Part 3 - Roots of Anger

This is the third installment of a series (see the first installment here) summarizing the 1994 book Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C.by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood. This book has recently been republished as an ebook and a paper book. HBO has plans to use material from the book to make a movie about the life of Marion Barry.

Chapter 2: Roots of Anger

In 1967, Marion Barry jaywalked at the corner of 13th and U Streets NW. He was nearly run down in the street. When police confronted him, he swore at them. When police (addressing Barry as "boy") told him he'd be fined five dollars, he swore some more. He refused to show ID. He was arrested. He scuffled with police. He was released early the next morning on $1,015 bail.

"The majority of black Washingtonians thought that Marion was a thug," said radio and television veteran Jerry Phillips (l. 484).

Marion Barry was born in Itta Bena, Mississippi but lived in Memphis, Tennessee from age four to when he finished college in 1958, part of a family of ten.

Barry's mother said: "We weren't poor. It was just so many mouths. We always had plenty to eat, clothes, a decent place to live." (l. 508)

Barry has a Master's Degree in Chemistry. He was a few credits short of a doctorate.

While studying as an undergraduate, he became involved in the still-new civil rights movement in Nashville. He worked to desegregate lunch counters and libraries.

He was present at the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and became its first chair. He attended the 1960 Democratic Convention and testified before the platform committee. He got his first mention in the national media -- the New York Post.

During the same period, Barry met, wooed, married, abandoned, and was divorced from this first wife, Blantie Evans. Barry did a lot of womanizing, and was accused of sexual assault.

"He was abusive," says now-Congressman John Lewis (D-GA). "He knocked women around." (l. 618)

Barry moved to DC for the first time in 1965. He lived above the SNCC office at 107 Rhode Island Avenue. He did a lot of fund-raising.

"... Barry wasn't satisfied just with raising money. He sensed that SNCC was losing its clout and that the civil rights movement itself was moving into a new phase..." (l. 653)

In December 1965, city bus fares were raised from 20 to 25 cents. Barry and allies set up a successful bus boycott. When a home rule bill died in Congress, Barry and allies set up the "Free DC" campaign.

Storeowners were asked to display a "Free DC" signs in the window of their stores and donate five dollars. However, Barry got into the business of personally walking into larger Jewish-owned retail stores and asking for a larger donations based on his estimation of what the store could afford. This caused some allies to drop Barry, but many businesses, "especially along the 14th Street and H Street corridors" (l. 725), put up the signs.

Barry and the President of DC's powerful Board of Trade alternately traded publicly insults and arranged to meet each other privately.

As the Free DC movement wound down in late 1966, Barry met his second wife, Mary Treadwell.

"In the aftermath of Free DC, he [Barry] penned long memos to SNCC and sharpened his aim at confrontations that would galvanize the black community's rage. The police were clearly the most obvious villains..." (l. 789)

Barry's trail on charges stemming from the jaywalking incident filled the courtroom. His defense team lined up character witnesses of various races and professions, including a retired police officer and many clergy members. Barry was acquitted. Barry made a speech outside the courthouse, declaring his case "a great victory for Negroes and poor people". (l. 808)

The white arresting police officer, Tommy Tague, was painted as a racist, and his life was made miserable. "Black activists picketed his house in Prince Georges Country, Maryland, and threw rocks through his window. His dog was poisoned, he suspects by protesters. The picketers used a bullhorn outside his home. A month later, Tague's wife moved out with the children. She later filed for divorce." (l. 811)

" 'I made Marion Barry,' says Tommy Tague." (l. 810)

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on the blog Short Articles about Long Meetings.

Full disclosure: I have a commercial relationship with Amazon. I will receive a very small portion of the money people spend after clicking on an Amazon link on this site.

This is a great book and well worth reading in its entirety.

Proceed directly to the next installment here

Part 2 - Antecedents: Parliament of Racists

This is the second installment of a series (see the first installment here) summarizing the 1994 book Dream City: Race, Power, and the Decline of Washington, D.C.by Harry Jaffe and Tom Sherwood. This book has recently been republished as an ebook and a paper book. HBO has plans to use material from the book to make a movie about the life of Marion Barry.

Chapter 1: Antecedents: Parliament of Racists

This chapter tells the story of pre-Marion Barry DC, but it starts with the 1992 murder of Thomas Barnes of Tuscaloosa, Mississippi. Barnes, an intern for Senator Richard Shelby, had stepped out of his Capitol Hill apartment to get a can of ground coffee. He was shot during a robbery. Shelby was white; his attacker was black. It was January 15, 1992, already 22 people had been murdered in D.C. that year.

Shelby, who had known Barnes "since he was a toddler" (Kindle location 284), was outraged. The police arrested the wrong black teenager on false testimony, aggravating a tense situation.

Shelby forced the District to hold a referendum on the death penalty. It was soundly defeated.

"I'm in favor of the death penalty, but I don't want someone who we didn't elect ordering us to take the vote" (l. 303), said then-City Council Chair John Wilson.

The authors continue: "...[I]t wasn't a question of right and wrong, it was a question of race and power -- white lawmakers in Congress telling black people in the city how to run their lives. This is the dynamic that underscores every debate, every decision, every relationship. No one can understand Washington without appreciating the debilitating impact of federal control that has been at various times patronizing, neglectful, and racist." (l. 305)

From there, the book goes back in time to chronicle "a long line of southern segregationists who ruled Washington with devastating result for African-Americans" (l. 337).

In 1890, a short-lived experiment with home rule failed. DC residents lost the right to vote. On the Senate floor, Senator John Tyler Morgan of Alabama said it was necessary to "burn the barn to get rid of the rats... the rats being the negro populations and the barn being the government of the District of Columbia." (l. 314).

In 1944, Senator Theodore Bilbo, "a short, troll-like white supremacist from Poplarville, Mississippi" (l. 366), became Chair of the Senate District Committee and "let loose his racism on the city" (l. 372).

"He proposed that twenty-two thousand blacks be driven of the alleys and sent back to farms, shipped back to Africa, or put in a 'self-liquidating' stadium." (l. 370)

"In the 1950s the segregationist running Washington from Capitol Hill was Congressman John L. McMillan of South Caroline. As chairman of the House District Committee, 'Johnny Mack' treated the city as if it were his plantation and turned the District Building into a fiefdom for his patronage jobs." (l. 376)

The white business community in DC did business with McMillian and staff, bypassing the official but powerless city government.

Meanwhile, jobs in the federal government enabled the development of "the largest and most stable black middle class in the nation" (l. 385).

Calvin Rolark Jr., a black newspaper publisher and immigrant to DC, said: "It was a segregated city among blacks. The lighter-skinned blacks didn't associate with the darker blacks, and the Howard University blacks didn't associate with anyone." (l. 390)

In the 1950's, an enormous slum in Southwest was demolished and its African-American population dispersed to housing projects, which were then left to deteriorate.

President Dwight Eisenhower ordered desegregation in the 1950s, but there was no movement on home rule.

"...[N]early a century of congressional control had created a leaderless, passive city full of politically docile people." (l. 414)

In the 1960's, Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was "the most influential Congressman of the day" (l. 416). After a 1964 DC voter registration rally drew only a few people, he said: "I have never seen a city in the United States as apathetic as this one. This is our first chance to be political men and women. We are colonials here in this District. The District of Columbia is the Canal Zone of the United States." (l. 422)

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on the blog Short Articles about Long Meetings.

Full disclosure: I have a commercial relationship with Amazon. I will receive a very small portion of the money people spend after clicking on an Amazon link on this site.

This is a great book and well worth reading in its entirety.

Proceed directly to the next installment here.