Part 13 -- Murder Capital

This is the thirteenth 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 12: Murder Capital

Rayful Edmond's undisputed moment at the top of the drug-dealing heap was short-lived. By summer 1988, he faced two challenges -- one from locally-based Michael Salter (also known as Michael Frey or Fray) and the other from criminal gangs based in Jamaica via New York and Miami. The Jamaicans caused rival gangs to unite temporarily. Once the external threat receded, the gangs turned on each other.

"The number of murders shot up again in 1988 to set a record at 372. The rate of 60 killings per 10,000 residents put Washington ahead of Detroit as the murder capital of the nation. By comparison, New York's rate was 25. And it would get worse. On Valentine's Day 1989, 13 people were shot in one twenty-four-hour period" (Kindle location 3888).

"Eighty-nine percent of the victims were black; 96 percent of the assailants were black. Not one murder occurred in the white neighborhoods west of Rock Creek Park" (i. 3893).

" 'I'm not going to take full responsibility for all these murders,' Mayor Barry told Newsweek magazine. 'The city government didn't import this drug into Washington' " (l. 3899).

"The public read about two separate car accidents, one in the dead of night. His chauffeur-driven car ran a red light and collided with a car driven by a radio reporter en route to work at 2 am. 'I'm just a night owl,' Barry said to explain his early morning meanderings" (l. 3913).

"At least half of the people killed were African-American males under the age of 25, and numbers of juveniles arrested on drug charges climbed from 1,111 in 1986 to 1,658 in 1987. In 1984 there were no children twelve or younger arrested for drugs; by 1987 there were 35. Twenty-five juveniles were charged with murder in 1988; 52 would be up on murder raps in 1989" (l. 3938).

"Barry's dissipation placed his young aides in a wrenching predicament. They were talented, honest, highly-motivated African-Americans. They felt indebted to Barry for his leadership in the civil rights movement. They believed that Barry and his comrades ... had changed the world and paved the way for their success. They also were totally committed to the notion that balcks could run the city government. It was their city" (l. 3953).

"Barry's staff became one more layer in the wall of silence that protected the mayor. But the wall had many more elements. Barry's friends kept their silence; his cocaine dealers never squealed; [then-wife] Effi Barry witnessed the damage and kept it to herself. The city watched Barry slur his speech, sweat profusely in cold room, stare from dilated eyes. Call them facilitators or enablers, to one degree or another, dozens of people were culpable. The whole town knew that the mayor was falling victim to drugs. 'What's the surprise?' an African-American cabdriver said one day. 'Everyone knows Marion's a street monkey who's addicted to cocaine' " (l. 3967).

"...[B]y the late summer of 1988, even Barry knew that he was in grave danger. Some friends who suspected Barry's addiction suggested he 'pull a Betty Ford' and check himself into a clinic for alcoholism. Some suggested he needed to take a real vacation and stop his party lifestyle. Barry was too proud and too scared politically to go public and check into a hospital. He decided to try to heal himself" (l. 3978).

He checked into the New Age Health Farm Spa in Neversink, New York.

"Barry's plan was to spend the week quietly and return to Washington refreshed and released from drugs and alcohol. But his insistance, for the first time, that a trip remain a secret raised suspicions in the press... Barry stationed two security guards in a New York City hotel for the week to distract reporters. Their bill, paid by taxpayers, exceeded $2,500" (l. 3995).

Barry went on a special diet and had colonic irrigation. After returning, he told the press in October that his health had improved: "I'm more controlled, more contemplative, more reflective, more caring" (l. 4005).

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on 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.

Read the next installment here.

Part 12 -- Crack Attack

This is the twelfth 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 11: Crack Attack

The star of this chapter is Rayful Edmond III, "the capital's first cocaine king" (Kindle location 3475).

Edmond started as a street drug dealer. Starting in 1985, he built an wildly successful crime organization using members of his extended family and childhood friends. His first kilo of cocaine was a gift from his father, a small-time gambler. "With the profits from the first kilo, Edmond bought two more, and an empire was born" (l. 3509).

Edmond operated an open-air drug market on Orleans Place and Morton Place NE from his mother's home in Prince George's County. He favored expensive cars but was also a Robin Hood-figure.

"... He'd make sure neighbors had turkeys on Thanksgiving; he bought meals for the homeless, cars for his top staff, and clothes for his friends. He sponsored a basketball team in the Police Athletic League called 'Clean Sweep', the name of the police operation designed to get drug dealers off the streets" (l. 3556).

The unlikely love interest for the 22-year-old Edmond was 45-year-old white divorcee Alta Rae Zanville. Their first meeting:

"He ran into her one day in the summer of 1986 when he stopped by the Florida Avenue Grill for lunch. The restaurant at the corner of 11th and Florida... is Washington's most celebrated southern food diner. It was also the home of a fencing operation run by the owner's sons" (l. 3563).

"... Alta Rae Zanville was just what Edmond needed at the time. They may have had an affair, but he wanted her for business purposes. His drug-dealing money was piling up. He was not sophisicated enough to lauder the cash through businesses or hide it in foreign bank accounts" (l. 3578).

Zanville started by renting an apartment in Crystal City on Edmond's behalf. She went on to larger operations designed to hide Edmond's mountain of cash.

The media and government began to pay closer attention to drug abuse and dealing at this time, thanks in part to the death by drug overdose of Len Bias, a star basketball player at University of Maryland. But Edmond's business continued to thrive.

"At his peak in 1988, Rayful sat atop an organization of nearly 200 employees that moved an estimated $10 million to $20 million worth of cocaine and crack a month from Columbia..." (l. 3646).

Crack appeared in DC in 1986. "Adding crack to Washington dispossessed neigbhorhoods had the same effect as throwing a match into a bucket of gasoline. Crack tore through other cities, but its impact on the capital was far more destructive. From 1984 to 1987 the number of patients admitted to emergency rooms with with cocaine-related problems tripled, according to criminal justice reports. The number of adults who were arrested and tested positive for cocaine increased by 43 percent between 1984 and 1988." (l. 3652).

"...[C]rack was able to dominate the capital because the metropolitan police department was ill equipped, ill prepared, and morally corrupted by its commander in chief, Marion Barry" (l. 3657).

"Barry cut the number of police officers as soon as he could and kept reducing the force to a low of 3,612 in 1982. At the same time he kept slicing the police department's share fo the city's budget. When he took office the police department got 8.6 percent of the budget; by 1985 it was down to 6.5 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office" (l. 3666).

The police department operated on ancient equipment at shared desks. Top appointments went to Barry cronies or good police somehow beholden to Barry.

"Rayful Edmond was perfectly situated to take advantage of the coming age of crack. His organization was as slick and well run as McDonald's. Morton Place and Orleans Place became so crowded that on some days Edmond's lieutenants had to order customers to form lines that stretched 100 buyers long" (l. 3707).

"Any kind of serious response was more difficult when it became apparent that Marion Barry, the commander in chief, was on his way to becoming a pipe head" (l. 3710).

"No direct connection was ever established between Rayful Edmond III and Mayor Marion Barry, Jr., though there was the odd case of Edmond's beeper that turned up in Barry's possession..." (l. 3772).

Barry also continued to have a stormy relationship with Hazel Diane "Rasheeda" Moore. At one point she refused his sexual advances. He accused her of infidelity.

"Moore denied it. Barry slapped her once. She slapped him back. His second blow knocked her to the floor. He stood over her.

'I haven't hit a woman in 20 years,' he said. 'You bring out the worst in a man. Just get out!' " (l. 3797).

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on 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.

Read the next installment here.

Part 11 -- Boss Barry

This is the eleventh 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 10: Boss Barry

With the sentencing of his long-time aide and friend Ivanhoe Donaldson to seven years in jail in December 1985, Marion Barry lost "the last person who could rein him in" (Kindle location 3045).

Meanwhile, problems mounted on all sides. A prominent homeless activist mounted a hunger strike. A Deputy Mayor resigned while under investigation for kickbacks. Prisons were overflowing. Massive protests about schools and jail were frequent.

"The government's mounting crises could have chastened Barry; instead he celebrated his fiftieth birthday as if he were a gangster. At one of two parties a stripper dressed as a policewoman popped out of a cake, handcuffed the mayor, and performed for the guests. 'Free at last,' Barry said as 'Officer Goodbody' removed the cuffs..." (l. 3066).

The unenviable task of restoring order fell to new chief of staff Carol Thompson. She did what she could: arranging aides and chaperones to accompany Barry, planting allies at public appearances, replacing alcoholic drinks with ginger ale. "Thompson realized within a few weeks that on many levels, starting with his schedule, Barry was controllable" (l. 3076).

In Barry's heart, the authors say, he yearned for the approval of both the white power structure and the city's black elite, but he believed this would never come. "The strut, the late entrances -- even the women and the drugs -- were an expression of that essential conflict between what Barry needed and what he knew he could never have" (l. 3090).

Around this time, Barry met Hazel Diane "Rasheeda" Moore, a failed model and businessperson. "It was the beginning of a relationship that mixed sex and drugs" (l. 3112).

In 1986, Barry was easily re-elected. "The Republican party was powerless, in part because white conservatives shut out blacks. The local Democratic organization was an inept, petty debating society because Barry purged critics in 1979 and packed it with sycophants" (l. 3129).

"In other cities, politics was a way for ethnic minoirites to stake their claim to economic and political power, but Washington never developed a true local political class.... In Washington, congressional domination, disenfranchisement, and racism stunted the growth of homegrown politics. By the time an elective political ladder became available in the 1970s, ambitious black men and women who might have been interested in city government could command prestigious, well-paying job in the legal community, in the federal government, or in business. Municipal politics was a backwater" (l. 3141).

"The 1986 campaign turned into a besotted, drug-laden lark. Places in Barry's inner circle were taken by a fresh set of friends. The new crowd tolerated or encouraged the mayor recreational use of cocaine" (l. 3172).

But Barry was able to get big campaign contributions from Wall Street firms looking for a piece of DC's newly-established municiple-bond program. Since the campaign itself required little money, "Barry's campaign hired hundreds of low-level 'paid' volunteers to put on the semblance of a campaign. It was a private version of his summer jobs program" (l. 3181).

"Barry was doing so much cocaine during the campaign that he started having trouble coping with his daily schedule. It was at this time that he started taking Valium to bring him down from the cocaine. When the Valium proved too weak, he switched to Xanax, a stronger tranquilizer" (l. 3186).

Barry's opponent in the general election was Republican Carol Schwartz. Schwartz received no help from the national party. Barry got 61 percent of the vote, Schwartz 33. She lost everywhere but largely white Ward 3. White voters backed Schwartz over Barry, 76 percent to 15 percent.

January 1987 brought two blizzards totaling 26 inches of snow. Barry vacationed in California and watched the Super Bowl while the city failed to dig itself out.

"...[T]he city didn't actually know how many people were on the payroll. The 1988 census and an independent commission on budget and financial priorities put the count at 48,000 -- one worker for every 13 residents -- more government workers per capita than any other city or state government..." (l. 3240).

"...[T]he high cost and large number of workers didn't translate to high-quality service. Delivering a welfare check in the District consistently cost twice the national average, for example" (l. 3244). The book goes on to list many, many more instances of poor city services, including foster care, ambulance and fire, neonatal care, public housing and schools, with the poorest citizens often bearing the brunt of the city's ineptitude.

However, "[t]he African-American poor- and middle-class communities credited Barry with improving basic city services that most people take for granted: accurate water billing, street repair, garbage collection. These services didn't work totally efficiently, but they worked better than they had before" (l. 3294).

"From the African-American point of view, Barry had dramatically improved city services for the elderly and provided thousands of summer jobs for young people.... A typical black family might have one or two extended family members working for the city government, an elderly person in a city-subsidized home, a child in a summer jobs program, or a relative working either for the government or for a company that held city contracts" (l. 3307).

"...Barry's political machine was fueled by the fear in the black community that whites would take it all away if they could" (l. 3309).

In May 1987, a top Barry official named Larry Rivers was arrested in a 17-month-long sting operation. The arrest led to FBI raids on many friends and colleagues of Barry's, including a former girlfriend, Karen Johnson. After the raids, a TV reporter "obtained Johnson's private diary and disclosed the early 1980s sex and drugs spree that she had so carefully documented" (l. 3375).

Johnson had served "eight months in jail on contempt charges for not talking about the mayor's cocaine use with her in the early 1980s" (l. 3374).

Now, "Karen Johnson seemed to be a different person. With guidance from her attorney, G. Allen Dale, she told law enforcement authorities that she had received much as $25,000 from Barry's close associates.... The two businessmen first denied and then acknowledged giving money to Johnson..." (l. 3380).

Johnson resisted the blandishments of media heavyweights Katie Couric, Mike Wallace and Bob Woodward. She would not give interviews.

"Enough facts leaked from the Johnson affairs to paint a convincing picture for most Washingtonians that Barry used cocaine and tried to silence a potential witness. But for all the leaked details, graphic news accounts, and innuendo, [US Attorney Joseph DiGenova couldn't bring charges."

Barry marshalled allies for a counter-attack, including Cathy Hughes, owner and on-air personality of radio station WOL-AM. But he was soon fighting on another front as his then-wife, Effi, after a long period of avoiding the news media, gave a TV interview in which she criticized her husband's "indiscretions".

Despite promises to friends and supporters to change his ways, Barry took a vacation to the Bahamas in the company of women other than his wife. He was followed by a Washington Post reporter, who published details.

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on 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.

Continue reading the next installment here.

Part 9 - Greed City

This is the ninth 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 8: Greed City

This chapter chronicles the DC real estate boom of the 1980s.

Developer Jeffrey N. Cohen started buying and renovating Dupont Circle brownstones in the 1970s. In 1979, Cohen and partners bought the dilapidated Parkside Hotel at 14th and I Streets NW, then a district of flophouses and strip clubs.

"Enter Marion Barry. The new mayor awarded Cohen a contract to shelter homeless families... for $507,000 a year, more than enough to cover the mortgage" (l. 2513).

In spite of appalling conditions, the city increased the contract to $530,000 and bought three surrounding buildings. In 1985, Cohen sold the property for $12 million. Two years later, it was re-sold for $39 million to a developer who put up an office building.

This pattern was repeated many times both in downtown DC and in many Maryland and Virginia suburbs. "Revenues from commercial property taxes doubled and then tripled.  The questions became how the new black political structure could ensure that the city's African-American community shared in the economic boom" (l. 2546).

James Gibson was Marion Barry's first planning director. Gibson "saw the potential in moving the central business district to the east, into the one hundred city blocks immediately north of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol" (l. 2561). Developers levelled the structures that were there and put up office buildings.

"The city owned some choice pieces of property, especially over the downtown stations of the new Metro system" (l. 2585). In 1980, the city sold a parcel over Metro Center at $133 per square foot. At the time, comparable properties went for $500 a square foot. One of the partners in the firm that bought the property was the city's Democratic party chair and had gone on a trip to Africa with Barry. Other firms, with minority partners, got similar deals.

Another choice parcel was Gallery Place. A DC government agency valued the land at $31 million, the developer paid $17 million in July 1981. "In exchange for a low price, they promised to build offices, a hotel, shops, and apartments for low income residents" (l. 2594).

"But a decade later not a spade of dirt had been turned, the grand notion of building apartments was history, and Gallery Place was dead in the water" (l. 2608). It was sold to Oliver Carr, the city's biggest developer.

"What started as an attempt to broaden the economic base of the city soon proved to be a rich source of political favors. The city would sell land at fire-sale prices to development teams that boasted minority partners, who always seemed to be the same people with strong social and political connections to Marion Barry" (l. 2612).

" 'I call them the chosen ones,' said John Wilson, whose Ward Two council district encompassed downtown. 'What started out to benefit the minority community at large has meant some politically influential blacks can move out to posh suburbs like McLean or Potomac' " (l. 2620).

Meanwhile, the city paid increased prices for basic goods and services (e.g., heating oil, corn flakes, trash collection), supplied by influential friends and political contributors. The goods and services were often delivered late, or not at all.

"The most egregious examples were in housing and the treatment of the homeless" (l. 2654). A well-connected man named Cornelius Pitts got $3300 a month for every homeless family he shelter and fed inadequately. He also got the city to lease office space from him at $97 a square foot, when prime office space cost $25 a square foot. "Between 1985 and 1989, ....  Pitts received approximately $16.4 million in contracts" (l. 2673).

Another friend, Roy Littlejohn "came back in 1987 to go into the shelter business and opened two, Urban Shelters and the R Street Shelter, with millions of dollars in contracts. He charged the government $2800 per apartment per month and furnished small, dingy rooms with metal folding tables and chairs, or nothing" (l. 2680).

A DC city auditor explained it to Congress: "... the financial flexibility needed to carry out the agency mission is too easily subverted to the agenda of greedy, corrupt, highly placed individuals ..." (l. 2690).

"No matter how many millions of dollars in city contracts flowed to Barry's friends, it was chump change compared to the hundreds of millions of dollars that enriched the white community during the real estate boom" (l. 2693).

Oliver Carr and Barry did not get along, and Carr supported Barry's challengers for mayor in 1978 and 1982. However, Barry needed money for his campaign warchest, and Carr needed city permissions to develop land, so the two eventually met and, although not friendly, established an uneasy peace.

Investors from England, Holland, Japan, and Canada bought standing buildings in DC's downtown. Developers from Texas and Massachusetts moved in to challenger Carr and other locals.

However, many areas still bore the scars of the 1968 rioting. "To his credit, Barry chose the corner of 14th and U Streets, where the riots began, to build a new municipal center" (l. 2737).

"The only white developer who tried to bridge the gap between Washington's two worlds was Jeffrey Cohen, and he did it by attempting a major redevelopment in the Shaw neighborhood" (l. 2742).

"Cohen first scored on the abandoned Children's Hospital building at 13th and V Streets NW. He and a few partners had bought it for $5 Million in 1978 and promised to build a new rehabilitation hospital..." (l. 2747). Barry helped Cohen get a "certificate of need" for the hospital.

"Cohen never built the rehabilitation hospital. Instead, he sold the coveted certificate of need to the Washington Hospital Center for $8.7 million. As part of the deal, Cohen's group received $5.7 million in architectural and legal fees. In all, Cohen's group made $14.4 million for not building a hospital. Shaw got no jobs and no nearby health-care facility. Cohen then turned around and sold the Children's Hospital property to the city for $5.8 million, for an $800,000 profit on the land" (l. 2755).

Cohen used connections to finance further deals in Shaw throughout 1985. He also took on Barry as a 10 percent partner in a commercial development on Nantucket. "Cohen then created a dummy corporation to hide Barry's stake" (l. 2772).

"Four months later, on December 2, 1985, the mayor sent city council chairman David Clarke a bill that would float $9 million in tax-exempt bonds for Cohen to use in the renovation of the Manhattan Laundry, a sturdy structure that Cohen wanted to turn into offfices for himself. The bond passed, and once again the city picked up Jeffrey Cohen's tab" (l. 2776).

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on 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.

Continue reading the next installment here.

Part 8 - Black Power: The Making of a Machine

This is the eighth 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 7: Black Power: The Making of a Machine

Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court, swore Marion Barry in as mayor of Washington on January 2, 1979 at the District Building. His wife Effi stood by his side.

Barry and his team of aides redesigned the government, which had not changed greatly from its pre-home rule structure. They also changed the faces in city government. Barry made it clear that the city human rights office would investigation minority hiring practices of district firms and expected law firms, accountants, and retailers to hire more blacks and women.

In the city government, "...they moved swiftly to bring on more women and members of the gay and Latino community -- both to be fair and to pay political debts" (Kindle location 2173).

Barry's top aides were city administrator Elijah Rogers and "general assistant" Ivanhoe Donaldson.

They inherited a $100 million budget shortfall and $300 million in long-term debt from the previous administration.

In July 1979, Barry and "a small entourage" took a nineteen-day trip to Africa. He was greeted like a world leader. But while he was gone, Ivanhoe Donaldson was arrested for failing to pay a personal $2,700 debt to building contractor. But the debt was paid off and the bad publicity was minimal.

In October, the Washington Post ran a series of articles chronicling the theft and skimming of government money by Barry's previous wife and the organization they had run together. At the same time, the Washington Star newspaper reported that Barry had received a sweetheart deal on a home mortgage from an influential banker.

"Lillian Wiggins, a columnist for the Washington Afro-American, smelled a plot" (l. 2259). Wiggins labelled it the "Master Plan", eventually shortened it popular usage to "The Plan". Negative characterizations of black leadership were part of a plot to reinstall white leadership in the district. "In ominous shorthand it embodied the city's racial tensions; it also played into Barry's hand. A year into office, he'd become the lightning rod that was hot-wired directly into that most vulnerable and insecure part of the collective black psyche" (l. 2271).

"That kind of pressure led many black Washingtonians to circle their wagons around Barry to protect him" (l. 2275).

"The racial divisiveness made it easier for some whites -- who needed little from government except routine services -- to disengage themselves from it all" (l. 2276).

The Barry administration sent mixed signals to Capitol Hill. Barry met Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT). Leahy headed the Senate committee that controlled DC's budget. Barry said, "We want as much control as possible over our finances" (l. 2288). Congress seemed prepared to grant this wish, but then the Barry administration pulled back. Barry aide Ivanhoe Donaldson called a Leahy staffer later and said, "The budget autonomy is too risky. We like it the way it is now" (l. 2300).

The Barry administration was plagued by local problems (crime, rats) and national ones (recession, inflation).

Barry started seeing a woman named Karen Johnson, who kept a detailed diary of their relationship. The diary eventually came into the possession of a TV journalist and later the FBI. Johnson became pregnant and Barry ended the relationship.

Johnson's former boyfriend was a drug dealer. "Johnson's estranged boyfriend, Franklin Law, told police that he supplied Johnson, who shared it with Barry and eventually sold it to him on at least twenty or thirty occasions" (l. 2331).

Ivanhoe Donaldson was supposed to keep Barry in check, but he had problems of his own. He got in the habit of writing checks to friends from the unaudited Special Administrative Fund. The friends would then turn around and give the bulk of the fund back to Donaldson for his own personal expenses. "Ivanhoe Donaldson had embezzled $27,145 in five months from the emergency fund that became his personal slush fund" (l. 2352).

In March 1982, three women who worked in a strip club just south of Franklin Square told police Barry had come to the club for sex and drugs. An African-American police official reported this to the FBI and Justice Department, who did nothing. Eventually, the report was leaked to Barry and the police official was demoted.

In the 1982 election, Barry's main opponent was Patricia Roberts Harris, an African-American lawyer who had worked at the US delegation to the UN, and had been Ambassador to Luxembourg and Secretary for Housing and Urban Development.

Barry predicted he would beat Harris handily. "The mayor based his prediction on the three legs of his young political machine: campaign money from the business community, power and votes from the churches, and the loyalty that derives from political patronage" (l. 2420).

"He began by courting the city's powerful black ministers" (l. 2421), including the leaders of the Bible Way Church, the United House of Prayer for All People, and the Shiloh Baptist Church. He put city money at the disposal of various churches to provide much-needed programs like day-care and senior centers.

Also, "Barry dispensed carefully controlled constituent services, merging that office with his political apparatus under former campaign deputy Anita Bonds. She handled routine complaints on one hand, enforced political discipline with the other, and also bused adoring crowds to Barry's community meetings" (l. 2431).

"Routine city services, such as trash collection and street cleaning, began showing up regularly in black neighborhoods unaccustomed to it. Barry also opened up new libraries and fire stations" (l. 2441).

Harris came off as aloof, Barry as a man of the people.

"'I have suffered a thousand wounds in trying to do right by the city', Barry told one candidate forum."

"'It's true, Mr. Mayor, that you have suffered a thousand wounds, responded council member Charlene Drew Jarvis.... 'Unfortunately, they're all self-inflicted'" (l. 2460).

Barry won the 1982 Democratic primary with nearly 60 percent of the vote. "The results marked the total shift of Barry's electoral support from an integrated base in 1978 to one that relied on the black middle class and poor. In 1978 the white vote put him over the top; in 1982 it alone couldn't defeat him. With the biracial coalition went the civil rights movement's liberal dream of social change, of helping the less fortunate, of bringing the races together. In its place, Boss Barry began to emerge" (l. 2470).

At this time, Barry's first group of advisors, including Elijah Rogers, left. Another advisor who left said: "The government became directed by greed" (l. 2491).

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on the 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.

Continue to the next installment here.

Part 7 - A Man for All People

This is the seventh 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 6: A Man for All People

This chapter starts with a description of the 1973 murder of seven members of the Hanafi Muslim sect (including four children) by Black Muslims at a brick mansion at 7700 16th Street NW. The murderers were  tried and sentenced to long prison terms, but the Hanafi Muslim group descended into paranoia, saying, for example, Jewish judges had been too lenient. They turned their 16th Street home into an armed camp.

On March 9, 1977, the Hanafi Muslims struck back. They stormed the offices of the B'nai B'rith and the Massachusetts Avenue mosque called the Islamic Center and took hostages.

Marion Barry heard about the incident on his way to the District Building for a committee hearing. "He was unaware that a smaller group of Hanafis at that moment was beginning to seize offices inside the District Building" (Kindle location 1873). He was shot as he stepped off an elevator. He suffered a minor flesh wound, but the pellet was lodged two inches above his heart.

Mary Treadwell, recently divorced from Barry, ran to his side at the hospital. There, she met Effi Cowell, then 33, who would become Barry's next wife. Advisers ensured that future visits did not occur at the same time.

From his hospital bed, Barry made the decision to run for mayor in 1978, against incumbent Walter Washington and City Council President Sterling Tucker in the Democratic primary. Initial polls showed him in third place. Barry and advisers felt Washington and Tucker would split the black vote. They formulated a strategy that would "allow Barry to slip into office by corralling white votes and picking off pockets of support from disaffected blacks and the emerging block of gay voters" (l. 1923). The existing black elite was not likely to vote for Barry, they felt.

Barry pursued white and black businesspeople who didn't like the other choices, including restauranteurs who had difficulty getting liquor licenses.

Barry was living with his girlfriend, Effi Cowell. Advisers felt a candidate for mayor could not be living with someone. In February 1978, they were married in a quiet ceremony. But she was a problem for the campaign, as she had a quiet manner that appeared aloof and was so light-skinned that many voters thought she was Caucasian.

Barry continued womanizing. He was seen out alone with other women. There were difficult-to-confirm accusations of sexual assault.

Candidates hustled for endorsements. Barry received the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, in spite of his previous run-ins, because he proposed legislation to give them annual raises.

Barry also charmed the Washington Post editorial board. He received six separate editorials praising his campaign. He resisted pressure from the Tucker campaign to drop out. Barry won the primary by 1,400 votes out of 89,460 votes for the three major candidates, and buried the Republican candidate in November.

Barry reached out to those who had supported other candidates. President Jimmy Carter and members of Congress (including Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the committee that oversaw the city's budget) met with Barry.

"The resulting political constellation presented a unique opportunity in American politics. In 1978, in the capital city, there was a chance to create a truly integrated body politic" (l. 2128).

Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on the ad-hoc "Cheater's Guide to Dream City" blog.

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.

Read the next installment here.

Part 6 - Bombthrowers to Bureaucrats

This is the sixth 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 5: Bombthrowers to Bureaucrats


The 1968 destroyed large parts of Washington, and little rebuilding took place immediately. In 1969, President Nixon promised assistance. Neighborhood groups squabbled over who should represent the neighborhood, and millions in federal funds went unused (l. 1475).

But there was also opportunity. Fourth-generation Maryland housebuilder Oliver Carr bought up downtown property cheap, starting with a building at the corner of 17th Street and Connecticut Avenue NW. "From that first bold move, Carr built an empire..." (l. 1482).

DC Mayor Walter Washington changed what had been a department of the federal government into the DC government, while also handling wave after wave of anti-Vietnam War protestors.

"...[W]hen one million peace protesters descended on the capital in May 1971, Richard Nixon called him from Camp David to say, 'You're in charge'" (l. 1487).

"In one of the least reported and documented developments in Washington local politics, the timing of the District's movement toward independence coincided with the continued ingathering of former student civil rights leaders. Many of the men and women who had stood on the front lines of the movement -- Ivanhoe Donaldson, John Wilson, Courtland Cox, Lawrence Guyot, Frank Smith, and others -- saw the city's unique black majority community as fertile soil to carry on a civil rights movement as it changed into a struggle for economic power. Eventually, nearly the entire leadership of the student civil rights movement found its way into the capital and joined the battle wrest power from Congress, the white power structure, and the native black elite" (l. 1489).

Meanwhile, Marion Barry became the bridge between the white power structure and the African-American community through his organization, Pride, Inc. "He wore a tie and jacket to disarm the businessmen; he wore a dashiki and an amulet with a bullet around his neck and armed himself with a .38 for his work at Pride, Inc" (l. 1495).

Pride, Inc., started as an alley cleaning operation and expanded into gas stations, real estate, and confections.

Barry was arrested in May 1969 after he and companions started a fight with a police officer over a parking ticket. He was hit with a blackjack and spent the night in the hospital. Staff on Pride, Inc.'s payroll demonstrated against Barry's arrest. A trial on the charge a year later ended in a hung jury.

A month after that, Barry and an ally stormed a meeting of First Lady Pat Nixon and Republican Senate wives to draw attention to the fact that cars double-parked outside the building were protected by police, while regular citizens would have gotten tickets. He got positive press attention.

Soon after, Barry helped negotiate an end to a threatened teacher's strike.

Pride, Inc., was the subject to near-constant legal scrutiny, including FBI (which had also infiltrated the organization) asking "Pride officials whether they had had any dealings with the Mafia, Red China, H. Rap Brown, or drug dealers" (l. 1543). FBI reports included information on Barry's love life and choice of clothes. The most damaging finding was $10,000 in phony payroll checks out of about $8.5 million in federal grants, an amount the authors call "minimal" (l. 1548).

"The FBI's surveillance continued into the early 1970s, when its reports noted in deadpan prose that the 'negro militants' were becoming elected officials" (l. 1560)

In 1971, Walter Fauntroy became DC's first delegate to Congress, defeating three other candidates with 44 percent of the vote. Appointed City Council President John Hechinger got the downtown business community behind Fauntroy "and establish[ed] an enduring pattern of white money behind black candidates" (l. 1586).

"If the first law of Washington politics was white money behind black candidates, the second was that Washington was a one-party town. The Republican party never organized in the capital and never attracted more than a tenth of the electorate, in part because it was run as a club for white conservatives" (l. 1604).

Barry ran for a seat on the DC school board against Anita Allen, a member of the city's light-skinned African-American elite. Handlers groomed him to act in a manner more acceptable to middle-class voters. "I'm a situationist," Barry told a Washington Post reporter at the time. "I do what is necessary for the situation" (l. 1633).

Barry won with 58 percent of the vote. 9.3 percent of the city's registered voters went to the polls. Other candidates, whom Barry had supported, elected him school board president.

In May 1973, Barry married Mary Treadwell, his second wife. Two months after that, he barely escaped arrest for an incident late at night in the apartment of a female colleague. "The story never became public, in part because the woman realized that if she exposed Barry it could hurt certain initiatives she was working on, including the home rule drive. She didn't want to give Congress another reason to keep the District from governing itself" (l. 1719).

1973 saw another try at a home rule bill. Autonomy was chipped away as it progressed through committee. The right to a locally-elected district attorney was lost. Congressional representatives traded their support for home rule for a guarantee of no commuter tax. Federal properties would not be taxable. Instead Congress and the President would determine a yearly lump-sum payment. Congressman Gerald Ford led the opposition to the bill, but his attention went elsewhere when he was appointed Vice-President.

Barry found the problems of the city's schools intractable and wanted to move on. With the help of Ivanhoe Donaldson ("brilliant, articulate, courageous") and others, Barry considered running for city council president. But the city's political elite had other ideas. Barry was told to run for an At-large seat.

"Barry bristled, postured, argued -- then did as he was told. But he would never forget" (l. 1789).

Walter Washington won the first election for DC mayor. "Sterling Tucker was elected city council chairman and promptly made his first mistake by appointing Barry to head the powerful finance and revenue panel, which controlled taxation. For the next four years, Barry used his committee as a club against Tucker and Mayor Washington on one hand, while with the other he began to woo white business interests" (l. 1795).

Barry and staff also rejected Washington's tax-raising budgets and devised tax-cutting budgets of their own, although rich property interests got some special breaks.

He also kept his activist edge. He said DC tax money "flows out of the pockets of DC taxpayers and into the hands of predominantly white male, suburban-residing police officers" (l. 1810). He won the election, and also separated from his second wife.

Barry seemed to be cleaning up his act. He stopped smoking. He drank only white wine. But it was at this time, the authors say, "that Barry first came into contact with cocaine" (l. 1838).


Cheater's Guide to Dream City continues next week

Further installments will appear on successive Fridays. All posts will be cross-posted on 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.

Continue to the next installment here.

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