Barry, Marion, Jr (1936– )

US Democrat politician, mayor of Washington, DC, 1978–90 and from 1995. He was active in the black civil-rights movement from 1960 as cofounder and chair until 1967 of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

As a student at the University of Tennessee, Barry became involved in the campaign for civil rights and organized the first lunch-counter sit-ins in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1960. He met Martin Luther King that year and helped to establish the SNCC, based in Atlanta, Georgia, which advocated direct action through protests, sit-ins, and boycotts. In 1967 Barry set up the Youth Pride programme to help poor, unemployed blacks in Washington, DC, which became a nationwide model. He was elected to the Washington city council in 1974, elected mayor in 1978, and re-elected in 1982 and 1986 despite a deterioration in schools and public services, and a rise in violent crime and drug abuse. Convicted of cocaine possession in 1990, he was imprisoned for six months. Emerging a born-again Christian, he revived his political career, winning a city council seat in 1992, and was re-elected mayor in November 1994. He has retained strong support in the 70% African-American city, and has become more radical, allying himself with Louis Farrakhan and marrying Cora Masters, his fourth wife, a long-time black activist academic. In August 1997 Barry was stripped of control of nine major city agencies by Congress under the terms of a financial rescue package for the troubled city.