[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 144 (Monday, December 1, 2014)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E1679]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     HONORING MARION S. BARRY, JR.

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, December 1, 2014

  Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask the House of 
Representatives to join me in honoring Marion S. Barry, Jr., the four-
term Mayor of the District of Columbia and Ward 8 Council Member, who 
is remembered for his work as a national civil rights leader and as a 
creator of post-home-rule D.C. Barry passed away on November 23, 2014.
  Born in Itta Bena, Mississippi in 1936, one of 10 children in a 
family of sharecroppers and one of Tennessee's first black Eagle 
Scouts, Marion brought his prodigious work ethic to the civil rights 
movement before coming to the District of Columbia. He left his PhD 
program in chemistry at Fisk University to help form the Student 
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), became its first national 
chairman, and continued to work for civil rights in the District and 
nationally.
  In 1965, Barry moved to the District of Columbia, and was quickly 
adopted by the city and its voteless residents. Barry used his 
political gifts and brilliant skills as a community organizer not only 
in the fight of its residents for jobs, equal rights, home rule, and 
statehood, but also applied them to the political process to become 
mayor of the city. He established Pride Inc., which received federal 
funding as it trained and found jobs for residents. Marion Barry was 
elected first as a member of the D.C. School Board. He went on to be 
elected as an at-large Member of the D.C. Council and then became the 
second home-rule mayor of the District of Columbia, in 1979.
  As mayor of the District of Columbia in the first years of home rule, 
Barry began the work to make home rule work. In his first term in 
office, Barry, who inherited a $100 million deficit, ordered the first 
audit in a century. He reduced the city's debt and balanced its budget. 
He opened employment and business contract opportunities to African 
Americans for the first time and established a summer jobs program that 
was to become his signature program. It gave many young people their 
first work experience, for which thousands still remain grateful. 
During his four terms as mayor, Barry never forgot his own roots in 
poverty, becoming an iconic figure, especially to the city's poor even 
as he worked to build an African American middle class. After his years 
as mayor, Barry became council member for Ward 8, the lowest-income 
ward in the city, where he also lived and was continually reelected. In 
his role as Ward 8 Council Member, Barry strongly supported 
congressional legislation that transferred valuable federal land, 
including Poplar Point in Ward 8, to the District of Columbia, and the 
congressional legislation that established the Department of Homeland 
Security headquarters, now being built on the St. Elizabeths property 
located in Ward 8, the first federal complex east of the Anacostia 
River.
  Marion Barry, who blazed his own path of ups and downs, published his 
autobiography, ``Mayor for Life: The Incredible Story of Marion Barry, 
Jr.'', this year. He was loved for his indomitable capacity to keep 
getting up and rise above controversy and criticism to work for 
residents of the District of Columbia until his last days.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask the House to join me in honoring Marion S. Barry, 
Jr., for his many accomplishments for the District of Columbia and for 
a lifetime of fighting for the oppressed and underserved.

                          ____________________