They've named a building in Washington for its former mayor Marion Barry, the latest reflection of the complex reactions folks have had towards Barry over the years. For example, here is something your editor wrote about him some time ago
Sam Smith, 2006 - Marion Barry and I split back in the 1980s. I can't remember the exact issue, but it was one time too many that Marion had promised one thing and then done another.
I first met Marion in 1966. We were both in our 20s
and he was looking for a white guy who would handle the press. He had
just organized the largest local protest movement in the city's history -
a bus boycott - and I had participated and written about it. The
typical twenty something doesn't get over 100,000 people to stop doing
something for a day. I gladly took on the assignment.
We hit it
off and remained allies even after the day Stokley Carmichael walked
into SNCC headquarters and said that we whites were no longer welcomed
in the civil rights movement. Barry would later describe me as one of
the first whites who would have anything to do with him. I backed him
when he ran for school board and in his first two mayoral bids. And in
those days, I have to say, he got pretty good press.
But even by
the time of the second run for mayor I was feeling queasy. A couple of
friends and I held a fundraiser for Marion but our wives would have
nothing to do with it. I introduced him by listing the reasons why
people might be ambivalent about Barry and then added, "On the other
hand. . ." Marion pointedly wiped his brow.
I was already
becoming aware of Marion's addiction to that most dangerous, if legal,
drug called power. Later, I would be listening to a talk show discussing
a book about cocaine in the executive suite and suddenly realize how
similar the two addictions were and how I could no longer tell which was
affecting Barry more.
I saw less and less of him. We had lunch
one day but I told him some things he didn't want to hear and he later
told a reporter, "Sam's a cynical cat." In 1986 I told the Philadelphia
Inquirer, "He's basically done to ethnicity what Ronald Reagan has done
to patriotism. He's turned it into a personal preserve." About the same
time Marion told a reporter doing a feature on me that "Sam and I go
back a long way, and over the years he's become more radical, and I've
become more conservative."
But I still saw that it was a complex
story. At one point, Charles Peters, editor of the Washington Monthly,
asked me to do a piece on him. I told him that I would be glad to but
that I wasn't going to trash Barry. And I suggested a headline, "Failing
the Faith." A few days later, Peters cancelled the lunch at which we
were to discuss the article and never got back to me. The next thing I
knew, the Washington Monthly ran an article by Juan Williams trashing
Marion Barry and using a variety of the headline I had suggested.
Williams was on his way.
When Barry ran for mayoral reelection
the last time, I took the position that I was all in favor of
redemption; I just didn't see why you had to do it in the mayor's
office. I broke up one talk show host by suggesting that Barry follow
the example of a recently disgraced Irish bishop and go help the Indians
of Guatemala.
On another talk show, Barry said that the press
was always blaming him for all the city's problems. I said that wasn't
fair; I only blamed him for 26.7% of the city's problems. "I'll buy
that," Marion replied. . . Later a white Washington suit actually asked
me, "How did you derive that number?"
Yet I also knew that Barry -
like other urban ethnic politicians - had far more to blame than
himself. Whatever his faults - he knew he had been granted dispensation
because - like a feudal lord - he provided significant favors in return.
Barry had lived in Memphis and I often suspected he had learned his
politics from Boss Trump. For he understood the quid pro quo of
traditional urban corruption that had helped the Irish, Italians, Jews,
and Poles break down the worst corruption of all - that of an elite
unwilling to share its power with others. Later I would call Barry the
last of the great white mayors because his approach had more similarity
with that of a Daley, Curly or La Guardia than that of more recent city
officials.
It was far from a perfect deal but in the interim
before "reformers" seized office again on behalf of their developer and
other business buddies, more people would get closer to power than they
ever had or would again.
And now the reformers are back. The
young gentrifiers who think the greatest two moments in the city's
history are when Barry went to jail and when they arrived in town. And
their politicians, who don't feel it necessary to even tithe to the
people.
Some years back, Marion, at a public dinner, ran into my
wife and asked, "Where's that sonofabitch?" But when he saw me we hugged
because despite all our differences we both know we are still kin in a
too tough world. I'd just lucked out better.
