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The blue tarp covering the new street sign finally fell and the crowd erupted.
They had waited years to see Marion Barry Avenue rise — a name that reflected their pride in being Black Washingtonians, hope for the future of their neighborhood and resolve in cementing a shared history for future generations.
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For those gathered in Anacostia on Saturday, Marion Barry Jr., the four-term D.C. mayor who died in 2014, is their “mayor for life.”
People celebrating the new street name said Barry still looms large in their lives. They called him a mentor who taught them how to use local government to advocate for their communities. He gave them their first summer jobs through a program he launched in 1979 and one that continues today. Some said they tell their children about him, teaching about his accomplishments alongside figures like Martin Luther King Jr.
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Now the street bearing his name will intersect with Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue, in a section of the city that includes what was the heart of his political base as mayor and on the D.C. Council.
“It’s reclaiming a piece of D.C.,” J.R. Clark, 57, who grew up in the District and lives in Ward 7, said during the celebration Saturday. “It’s reclaiming our history and not letting others define who our leadership is and who our heroes are in our community.”
Barry was the most powerful local politician of his generation. He created new opportunities for Black people, elevating them to city government positions, and created programs that helped people who needed it the most: food for seniors, home-buying assistance for the working class and summer jobs for youth. He found supporters in racial justice advocates in the NAACP and everyday folks who benefited from the social services he championed.
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Even after he served a jail sentence when the FBI caught him smoking crack on camera in a 1990 sting at the Vista Hotel, he came back to win a fourth term as mayor.
In the months before his death, he was viewed favorably by 81 percent of Black Washingtonians, and just 7 percent of White people. Barry proudly represented “Chocolate City,” a moniker bestowed when D.C. was majority Black.
The years-long grass-roots effort to rename this major thoroughfare in Southeast Washington included petition drives, letters to the D.C. Council and a push from council member Trayon White Sr. (D), who represents Barry’s home of Ward 8. And it came during a time of communities across the country reexamining the past and pushing to change the names of public spaces to more fully represent the diversity of America.
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The roots of the road’s previous name, Good Hope Road, dated back to the 19th century when renowned abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass lived in Anacostia. Some in the neighborhood questioned changing the name of a street that had represented their community through so many generations and complained to the D.C. Council of potential logistical complications.
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Still, the council this year unanimously approved the legislation, which was backed by Barry’s widow, Cora Masters Barry. Many on Saturday said they thought calling this road, the entrance to Anacostia, after a man who fought hard for this often overlooked part of D.C. was a perfect fit.
“To me, this is it,” Masters Barry said. “He’s alive. You’ll call his name all day. A thousand times a day people will be saying, ‘Marion Barry. Marion Barry.’”
At a block party celebration, people waved signs that said: “It’s A Great Day To Live in Ward 8,” uplifting a community too often defined by challenges such as poverty, underinvestment and gun violence. The area recorded at least 89 homicides by mid-November, by far the most of any ward.
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The hundreds of people gathered Saturday heard from speakers including Masters Barry, White, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D). They watched videos of Barry’s career, hugged longtime friends and shared memories of the former mayor and the difference he made in their lives.
“He would be the first to tell you that he was the champion for the last, the lost and the least. But he would also tell you that he transformed every ward of Washington, D.C.,” Bowser said from the stage. “Marion Barry challenges us to do more, to be bigger, to get up when we’ve been knocked down and to show the world who we are as Washingtonians and who we are as people.”
The city has continued to honor his legacy over the years. His statue stands on Pennsylvania Avenue NW outside the Wilson Building. The office building at One Judiciary Square was named the Marion S. Barry Jr. Building. The summer youth employment program he championed has his name, too.
Yolanda Armstrong, 42, arrived early to snag one of the few seats in front of the stage. She stood in front of her chair, dancing to go-go music and cheering in anticipation for what the day would bring.
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She said she got her first job from Barry, working in customer service at an office. Now she works for Marty’s Food and Catering, a community catering business that provides food for people in need.
Armstrong, of Southeast Washington, is a fourth-generation Washingtonian who credits Barry with paving the way for other Black people in this city to find professional success and ascend to the highest levels of local government.
Armstrong’s children, she said, “know who Marion Barry is, they know President [Barack] Obama, they know the mayor.”
“He was the blueprint. Everything from the street that you walk to the restaurants you eat at, the jobs, the buildings, he's the steppingstone for everything,” she said. “It makes me feel so good to see recognition for someone I knew was bright and brilliant and gave us opportunities”
As Tatum Primus, 16, a former D.C. youth deputy mayor, walked up to the stage Saturday to honor a man she never met, she thought about how Barry would be distraught by the current gun violence. Primus, who wants to be a defense attorney one day, shared a poem she wrote that she hoped would speak out against this crisis in a way that honored the late mayor.
“Oh, D.C., violence only leads to more pain and despair, leaving wounds that are deep and hearts that can’t be repaired,” she said from the stage. “We must put the guns down and rise above this ugly strife. And reclaim the city’s spirit, its true vibrant and chocolate life.”
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