D.C.’s Long Good-Bye to Marion Barry

The three days of services and tributes to former Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion S. Barry, Jr., ended Saturday, Nov. 6, at Congressional Cemetery, where many other significant local and national figures have been laid to rest. During this time for Barry, it was written: “A Life Ends. The Legacy Begins.”

Barry was mayor from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999. He died Nov. 23 at 78.

On Thursday, his casket was officially received by the District government at the Wilson Building on Pennsylvania Avenue and was in repose for more than a day. On Friday, a procession took the casket to the Temple of Praise Church on Southern Avenue.

At the Washington Convention Center on a rainy Saturday, speakers moved along the stage with Barry’s casket front and center in the upstair exhibit hall for a nearly day-long tribute to the former mayor and councilmember. Each noted on how Barry’s life touched them and how it changed the life of the nation’s capital and its residents. Here he was with his friends and people.

After the invocation, the former mayor’s son Christopher Barry addressed his father’s past and present. Another speaker wondered if the young Barry should go for the now vacant Ward 8 seat.

Later on, Barry’s wife Cora Masters Barry spoke of her husband, from whom she was separated, as someone who talked to everyone and gave away money.

Watching the clock because of the need for burial before sunset, master of ceremonies Rev. Willie Wilson kept the speakers moving on. Those included Mayor Vincent Gray with former mayors Sharon Pratt and Anthony Williams standing behind him, along with Ras Baraka, Mayor of Newark, N.J. Mayor-elect Muriel Bowser cited Barry’s summer jobs program, which so many Washingtonians have said gave them their first job.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, gave a heart-felt eulogy, recalling his time with Barry as “blood brothers” in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam gave the fiery speech of the day at the convention center. He equated Barry’s sins of marital infidelity and drug use to those of President John F. Kennedy. Farrakhan also called for activists to be “lions” instead of “pussycats,” knowing that sometimes the elders do not make it to the promised land but that their children do.