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Marion Barry (1936 – 2014)

Longtime politician's death stuns D.C. residents.

He had been frail for years, suffering at various points from diabetes, recurring infections and a bad kidney. As recently as February, after another extended hospital stay, friends and colleagues had braced themselves for the possibility of Marion Barry’s death.

 

Yet, for all his months of deepening decline, the announcement that Barry had died early Sunday stunned a city where for four decades he had reigned as its invincible and rollicking political star.

A presiding D.C. Council member and former four-term mayor, Barry was that rare elected leader who personified his city, as Richard J. Daley was Chicago in the 1960s and Edward I. Koch was New York City’s signature voice during the 1980s.

Barry’s many triumphs inspired civic and racial pride in “Chocolate City,” as the District was known when its population was majority African American and where he celebrated the empowerment of black Washingtonians.

Yet Barry also was the source of national and even international embarrassment, the defining moment being when federal agents videotaped him smoking crack cocaine at a downtown Washington hotel in 1990.

 

Daniel Luzer is GOVERNING's news editor.
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