Statue of Mayor Marion Barry
This past weekend a statue was unveiled in front of the John A. Wilson Building, which houses the mayor’s office and the D.C. Council, and is located at 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue (MAP), just blocks from The White House. The statue is of a man who to some people was a “living legend” who advocated for the city’s poor. To others he was a controversial figure, best remembered for being re-elected mayor despite serving a prison sentence for possession of crack cocaine. The statue is a memorial to former D.C. “Mayor For Life” Marion Barry, who died at age 78 in 2014, and is buried here in the city in Historic Congressional Cemetery.
The 8-foot-tall, bronze statue of Barry was created by Maryland-based sculptor Steven Weitzman. The statue was commissioned by the Executive Office of the Mayor in partnership with the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and the Marion Barry Commission, with its estimated cost of approximately $300,000.00 paid for by a combination of both taxpayer and private funds. It is the first permanent public honor the District has given Barry, and one of only three full-body statues in the city of African Americans.
Barry’s supporters contend that Barry embodied the spirit of Washington and point to his: work in the 1960’s as a civil rights activist; serving as the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; being elected to the D.C. Board of Education; being elected to a seat on D.C.’s first elected city council; serving for a total of 16 years on the city council, the last 13 of which after he was shot by radical Hanafi muslims, from a breakaway sect of the Nation of Islam, when they overran the District Building in March of 1977; becoming the first prominent civil rights activist to become chief executive of a major American city, serving four terms as the city’s mayor, and; a number of notable achievements such as the founding the city’s summer jobs program which is now named after him.
But Barry’s detractors say he was also very controversial, and continued to be plagued throughout his life and career by: various legal problems such as failing to file tax returns and pay taxes; a variety of traffic violations including drunk driving and, at one point, accumulating over $2,800.00 in unpaid tickets for speeding and parking violations; conflicts of interest while in office, including personally benefiting from awarding a city contract to his then girlfriend; being caught on videotape being arrested and subsequently convicted of smoking crack cocaine in a hotel room with an ex-model and propositioning her for sex, and; making racist remarks about Asian Americans at a party celebrating his primary victory during the election when he was elected to his last term on the city council, on which he served until his death.
Regardless of personal opinions about him, Barry’s legacy might best be summarized by the campaign slogan he adopted when he emerged from prison and dove straight back into politics: “He May Not Be Perfect, But He’s Perfect for D.C.”
[Click on the photos to view the full-size versions]
The DC Bike Blogger 
I’ve never been a Barry fan and I think it is sad that he has been made a hero. No one is perfect but to me he did not employ the morals I would want young people to emulate.
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I certainly understand your perspective, and for that reason I would have preferred that some other way been chosen for the city to recognize Marion Barry, one that focused on something good that he did. A statue seems to focus on the man, whereas something like naming the summer jobs program after him focuses on what he did. Perhaps D.C. could have recognized achievements he had as part of the civil rights movement, or some other achievement from his earlier years in D.C. politics.
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