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In the decade after Marion S. Barry Jr.’s death, the District has memorialized D.C.’s “mayor for life” with a statue in front of the John A. Wilson Building, along with the renaming of a major Southeast corridor, D.C. government building, and the summer jobs program he created. 

However, Barry’s latest posthumous honor — a colorful mural detailing notable moments and figures throughout his nearly 60-year civil rights and political career — would prove to be most crucial and timely in cementing a legacy that, just weeks prior, the restaurant chain &Pizza attempted to lampoon for profit. 

Barry’s widow, Cora Masters Barry, highlighting her late husband’s life and legacy, reflected on the journey to memorialize the impactful District leader on the 10-year anniversary of his death. 

She called the mural a labor of love, research and education between , , co-founded by Nabeeh Bilal, and other District organizations, to design and create the three-part art installation currently hanging in the lobby of the Marion S. Barry Jr. Building in Judiciary Square in Northwest. 

“This didn’t happen overnight and without challenges,” Masters Barry told celebrants. “We eventually got it together when this young man [Nabeeh Bilal] stopped what he was doing and read Marion Barry’s book.” 

Though she vowed not to give & Pizza too much attention, Masters Barry had choice words for the establishment and others who are eager to demean her late husband’s legacy. 

“The next time a store, like &Pizza, comes and they want to talk about our heroes, [they can] come into this building and get some education,” Masters Barry said. 

A Deeper Look at the Marion Barry Legacy Mural

The Marion S. Barry Legacy Mural represents a collaboration between the Marion Barry Jr. Legacy Foundation, CreativeJunkFood, LLC, D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, D.C. Department of General Services, and the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities. 

It also involved engagement with a 200-person focus group.   

As Bilal recounted, CreativeJunkFood, LLC and the Marion S. Barry Legacy Foundation, for two years, mulled over how to create a project that didn’t focus on Barry as an individual, but Barry as a legacy maker. 

 “The first few revisions were tough,” Bilal told celebrants on Nov. 23. “By Nov. 22 [of last year], we couldn’t nail down the design. We needed to find that balance of esthetic and history.” 

Bilal embarked on that journey with fellow artists  Candice Taylor, Kaliq Crosby, Keyonna Jones, and Joseph Orzal.

What would eventually become the Marion S. Barry Legacy Mural has three parts — each highlighting Barry’s vision, impact and long-lasting influence via a collage of photos and bold, colorful print detailing milestones in Barry’s life, activism and career. 

The first part, located to the furthest left of the lobby, focuses on Barry’s childhood, civil rights career, Home Rule activism and election to what was then D.C.’s school board. 

The second part, located in the middle of the lobby wall, highlights moments throughout Barry’s first three mayoral terms, including his launch of what is now the Marion S. Barry Summer Youth Employment Program; procurement opportunities for local Black-owned businesses; investments in senior programs; inclusion of women in D.C. government leadership; and the construction of the Reeves Center on a blighted U Street corridor. 

The last part of the art installation focuses on Barry’s 1990s political comeback, his agreement with Abe Pollin to construct the MCI Center (now Capital One Arena) and bolster economic development in Gallery Place-Chinatown, as well as his support of his mayoral successors, including D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. 

A teary-eyed Bilal said that he came to appreciate D.C.’s mayor for life after immersing himself in all details of his upbringing and civil rights and political history during three cover-to-cover reads of “Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry Jr.”  

“I found a man who never forgot where he came from and loved poetry, a man whose experience as a boxer fueled his fight, a man who didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer, a man who made people rich but never took a dime he didn’t earn,” Bilal said. “He’s the man who epitomizes that your blessings are to be shared with others. I discovered how to make a Marion Barry mural that’s not about Marion Barry. You see elements that symbolize something and tell their own story.” 

Officials, Old and New, Dissect Marion Barry’s Legacy 

Other speakers at the Nov. 23 Marion Barry Legacy Mural unveiling reflected on the late mayor’s transformational work, not in the District, but in the D.C. metropolitan region.

U.S. Senator-elect Angela Alsobrooks, as county executive for Prince George’s County, Maryland, duplicated the District leader’s highly-regarded summer youth employment program. She credited Barry with the economic boom that her neighboring county experienced in the 1990s. 

On Nov. 23, 2014, Barry passed away at the age of 78, just five months after he and author Omar Tyree released “Mayor for Life.” He was serving as Ward 8 council member at the time. 

Friends, family, colleagues, residents and all others in between honored Barry during a three-day tribute that culminated in a five-hour memorial service at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Northwest, a structure that came into existence and spurred downtown economic development during his mayoralty. 

In 2015, less than two months after Barry’s death, a newly installed Mayor Bowser launched the D.C. Commission to Commemorate and Recognize the Honorable Marion S. Barry, Jr.  

As Bowser recounted to groups of residents and government personnel last week, she entered office intent on honoring a commitment she made to Barry to surpass him and her other mayoral predecessors in her investments in Ward 8. She said she’s been able to do so via St. Elizabeths Campus, the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge, the development of Historic Anacostia, the construction of a new hospital, among other economic development projects. 

“He told me a lot of things and taught me a lot of things,” Bowser said. “The biggest one was that if you get kicked down, come back up. He asked us to walk with our backs straight and 10 toes down and do what we gotta do for D.C.” 

A panel, moderated by �����鶹Ӱ����Ƶ Publisher Denise Rolark Barnes and chock-full of Barry’s colleagues, would later emphasize during the Nov. 23 program that the late mayor always represented the District’s best interests, particularly while engaging politicians on Capitol Hill. 

Michael Rogers, Barry’s last-ever city manager, told those who attended the panel discussion in the old council chambers of the Marion S. Barry Jr. Building that D.C.’s mayor for life made the best of a fourth term, where the D.C. Financial Control Board, installed by a Republican-controlled Congress,  left him powerless. 

“We took the cabinet to strategic meetings and developed the transformational plan that turned things around,” said Rogers, who alongside Masters Barry, Constance Newman, Ronald Moten, Monica Ray, and others, also serves on the Marion Barry Legacy Foundation. He went on to explain how Barry helped convince Congress to take ownership of the pension fund that weighed heavily on the local budget. 

“That became one of the principles he worked with the control board on. He used their credibility to help get pension liability back to Congress.” 

Other panelists included: Newman; Barry’s Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) colleague Dr. Joyce Ladner; former D.C. Councilmember Jack Evans; former D.C. city administrator Elijah Rogers; Barry administration figure Artis Hampshire-Cowan; Carol Thompson Cole, D.C.’s first female city administrator; and Merrick Malone, Barry’s deputy mayor for economic development. 

Evans, D.C.’s longest-ever serving council member in the Home Rule era, touted Barry’s knowledge of finance and what he called his ability to go toe-to-toe with a white establishment that still had much of D.C. under its thumb early on in D.C.’s period of self-governance. 

“He came up with the Downtown plan that produced the revenue we used for our schools,” Evans said, giving an overview of his work with Barry, the mayor and council member. “He was there figuring out how to make baseball work. He wanted the baseball academy east of the river and that’s what we got. Just imagine if we hadn’t built the convention center, MCI Center [now Capital One Arena], Reeves Building and the baseball stadium.” 

Rogers, the first city administrator under Barry, echoed Evans’ sentiments, noting how Barry ensured that one-third of contracts went to Black-owned businesses, even with the District in dire financial straits. 

“Barry had to form a new government in two months with limited Home Rule,” Rogers said. “We had to get out of the federal checking system, but we had to show that we could manage our resources. For years, we had a balanced budget and added money, which people don’t talk about.” 

Hampshire-Cowan credited Barry with allowing her to grow professionally in the D.C. government, first in intergovernmental relations and, later, as general counsel. Under Barry’s leadership, Hampshire-Cowan took part in various discussions, including those with  Jack Kent Cooke about the future of the Washington Football Team at RFK Stadium. 

“The mayor always believed in giving people responsibility if he believed they were competent,” Hampshire-Cowan said. “He was always strategic. This was a man who was bright, compassionate, and made opportunities. There were people doing amazing work.” 

Ladner, who served as SNCC field secretary when Barry served as chairman of the organization, said that much of what Barry achieved in the District came as a result of childhood lessons and experiences on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. 

“By the time [Marion] got to Fisk University, the core of his belief system had been formed in the areas of seeing his family being exploited,” said Ladner, who served as a control board member alongside Newman. “When the sit-ins happened in 1960, he emerged as a leader of the movement… to fight against poverty and racial discrimination long before becoming mayor. A lot of young people [in SNCC] would elect Marion as a chairman. It shows what they thought about him.” 

Keeping Barry’s Legacy Alive

Though he died a decade ago, Barry’s legacy lives on through District programming and the people who continue to benefit from his life’s work — including local youth. 

Tatum Alexis Michael Primus, a third-generation Washingtonian and co-D.C. youth mayor, said that Barry’s love for children ensured that she and the more than a dozen young people who stood behind her on the podium could find their voice in the Marion Barry Youth Leadership Institute.  The institute in honor of the late mayor is a year-round program that trains young people in leadership and self-development. 

“We honor a remarkable man who’s shaped our lives in so many ways,” Tatum declared. “He understood the future of this city lies in its youth.”

Implementing the lessons she’s learned in the institute, Tatum, 17,  spoke about her role as co-D.C. youth mayor.

“As an emerging young leader, I’m advocating for the youth… to make sure our ideas are heard,” said Tatum, a student at Banneker Academic High School in Northwest. “I stand united with you all. Marion Barry believed in the power of community. We can harness that. Let us remember him and embody his legacy.”