Marion Barry and me

 Next Saturday they're renaming a street in Washington DC for former mayor Marion Barry. Here's something I wrote about Barry some years ago. 

Sam Smith, 2006 - Marion Barry and I split over a quarter century ago. 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 help 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 Stokely 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 add, "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.

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. . .

Barry had lived in Memphis and I often suspected he had learned his politics from Boss Crump. 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. It was far from a perfect deal but in the interim before the "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. It happened in Chicago, in Boston and in Washington.

And now the reformers are back. The young gentrifiers who think the greatest two moments in the city's history is when Barry went to jail for his drug use and when they arrived in town.

The last time I saw Marion was at a public dinner. Earlier, he had run 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.