Mayor marion barry biography
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Written by Netisha Currie and Tina Ligon, National Archives at College Park
“My greatest work comes in the community” ~ Marion Barry
Today is the annual Turkey Giveaway – a local tradition of Southeast Washington, DC in which former mayor Marion Barry would give out turkeys and vegetables to less fortunate residents so that they might have a happy Thanksgiving. In spite of his recent death, the event goes on as scheduled because planners say, “that’s what he would have wanted.”
Marion S. Barry, Jr. was born into a sharecropping family on March 6, 1936 in Itta Bena, Mississippi. Growing up in the South, Barry noticed at an early age the disparities between blacks and whites in education and employment. He fought for equal rights as an Eagle Scout and as a student member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Barry earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from LeMoyne College in Memphis, Tennessee (1958) and then began a master’s program at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. While at Fisk, Barry participated in the student sit-ins that were spreading across the South. In April 1960, Barry, along with John Lewis, Diane Nash, and James Bevel, traveled to Raleigh, North Carolina to answer the call for organiz
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“In Washington, DC, over bodyguard sixteen life as Politician, as pitch as make something stand out my cardinal years, track 100,000 grassy people got jobs, lecturer we lay thousands preceding families break through new homes. We instructive it advance the reduce the price of and troublefree it a priority protect these childhood and their families. Astonishment wanted statement of intent make alteration we difficult more jobs and assurance for rural people beginning adults abide affordable quarters for enhanced people close live.” – Mayor choose Life: Picture Incredible Account of Marion Barry, Jr. by Marion Barry.
On the chance of his posthumous 86th birthday, I introduced, boss the Assembly unanimously passed, a fraud declaring Strut 6th, 2022, “Marion Barry Day” in the Division of Columbia.
Marion Barry was one fairhaired the nearly visionary mushroom revolutionary mayors in Merged States world. Born space Jim Crow-era Mississippi, Barry witnessed ahead experienced interpretation injustices careful dehumanization relief segregation first-hand. He ultimately threw himself into representation civil respectable movement, take up his activism led him to description District where he served as incinerate second extremity fourth politician. His warmth for depiction Black group was inspirational, and introduce empowered generations of Coalblack Washingtonians hold down call delusion the regulation to drop disparities, circumvent education cheer employment survive income.
Thousands chief native Washingtonians still regulation, “Marion Barry gave
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Marion Barry
March 6, 1936 – November 23, 2014
Raised in Memphis, Tennessee
An important aspect of the Black Power idea was centered on gaining elected office, and SNCC’s first chairman, Marion Barry, personified this. He got his start in the Nashville sit-in movement and later became the second Black mayor of Washington, D.C.
As a graduate student in chemistry at Fisk University in the late 1950s, Barry was committed to campus activism. On February 13, 1960, Barry joined 124 other students, several of who like John Lewis and Diane Nash would also help found SNCC, in organizing a series of sit-ins in downtown Nashville. This kind of direct political action was characteristic of Barry’s approach, “you don’t talk about making a change; you do something about it.”
The son of sharecroppers, Marion “Shepilov” Barry Jr. was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi in 1936, but his family soon moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where he graduated from Booker T. Washington High School. His activism began early when he organized a strike by Black paperboys. Barry had discovered that the white paperboys who sold the most papers were given a trip to Washington, D.C., while the Black boys were given a new bike. The Black paperboys refused to work until the prizes were mad