Marion Barry - Early Life, Education, and Civil Rights Activism

Early Life, Education, and Civil Rights Activism

Marion Barry was born in Leflore County, Mississippi, the third of ten children. His father died when he was four years old, and a year later his mother moved the family to Memphis, Tennessee, where her employment prospects were better. He had a number of jobs as a child, including picking cotton, delivering and selling newspapers, and bagging groceries. While in high school, Barry worked as a waiter at the American Legion post and at the Boy Scouts earned the rank of Eagle Scout.

Barry attended LeMoyne College (now LeMoyne-Owen College), graduating in 1958. While at LeMoyne, his ardent support of the civil rights movement earned him the nickname "Shep", in reference to Soviet propagandist Dmitri Shepilov. Barry began using Shepilov as his middle name. In 1958 at LeMoyne, he criticized a college trustee for remarks he felt were demeaning to African Americans, which nearly caused his expulsion.

Barry also earned a Masters of Science in organic chemistry from Fisk University in 1960. Barry is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity.

After graduating from Fisk, Barry joined the American civil rights movement, focusing on the elimination of the racial segregation of bus passengers. He was elected the first chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Barry began a doctoral program at the University of Kansas, but he quit the program when white parents opposed him tutoring their children. He began doctoral chemistry studies at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, the only African American in the class. There too he was prohibited from tutoring white children, and his wife was not allowed to work at the school. He quit the program in favor of his new duties at SNCC. During his time leading SNCC, Barry led protests against racial segregation and discrimination.

In 1965, Barry moved to Washington, D.C. to open a local chapter of SNCC, where he was heavily involved in coordinating peaceful street demonstrations as well as a boycott to protest bus fare increases. He also served as the leader of the Free D.C. Movement, strongly supporting increased home rule for the District. Barry quit SNCC in 1967, when H. Rap Brown became chairman of the group. In 1967, Barry and Mary Treadwell cofounded Pride, Inc., a Department of Labor-funded program to provide job training to unemployed black men. The group employed hundreds of teenagers to clean littered streets and alleys in the District. Barry and Treadwell had met while students at Fisk University, and they later met again while picketing in front of the Washington Gas Light Company. Barry and Treadwell married in 1972. They separated five years later.

Barry was active in the aftermath of the 1968 Washington, D.C. riots, organizing through Pride Inc. a program of free food distribution for poor black residents whose homes and neighborhoods had been destroyed in the rioting. Barry convinced the Giant Food supermarket chain to donate food, and spent a week driving trucks and delivering food throughout the city's housing projects. He also became a board member of the city’s Economic Development Committee, helping to route federal funds and venture capital to black-owned businesses that were struggling to recover from the riots.

When President Richard Nixon declared July 21, 1969, to be National Day of Participation in honor of the moon landing by Apollo 11, Barry criticized Nixon for honoring the moon landing with a holiday when Nixon had previously opposed a holiday for Dr. Martin Luther King following his assassination. Said Barry, "Why should blacks feel elated when we see men eating on the moon when millions of blacks and poor whites don't have enough money to buy food here on earth?"

Marion Barry married Effi Slaughter, his third wife, just after announcing his candidacy for mayor in 1978. The couple had one son, Christopher Barry. The Barrys divorced in 1993, but she returned to Washington and supported him in his successful bid for a city council seat in 2004. Effi died on September 6, 2007, after an 18-month battle with acute myeloid leukemia.

Barry's mother, Mattie Cummings, died at age 92 in Memphis on November 8, 2009.