling newspapers, picking cotton, serving as a waiter to working in a departmental store.

After he completed his high school education, he attended LeMoyne College and graduated in 1958. He earned an M.S. degree in organic chemistry from Fisk University and was also a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha federation.

After graduating from Fisk University, he joined the American civil rights movement and was elected as the president of the ‘Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’.

During this time, he was pursuing a doctoral program in chemistry at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and was the only African-American in his batch.

After the 1968 Washington D.C. riots, Barry arranged for provisions for his fellow African-Americans. He also started initiating change in perception towards black people in Washington D.C. by becoming the board member of the city’s Economic Development Committee.

In 1971, he announced his candidacy for at-large member of the school board in 1971 and defeated his opponent with 58% votes. After being seated as the board member the following year, he organized the school’s finances and advocated a larger budget for higher education.

In 1974, Barry was elected to Washington’s first elected city council and while serving as the council member, he was nominated as the chairman of the District of Columbia Committee - a position he served till 1979.

He was shot on March 9, 1977 by the fundamentalists, Hanafi Muslims. After a quick recovery, he fell out of political favor in the 1978 election, but won the Democratic mayoral primary election, defeating Arthur Fletcher.

In the first four years of his tenure, he brought changes in the sanitation of the city, stabilized the city’s finances and made summer employment available for graduates. In his first term itself, the US government saw a surplus, but the unemployment and the crime sky-rocketed.

As the mayor of Washington D.C., Marion Barry canvassed dynamically to cut government waste, lessen infant mortality, provide accommodation and employment for the city’s underprivileged and also make occupation available for all African-American graduates. During his tenure as the mayor, he made sure that Washington regained its fiscal condition.