MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Few people are tied as tightly to the local identity of modern D.C. as Marion Barry. We live in a city that's gone through changes every bit as complicated as the life that Barry led, which ended this past weekend. Marion Barry came to D.C. as a civil rights activist at a time when residents of local Washington didn't even have the right to elect their own government.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIHe was part of a movement that not only gave those who lived here their first chance to make decisions about their own neighborhoods, but also gave a voice to the African-American communities that made up the majority of the city. But his story was also intertwined with some of the darkest pieces of D.C.'s local history. Times that included a brutal drug epidemic and violence that spiraled out of control. This hour, we're reflecting on the long, complex and influential legacy of the man identified more closely with local Washington than any other.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIThe man so many will remember as Mayor for Life. Joining us in studio is Tom Sherwood. He is WAMU 88.5's resident political analyst, a reporter for NBC 4, a columnist for the Current Newspapers. Co-author of the book, "Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington D.C." It's now available for the first time as an e-book through Amazon, complete with a new preface and afterword. Tom, welcome.

MR. TOM SHERWOODGood afternoon.

NNAMDIAlso joining us in studio is Tom's co-author, Harry Jaffe, co-author of "Dream City." He is national editor at Washingtonian Magazine. Harry, good to see you.

MR. HARRY JAFFEHappy to be here.

NNAMDIFrank Smith is a former member of the D.C. Council and a founding member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. He's also the founder and director of the African-American Civil War Memorial and Museum. He has known former Mayor Marion Barry longer than anyone else in this room.

MR. FRANK SMITHThat's right.

NNAMDIFrank Smith, good to see you again.

SMITHThank you.

NNAMDIAnd Sandy Allen is a former member of the D.C. Council who represented Ward 8, the Ward that Marion Barry currently represents. Thank you for joining us, Sandy Allen. Good to see you.

MS. SANDY ALLENIt's good to be here.

NNAMDIYou can call us at 800-433-8850 if you have comments or questions. You can shoot email to kojo@wamu.org. Joining us by phone is Vincent Gray. He is mayor of the District of the Columbia. Mayor Gray, thank you for joining us.

MAYOR VINCENT GRAYGood afternoon, Kojo. Thank you very much.

NNAMDIMayor Gray, for a generation, Marion Barry was the most identifiable person in Washington, D.C. locally. Our version of a Richard Daley in Chicago. To what degree do you see who we are as a local place that's having been shaped by his identity and well, vice versa?

GRAYWell, I think there's absolutely no question that his influence was, you know, is absolutely extraordinary. And it, you know, has been for decades. He's somebody who rose to the highest levels of government and was, you know, clearly the most identifiable figure across the District of Columbia. You look at the things that he did. You know, he helped to reshape Washington, you know, when he came along, Washington was essentially still a southern town. Still very much dominated by the Congress of the United States.

GRAYAs you indicated earlier, people, you know, until 1964, didn't even have the right to vote for President of the United States and had no ability to elect our own officials. He was the second elected mayor that we had in the city. And he really put a tremendous imprint. There are symbols all over this city. The youth leadership, you know, program. The youth employment program which he put his stamp on very early. He was a visionary for that. It's interesting. We've been talking about building a new soccer stadium in the city.

GRAYAnd one of the parts of that discussion is to take the Reeve Center, which was his vision to build that to try to stimulate the economy in the 14th and U Street area. And replicate that over on the east end of the city as a part of this soccer deal. So, there are so many things that could be said about him, you know, in a very positive way, especially what he did for the black middle class, helping to build a black middle class in the District of Columbia through giving people job opportunities that they otherwise might not have had.

GRAYAnd also, people who were in business who became, you know, contractors for the District of Columbia. And the work they were able to do.

NNAMDIWhat, what Frank Smith called the Barry Revolution, he'll talk about that later in the broadcast. Here's Tom Sherwood.

SHERWOODMr. Mayor, Tom Sherwood. I know that Marion Barry was a friend of yours, so condolences to you, cause you've known him a long time.

GRAYThank you.

SHERWOODBut you know Cora Masters Barry, his widow. The family is still deciding what to do. You'll be a part of that discussion. What's appropriate for a sendoff for Marion Barry?

GRAYWell, you know, as already has been indicated in this discussion, Marion was an incredibly complex person in a very complicated and complex city. And I think, simply, to have one ceremony on one day would be truly an injustice to what he stood for. So first of all, I see it being a multi-day experience that will include, of course, him lying in state here at the Wilson Building. And, you know, giving as many people as possible a chance to be able to, you know, to celebrate his life.

GRAYAnd frankly, there'll be a lot of national figures who will want to come in and have a chance to say something about the life of Marion Barry.

SHERWOODIs there any place other than the convention center? I would, I mean, I have a feeling...

NNAMDIThat was my thinking.

SHERWOOD...I'm having a feeling that this would put Chuck Brown to shame by what might happen for Marion Barry.

GRAYWell, that right. Cause there's no way to put Chuck Brown to shame. Certainly we can, you know, we look at having a celebration at the convention center, which I think is an entirely appropriate place to do it, of life for Marion. But there probably will be tens of thousands of people who will show up. Who can imagine the number of people who will show up here at the Wilson Building for the time that Marion is lying in state? There are many people who benefited tremendously from Marion Barry's leadership.

GRAYThe tenacity, the courage that he had to do the things, frankly, that lots of other people wouldn't have done.

NNAMDIAny personal stories? Everybody has one.

GRAYYeah, well, there's one when I was the Executive Director of the Association for Retarded Citizens. We were working hard to get people out of an institution called Forest Haven, and that meant opening group homes in the city. And I remember going to a particular community one night with Mayor Barry. There were a couple hundred people there whose sole purpose was to stop the opening of this group home. And, you know, there was a man who stood up and asked him a question. He answered it. Asked him another question, he answered it.

GRAYAnd then the guy asked him a third question and Marion looked at this guy and said, you know, he says, you don't want this to work, do you? He said, if you want to stay here with me and talk about how we make this work, I will be happy to do that all night. But if you want to stop this, I have nothing further to say to you. There are very few political figures who would have stood up in a situation, even gone in the first place, let alone stand up and stand for what was right for a constituency that was almost voiceless in the District of Columbia.

GRAYAnd that's the spirit that he brought to so much of what we have in the District of Columbia today. And that's the kind of fighting he did right up until the end.

NNAMDIVincent Gray is Mayor of the District of Columbia. I know you're working on a tight schedule, so thank you for joining us.

GRAYThank you, Kojo. And thank you to the rest of the guests today.

NNAMDIWe're remembering Marion Barry, inviting your calls at 800-433-8850. You can send email to kojo@wamu.org. Tom, you said so much yesterday that with some people, it's trite to say it's the end of an era when they pass away. But you say it's completely appropriate in this case with Marion Barry. How so?

SHERWOODIt is. You know, no one will approach the notoriety and celebrity of Marion Barry in, I think, in any lifetime, including mine, whatever's left of it. And it's, you know, he's just a remarkable person. Frank Smith will tell us about his early days in the Civil Rights Movement and he was early days of being a leader. And it's also, sometimes, he had discipline problems, even as a civil rights leader.

SHERWOODI mean, we can't ignore the bad things that happened to Marion Barry, because, and I know that a lot of people will have tweeted, oh, he was terrible. He was a drug addict, he did this, he did that. He cheated on his wife. He gave contracts to people who didn't deserve them, who didn't do the jobs. And you say, okay, all of that is true, but that is not the full measure of the man, and I think that's what we're trying to do here today.

NNAMDILook at the full measure of the man. Harry Jaffe, the title on your book when it first came out reflected the past. The title on the re-edition of the book reflects the present and the future. Marion Barry stood astride both.

JAFFEWell, he certainly did. But I think -- I question whether he was able to really relate to the city as it is right now. I think that, in many ways, you know, his time had passed. I'm not so sure that the new residents in Washington, D.C. know him, appreciate him. The city -- he is responsible, no question about it, for having created the city that we live in. For good and for bad, but mostly for good. I mean, you know, he was a deal maker. He knew how to, you know, deal with developers who wanted to redo the downtown.

SHERWOODA poll within the MCI Center.

JAFFEI mean, I will tell you that if Marion Barry had been mayor when Jack Kent Cooke was figuring out where to put his stadium, the Washington football team wouldn't still be in Washington, D.C.

NNAMDIYou say would still be in Washington?

JAFFEWould still be. Yeah. I think that Marion Barry would have made a deal to find a place to build a stadium here in Washington, D.C.

NNAMDIIn case you're just joining us, that's the voice of Harry Jaffe. He's co-author of the book, "Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, D.C." He's national editor at Washingtonian. He is here with his co-author, Tom Sherwood, who's our resident political analyst and a reporter with NBC 4. And a columnist for the Current Newspapers. Also here is Sandy Allen, former member of the D.C. Council who represented Ward 8. And Frank Smith, former member of the council and founding member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating committee.

NNAMDIFounder and director of the African-American Civil War Memorial and Museum. Your questions or comments, 800-433-8850. You can send email to kojo@wamu.org or shoot us a tweet @kojoshow. Frank Smith, where did all of this come from? Where did this boy from Itta Bena, Mississippi who eventually ended up as the first chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in 1960. Where did these political skills come from?

SMITHWell, first of all, I think we ought to pull back the lens and look at this a little bit. Marion Barry was born, as you said, in a rural area of Mississippi and Itta Bena is not even a town. It's a little settlement. I'm not sure they have one traffic light there. I've been there many times. I don't remember seeing a traffic light, so it's -- now, why was I there? I was there because I was part of a group of people who had dropped out of college and become full time SNCC organizers. That's where I met Barry, while we were down there.

SMITHSo, this is an American story, you all. This guy, you want to know a rags to riches story that characterizes America, somebody who can start out from nothing and end up as Mayor of the biggest, most prestigious -- not the biggest, but the most prestigious...

NNAMDISon of a sharecropper.

SMITH...the most prestigious city in the world. If America is the nation on the hill, the city on the hill is Washington, D.C. So, somebody out there might get interested in how this guy rose, went from where he was to be the mayor of District of Columbia.

NNAMDIThat's why you're here, to tell us that.

SMITHAnd then, secondly, if you put him at -- when President Obama got elected president, there were 405 black mayors in the United States. So, we can look at how these mayors, what their cities and what they did to bring those citizens to the middle class and to help poor people who were trying to find jobs as a result of the Civil Rights Movement. So, part of looking at Marion Barry is to look at this. The Civil Rights Movement pretty much ends in 1964 with the demonstration at the -- well, SNCC as the Civil Rights Movement.

SMITHAnd probably, generally, 1964. Dr. King keeps going until '68 when he finally gets assassinated in Memphis, but the Civil Rights Movement we knew is pretty much over during that time. And so, SNCC disbands and many of us gotta find a place to live and...

NNAMDIAnd Marion comes here in '65.

SMITHMarion picks Washington. I pick Washington in 1968. Washington, D.C. is a majority black. We get here and find out people in D.C. don't have the right to vote. It's just like a Mississippi plantation. People can't try on clothes downtown, they can't live north of Walter Reed on the Gold Coast. So, you know, if you don't live someplace, if you're going to put your bucket down somewhere, as a Baptist preacher said one time, if you're going to take a text, you ought to wrestle with it a little bit before you start.

SMITHSo, if you're going to stay here, you gotta do something to try and help change the city. And no better place to do that than somebody who had started out his life as trying to figure out how we take people who can't even vote and get them into voting and into government.

SHERWOODBut, Frank, tell us, I think part of what we want to know from that civil rights era was he -- was he a natural born leader? Was he kind of -- some people called him a (word?), that he didn't really quite know what was going on. He's more academically-oriented than the street -- did he learn it? I mean, catfish helped teaching him stuff here. But, I mean, was he a leader there? Was he a follower? What was more -- what was he more like at that early time, I think, was the question we don't know the answer to.

SMITHWell, I think, he always had the kind of personal charisma and charm that you know -- that you know from his activities here in at D.C. And, secondly, you know, he was tall, angular, educated and people like that stand out. SNCC was a pretty much egalitarian group. Most of us had come from our college campuses, and so we were a collection of people who had -- and leaders on our own individual college campuses.

SMITHSo how does he get to be the first chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee? Well, some of it is because he wanted to chair, quite honestly. And he did want it. He brought his group there from Fisk University and from Nashville, to vote for him at the meeting and that's how he got elected chairman. And he...

JAFFEOn the other side, he also had a reputation, even going back then, of being more interested in the notoriety, in the media of it all, being important as opposed to doing the real work. You know, he became the first chairman SNCC because Diane Nash was not in the room at the time. And so -- and then when he came to New York before coming to Washington, he was great on the circuit of, you know, trying to raise money, but he didn't do any real work. What's your sense of that?

SMITHWell, let's me say something about that election business, because, you know, some of it was Diane really didn't want to be chairman and Marion wanted to be chairman. If she wanted to be chair, she would have been there because she could have gotten the same vote. So I think that was some of it. But he was not interested in the nuts and bolts of running an organization, which is what you needed at the time. And so, that's why he gets -- he gets a bad rap for that. He...

JAFFEAnd he didn't last very long as chairman.

SMITHHe's not as revered within the Student Nonviolent Coordinating as he should be. I would want to correct some of that because I can promise you that we'll have a reunion in Washington, D.C. around Marion Barry's funeral. All of our buddies from SNCC and all of the -- everybody who ever had something to do with the summer of '64 will be here for this and we're going to make a place for them at the African American Civil War Museum, where we (unintelligible) have their testimonials.

NNAMDIBut there was a time after he came to Washington when he was affiliated with Pride, Incorporated, when he had the image, the dashiki-wearing image of being what we considered in those days a black militant. Nevertheless, he chose, at some point, to enter what he saw as the system to run for political office, first for the school board, then for the council, and ultimately for mayor. And in this interview, he gives some indication of why he wanted to do that.

MR. MARION BARRYFor a long time, I didn't trust the system. I didn't want to be a part of it. I didn't want to do anything that I think that would coop you, take you, suck you in, spit you out into something you don't want to be. I thought a lot about it and decided that by running for mayor and using the power of the pen, I could make drastic changes in Washington.

NNAMDISame kind of decision that Frank Smith made at one point. We'll talk about that. But first, we have to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue talking about Marion Barry, life and legacy. If you've called, stay on the line. We will try to get to your calls. If the lines are busy, shoot us an email to kojo@wamu.org or go to our website, kojoshow.org and join the conversation there. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. We're remembering Mayor Marion Barry who died this past Sunday morning. We're talking with Sandy Allen, she's a former member of the D.C. Council who represented Ward 8. Frank Smith is a former member of the D.C. Council and a founding member of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, founder and director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum.

NNAMDITom Sherwood is our resident political analyst, a reporter for NBC 4 and a columnist for the Current Newspapers, co-author of "Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, D.C.," which is now available as an ebook through Amazon, complete with new preface and afterword. His co-author is Harry Jaffe. He is the national editor at Washingtonian. We broke when we talked about Marion Barry's entry into -- into the mainstream of politics, so to speak, into electoral politics.

NNAMDIYou and -- and that's where Sandy Allen will obviously come into this discussion. But first, with you Frank Smith, what was the basis of decisions of people like yours and Marion Barry to enter electoral politics?

SMITHWell, first of all, let me say, Marion and Ivanhoe and John Wilson and that whole group entered D.C. politics before I did.

NNAMDIYep.

SMITHIf mayor -- if Marion was skeptical about being, you know, up in office, I was even more skeptical. It took me a longer time, much longer time to run. But what I was doing before that was I was serving as a researcher at Institute of Policy Studies. I was actually writing policy and advice -- I always did advice elected officials on what they should do when they were in office. I said, look, I'm doing all these papers, nobody's paying me any attention. I might as well…

NNAMDII thought you were still going to school pursuing a doctorate degree.

SMITHI was going to school. And actually, I applied for a job, this is still a Marion Barry. I decided that I wanted to be a housing expert. So I -- there was a -- Marion was mayor, he wanted me to go into the Housing Department and on a special program that I wanted to direct. So I got my resume, we had a meeting with him. He hired me about two o'clock in the afternoon saying, you know, report tomorrow to your job and I said okay.

SMITHSo I went back home. And by the time I got back home, I talked to my wife, I said, you know what, I said, Marion has offered me a job. I don't really want to work for him. I don't work for anybody. So...

JAFFEWhy was that? Why would you not want to work for him?

SMITHBecause if I -- if I want to be in politics, I want to be my own person. I want to be able to tell -- to make my own decisions. So I decided on involving myself and that's what I -- that's how I got into first -- I ran against David Clarke and lost and then I ran again. But what we were all trying to do, Harry, was to find a way to see if we could use the government to try to implement some of those policies of trying to take care of people who were homeless and people who needed a job and people who needed some inspiration really to try to overcome the awful scourge of slavery and discrimination that we had lived with in America for all those years. And I think there was a kind of experimental way. None of us had done this before, so this was a sort of an experimental way for us to try to get started.

JAFFEA lab -- a political laboratory.

SMITHYeah, absolutely.

SHERWOODYou're saying...

NNAMDISandy Allen, it's reflective of what Tom Sherwood, Harry Jaffe and certainly I have experienced in our relationships with Marion Barry and that is friend today, foe tomorrow, friend today, foe tomorrow and back and forth. You were the person who Marion Barry replaced as the Ward 8 representative and that was not a very happy period in your life.

ALLENNo, it was not a happy period in my life, but at least Marion had come to me and said, I'm going to run against you. He took me to lunch.

NNAMDIThis is like Wilhelmina Rolark, before, did you not?

SHERWOODSame thing.

NNAMDIYes.

JAFFEBoth of you and Wilhelmina are very close to Marion, helped him when he was down.

NNAMDIThat's right. But go ahead.

SHERWOODWhere did you go to lunch?

ALLENI can't even remember, Tom. But anyway, he took me to lunch and paid for it. You know, Marion takes you to lunch...

NNAMDIAnd then not pay.

ALLENAnd you had the bill. But he took me and he said he was going to run. And I was like, you're going to run? No, you're not. He said, okay, Sandy, I thought I would tell you in advance because of our friendship. Because I had run his campaign against Wilhelmina Rolark, I had been the campaign manager for that victory and we had been back and forth with -- he had another candidate when I getting ready to run for the first time.

ALLENAnd I said let the voter make the decision, Marion. I hear you. Marion said, I'm going to beat you. I said, okay, I'm going to run, so let's see what happens. And he and I to this -- till he passed were still friends. Now, we -- that was the thing that most people cannot understand was he beat me terribly in the election, but it made no difference. I then was his campaign for the next time he ran. But it was because it was politics and our friendship.

JAFFEKojo, let me...

NNAMDIWhere did that come from because Harry Jaffe, Tom Sherwood and I have all had these experiences with Marion Barry over the years. Marion Barry had what it appeared to be an almost unique capacity to shrug off, I mean, grudges that he held against people. He didn't seem to hold them for very long. Was that on his part -- a part of his politics or was that simply a part of his personality?

SMITHWell, let me just add my story to the story.

NNAMDIOh, you have one, too?

SMITHThe first time I ran for office, I ran against David Clarke. The second time I ran, the Mayor Barry supported Maureen Higgin (sp?) who ran against me.

NNAMDIOh, I didn't know that.

SMITHOh, yeah. So here's what happened. One day, he's up on the street with his political caravan on Columbia Road and Adams Morgan show at her headquarters and he walked outside to get underneath her sign that said vote for Maureen Higgin. The next morning, Maureen's got a flyer out with the mayor and her standing in front. So I called the mayor up, I said, what is this? Used a few expletives that I wouldn't say on air.

NNAMDIWe'll delete, Frank.

SMITHHe said -- he said, hey, it's politics, man. You know what I'm talking, so he was trying to figure out a way to court white votes.

NNAMDIAt the time.

SMITHBecause he needed it at the time and he was courting it at my expense. So, now, I beat -- I won the race, but the fact of the matter is, he didn't only do that -- it was kind of funny that next year I'm filed -- I'm doing it for my term of office, The Washington Post ran something they called The Marionettes of the city council. They had my picture...

SHERWOODI may have written that story.

SMITH...with this group of people. And I'm saying to myself, I had to beat this guy to get elected and now they're telling me I'm one of his...

NNAMDIThat you're on his puppets.

SMITHYeah, I'm one of his puppets. So, you know, hey...

SHERWOODYou know, Mark Plotkin said, I think, famously. He said, you know, Barry lives moment to moment. There's no past, there's no future. You're either with him or against him as you were just saying, Kojo. And I'm just -- at core, you know, was something -- what drove him? It wasn't -- he obviously didn't do it for money, because there was -- the FBI investigated him for a lot of things, but not for having money. So what was his core? I mean, did he just -- he wanted to help people personally flawed or what?

SMITHWell, wait. First of all, they did try to get him for money. They thought, at one time, I heard they thought he was using these poker games to get money into his account. So they couldn't prove it. But so they thought they could get them on it. They always tried to get these guys on money first. Everybody knows that.

SHERWOODYeah, but they didn't.

SMITHIf you can't get them with money, you go...

JAFFEI think to set the record straight, I think that we should kind of say that Marion Barry was not personally corrupt.

SMITHAbsolutely.

JAFFEPeople throw that line around. I don't think that he got personally enriched himself while he was in office.

NNAMDIWell, now that he's passed, I can say what he once said that an off-the-record briefing. At an off-the-record briefing when another friend of his had gotten in trouble with the law for financial reasons, Marion Barry told us reporters, he said, you'll hear a lot of stuff about Marion Barry and drugs. You'll hear a lot of stuff about Marion Barry and women. You never hear anything about Marion Barry and stealing any money. And in my opinion, that's what told the authorities where to look when they wanted to go after Marion. He said, okay, forget about money.

SHERWOODDon't waste your time on me.

NNAMDIExactly. Don't waste your time.

SHERWOODOf course, if I were taking money, that's what I'd say, I don't take any money.

SMITHWell, money leaves such a trail. It's easy to find out if people taking money, because they're either spending it somewhere or wearing it on their backs or driving it in their car something. But I think that -- you asked the question earlier, you know, what drove this guy? Marion had a complete, absolute compassion for people. And he was able to transmit that to people when he walked into the room. Not everybody can do this. He can walk into the room and people felt like, you know, he was the guy who cared about us.

SMITHAnd because he had that reputation, he could say -- he'd get away with it. He could take risks that others couldn't take. I remember that time when somebody called in and she'd talk about she couldn't find any place for herself and her eight babies. She was a single mother. And he said to her she should stop having babies. And Marion got -- some of my SNCC friends wrote Marion letters, you've lost your heart. You're out here complaining because this lady...

SHERWOODI was there...

SMITHWell, the reality is that, you know, we do have to do something about this issue in African American community of single women having all of these children and these guys walking away from their families and not taking care of them and leaving them really on society and have to really to fend for themselves. It's an issue that's with us today, even in his death. I think this should be a part of his legacy. In his death, he's still speaking to us about that. And I think we have to try to find a way to solve that.

NNAMDIWell, I knew that there were occasions in the past where Mayor Barry had stopped speaking to Harry Jaffe, he'd stopped speaking to Tom Sherwood, he'd stopped to Mark Plotkin. But I had never had that experience personally until I wrote an op-ed analysis in the Washington Post that described him as a disgraced former mayor. He came up on this show and said this...

BARRYI have Kojo's outrageous...

SHERWOODOh, the article. That's the article.

BARRY...ridiculous, lightweight, it needs his dignity beneath his character kind of a situation. I've known Kojo for probably 35...

NNAMDIForty years.

BARRY...40 years. He's been thoughtful. He's been well-researched. This was the lightest article I've ever seen him written.

SHERWOODDon't you think he should stick to radio?

BARRYI think he should. It was filled with inaccuracies, assumptions, statements that were beneath him. And I'm not just outraged, the majority of the citizens in this city. I don't have any problem with being criticized, being analyzed, but I have a problem when people tell lies, when they distort the truth.

NNAMDIAnd, of course, you could hear Tom Sherwood egging him on in the background.

SHERWOODStick to radio. No.

NNAMDIEven as he was doing...

SHERWOOD...you know, when HBO was talking about the movie that may still -- do on based on part on "Dream City," you know, the mayor was on radio and talking to everybody he could saying, those two white guys, Jaffe and Sherwood, they can't tell my story. He wasn't really mad. I saw him at several private events.

JAFFEThere were two reasons for that.

SHERWOODBut let me say...

JAFFEHe had his own book going.

SHERWOODNo. No, no. I mean, he would just yell and scream at us.

NNAMDII don't know how they wrote a book together, they disagree all the time.

SHERWOODPrivately -- privately, he was fine. He was mad -- and I think he had a right to be mad about this. HBO was and is planning to do a story that involves his life and they talked to him but they didn't pay him any money for his book rights. They didn't pay him any money and he was kind of cut out of the deal. And I think that's why he was mad about it. He wasn't personally mad at me and Harry.

JAFFEWell, Sherwood called me in the middle of that and said just don't say anything at all, because if you -- if you go public and defend yourself, that will play into Marion's hands.

NNAMDIWell, the thing that was most important to him is that he did not particularly like others defining his legacy. Nevertheless, as I mentioned earlier in this broadcast, Frank Smith and I, he probably doesn't remember this, but we met up one day at a gas station and we were pumping gas and that was the first time he used the term to me, the Marion Barry revolution. What were you referring to?

SMITHWell, you know, as I said earlier, you know, we came into power -- and let me use that word power, because mayors have power. Mayors -- congressmen don't have power. And I think they're learning this now, senators don't have power. Mayors have power. Mayors can hire and fire people. They can -- they can fix parking tickets. They can take contracts. They can -- they can pass tax proposals. Mayors have real power.

SMITHAnd so, Marion -- Marion came into power in D.C. at a time in 1978 when the civil rights movement was redefining itself around two things. One was economic development, which really -- we never really got a hold of. You know, Dr. King lead those marches down in the South about income earning in Memphis. And the other one was about political power. And in D.C. it starts out pretty naively.

SMITHYou know, we get the first elected positions in this town, something called the Third District Advisory Committee. And then after that, we get the schools at Morgan and Adam school, where these issues pop up right away. Does the school -- elected school board, which controls -- they had a right to hire and fire teachers. Well, the union say you can't fire these people, they have contracts. Well, if we can't fire teachers, what does it mean to have local control over a school?

SMITHSo we're having these discussions now, the civil rights movement are now saying there's something called equity and fairness and something called, you know, process here and we can't seem to do anything without running up against our friends, our buddies, because the unions have been bog supporters of the civil rights movement. So this issue starts out a little bit and it just goes on and on as these -- as we saw get the -- as we enforce the -- the nation enforces the '65 Voting Rights Act.

SMITHAnd then we get more and more people in the elected office. So -- but -- and that's where the jobs are. The jobs are in the -- the mayors -- the mayors of America control most of the jobs and the local -- and African Americans have done better with these mayors than they have in the private sector. We don't really compete with white in the private sector.

NNAMDIWhat was Barry specifically able to do that, in your view, constituted a revolution? Tom Sherwood has to go. Tom Sherwood, thank you so much.

SHERWOODThank you very much for being here. The idea...

SMITHBefore Tom goes, let me say this to Tom -- to this old white man from Georgia on this panel.

NNAMDIStarted from an old black man from Georgia to an old white man from Georgia. Yes.

SMITHYeah, yeah. So what did Marion Barry do? Marion Barry would walk into a room full of bond companies that were going to process the District government bonds and say, how come there ain't no white people in this room -- no black people in this room? Nothing but white men, they're doing this for years. He'd walk in the room and say, all you guys in the blue book, I know you all can do this deal.

SMITHThe first one of you all gets an African American with you, that's who I'm going with. And he'd walk out. Now, nobody that ever done that in America before, not and lived to tell about it.

SHERWOODWell, that was -- you would...

SMITHNobody that ever done that in America and lived to tell about it. He did it and he enforced it. And that's what he did. And he led these other citizens. I met a man out in Oakland, CA. I talked to somebody down in New Orleans. They said, Marion integrated Wall Street by forcing these people to bring African Americans there.

SHERWOODAnd this is something that -- this was the -- it was bringing African Americans legitimately into the business deals of government. This was done by Maynard Jackson in Atlanta, Herald Washington in Chicago.

SMITHIt started here.

SHERWOODBut I'm saying, but that was what was happening. People had been left out of all the business deals, even though they were part of the community.

SMITHIt started here.

JAFFESo as soon…

SHERWOODSo thank you very much for having me. I do have to go because I, you know, they pay me more on television.

JAFFESo as soon as Sherwood leaves I have a question for Sandy Allen.

NNAMDIThen we'll take a short break and we'll come back with Harry Jaffe's questions for Sandy Allen. And those of you who called in on the phone, we will get your calls in. 800-433-8850. We're remembering Marion Barry. You can also shoot us an email to kojo@wamu.org or a tweet, @kojoshow. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back. We're remembering Marion Barry, with Sandy Allen, former member of the D.C. Council, who represented Ward 8. Frank Smith is also a former member of the Council. He's a founding member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, and founder and director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum.

NNAMDIHarry Jaffe is national editor at Washingtonian and co-author of the book, "Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, D.C." It's now available for the first time as an e-book, through Amazon, complete with a new preface and afterward. Harry, you have a question for Sandy Allen?

JAFFERight. I understand all of the rosy view of Marion Barry and the hagiography that goes on when a great man like Marion passes. But, you know, putting aside his, you know, vast human frailties -- I don't have to tick them off, you know, drugs, alcohol, womanizing.

NNAMDIAllow me to read this email we got from Dionne. "I have no problem with Marion Barry's life being judged by his entire career, but should include the fact that he allowed the mismanagement and decay of almost every city agency during his tenure. No maintenance or repair of D.C. schools for 15 years. Nonexistent snow removal every winter. Countless agencies requiring judicial oversight. The list goes on. And don't forget his shameless and shameful use of divisive racial upheavals." Harry?

JAFFESo here's my question to Sandy Allen, Ward 8 is where, you know, the most poor folks, the most downtrodden neighborhoods, beset by drugs and violence, all the, you know, by far the greatest number of homicides occur over there. To what extent is Marion Barry -- and this is my biggest beef with him, actually, as a liberal white guy. My biggest beef is that he -- I don't think he did anything to improve the lives of the people that he purported to represent.

JAFFEThey elected him and I don't think that, you know, what did he do to improve the education, to improve the public safety? The person who started to move city agencies over into -- across the Anacostia River was Tony Williams, who got no love for that.

NNAMDIGot a lot of hatred for talking about moving UDC to Ward 8, as matter of fact. But Sandy Allen?

ALLENOne of the things that Marion could always do and he did it very well, even though it was not, let's say, economic development. It was the development of human capital, which really moved him a great distance. Marion can walk in a room, as we all know, and talk to John Doe and walk out and see John Doe four weeks later and call him by name. Those kinds of things were impression -- made impressions on the people in the community.

JAFFEWell, he was a masterful politician. Let's stipulate to that.

ALLENAnd that's…

JAFFEBut what did he actually do to improve the lives of the poor people who live in Ward 8?

ALLENAll right. He also signed some of the welfare reform laws that…

JAFFEDid he bring jobs to Ward 8?

ALLENHe brought as many as the economy would allow at the time that he was mayor. People didn't want to come to Ward 8. And it was not because of the crime. It was because it was disconnected from the rest of the city. It had nothing to do with…

JAFFEIsn't his -- isn't the council member's job to actually connect it to the rest of the city and bring the prosperity from the…

ALLENHe was…

JAFFE…West Side to the East Side?

ALLENAnd he was…

SMITHWell, Harry, let me jump in.

NNAMDII'm not finished yet. Because I was going to ask the same question to Frank Smith.

SMITHThat's right. And I want to jump in on it.

NNAMDIIs -- what can any city council member do? Because before Marion Barry there was Wilhelmina Rolark and there was Sandy Allen. And in Ward 1 there was Frank Smith and…

SMITHRight.

NNAMDI…now on his way out of Ward 1, but go ahead.

SMITHYeah, the -- I wanted to respond to that, Harry, because I represented the most diverse ward in the city. It was black, white, Hispanic, every -- west of Connecticut Avenue was a rich section of Ward 1. And on the side where I live now, going east toward Howard University, the ward got poorer. You lived over there for a while, on 9th Street, for a long time. You moved out of there because of drugs and stuff got so bad. And we build the African American Civil War Memorial for two purposes. One was to correct a great wrong in history, but the other one was to contribute to the economic revitalization of that area.

SMITHAnd that area now is being revitalized. And now people are saying that we are gentrifying the area and we're pushing all the poor people out of there and things like that. So it seems like we're always caught between one extreme or the other. You've got poverty going on so bad that people -- nobody wants to live there, including the black middle class. That's why you moved out of there. Nobody wants to live there. And then on the other hand you get whites moving back in there and the property values go up so much.

SMITHNow, it is true -- and I agree with some of these comments earlier about the government being dysfunctional during some of Barry's time and my time in government, too. We were out there cleaning alleys because we couldn't get the city to clean them. We -- it was a horrible time, really, to be in government. And I tell people that all the time. My children don't want to be in government now because they watched their daddy clean the streets. They said, I'm not going to do that.

JAFFESo at what point does Marion Barry bear the responsibility of that?

SMITHI think we…

NNAMDIWell, here's what…

SMITHI think we all bear -- wait a minute. I think we all bear the responsibility for this. And this is something that has -- does have to be cleaned up. And I think the District government is rich enough now and has enough money now so they can actually clean up some of these issues. And I'm distressed myself, Harry, that nobody here seems to be talking -- none of the current politicians seem to be talking about this in any kind of a serious way.

SMITHThis government is now rich enough and has enough income, it has -- we pay enough tickets and we pay enough property taxes, we have a large enough savings in the bank, so we can tackle some of these problems. And I look forward to seeing the Council and the mayor take some of this up.

NNAMDIAnd these are problems of class and race. And here is how Marion Barry responded to those questions.

BARRYThis city was racially polarized before I even came to Washington, in 1965. It is still racially polarized. It is geographically polarized, but more importantly, it's economically polarized. A white family, $101,000, a black family, $39,000. I didn't create that racial polarization. What happened, Tom, in my administration, I got 47 percent of the white vote in my first time out. But as I began to govern, the programs that I advocated appealed more to the needs of black people and not to the needs of white people.

BARRYTake job training, for instance. In the white community I get the impression that you don't need a government-sponsored job development program. You don't need subsidized housing. You don't need social services. Very few white people send their kids through educational -- to D.C. Public Schools. And so the programs I advocated, people could see and feel them. But the programs that white people would want to get involved in, you couldn't necessarily see and feel. For instance, Betty King (unintelligible) who you knew…

SHERWOODHad dinner with her less than a month ago.

BARRYYeah, people in Ward 3 are interested in taxes, trees, traffic…

SHERWOODPolice.

BARRY…trash…

SHERWOODCrime.

BARRY…and crime and good government.

NNAMDIHarry Jaffe, in all fairness, so far nobody has been able to bring prosperity to Ward 8, whether as a mayor or as the representative of that particular ward. But your turn.

JAFFEWell, I think that Mayor Tony Williams, for two terms, did a pretty good job of reforming the city government and managing it and training workers. I mean, Marion Barry hired a lot of people, but he didn't train a lot of people. I think that under Tony Williams for two terms the city functioned. The city started to work. And then it took Adrian Fenty to put his foot down and say, these schools are not educating our children.

JAFFEAnd he took over the schools. And, you know, there -- they still are in need of reform, but I think that we're on the right pathway. I wonder why Marion Barry, who started off on the school board, never saw that and never took that kind of action.

NNAMDIIt seems to me, though, that now that we have school reform in place, that the challenge for future leaders of this city is looking at a city that is rapidly being gentrified. The challenge for the future leaders of this city is how do you make sure that in the poorer wards of the city -- in particular Ward 7 and Ward 8 -- that there is available housing for people, that the schools in that part of the city are good? How do you meet that challenge, Frank Smith, Sandy Allen?

SMITHWell, first of all, I think when you drive around over there -- and I'm over there all the time. I was over there yesterday. As a matter of fact, I was in that march last night, from Barry's house to the Big Chair. And at one time we had a -- the African American Civil War Museum had a small grant to see if we could do some kind of economic tourism, economic development related to tourism in Ward 8. We were looking for a place, a rest spot over there big enough so you could move busses full of people and tourist sites over there in that neighborhood, which is something I think they need to develop.

SMITHIt is a challenge for the city. And I think, you know, I'm one of those guys who was in government four terms. Four terms on the city council, I never governed a single year when we had a budget surplus. We had deficits that grew every year that I was on -- over there.

NNAMDINow, you've got surpluses.

SMITHSo now that we've got -- I know. I don't know how to govern in times of surplus. These guys actually don't either because they're not doing much with it. But I think the opportunities are there. And I think this is something that we have to look forward to. I would say two things, one to the new mayor and to -- who's coming in in January and to -- something that I've said a long time ago. Washington, D.C. has more universities than it has high schools. Or it has as many high schools as it has universities now.

SMITHSome of these universities like G.W. have a school without walls, adopted these schools and whatever. These universities are tax exempt because they're doing something the city would be doing if it collected taxes -- educating people. So when you look at them, you ought to be asked -- you could ask how many African -- how many D.C. residents do they have enrolled in these schools. And there ought to be some kind of proportionate relationship between those two. Now there's a discussion where -- that I've had with the president of a couple of colleges here.

SMITHAnd I think the mayor, with a bully pulpit should pull these people together and start looking at how we get these -- it's true that Tony Williams -- I mean, that Mayor Fenty started a revolution in terms of rebuilding our schools. We've got some of the best-looking schoolhouses in America now. But guess what, 40 percent of our kids are in charter schools. And many of them are in warehouses on -- and that -- and we've got -- I've got them reading in charter school on one of my neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., that has many students that they got at Cardoza High School and they're in a warehouse.

SMITHSo we need to get that -- that worked out, too. And this is some -- there's an opportunity for this mayor and council to work out. And I'll think you'll see some action in that area.

NNAMDISandy Allen, hold your thought for a second, because Prince George's County executive Rushern Baker has a word or two to say. Rushern Baker, for those of you who may not knew it, grew up in the District of Columbia.

SMITHHe lived in Ward 1. I was his council member.

NNAMDISee there, Rushern Baker? Thank you so much for joining us.

MR. RUSHERN BAKERI am here. And what a very interesting conversation. And, yes, Councilmember Smith, you were my council member.

SMITHAbsolutely. Now, you're my daughter's council member out there.

NNAMDIYeah, your daughter's county executive.

SMITHYeah, yeah, my daughter lives out there in Bowie.

BAKERYeah, we're very pleased to have her out here. But I just wanted to join in on the conversation. Certainly, I, you know, as I remember Mayor Barry -- I always call him the mayor. In fact, probably the last conversation that my office had with him was making sure he was going make it out here to the inaugural, which he did when I first was inaugurated. And then the last conversation I had with him was on Election Day. Because many of the issues you're talking about, especially in Ward 8 and Ward 7, buttress Prince George's County.

BAKERAnd one of the things we're trying to do with our transforming neighborhood, work together. So on Election Day I went to Ward 8 and met the incoming mayor and Mayor Barry. And I had my son with me. And I told my son before we got out of the car, I said, you know, "Mayor Barry gave me my first job." And…

NNAMDIMy sons, too.

BAKERAnd sure enough, you know, when he -- when I introduced my son to Mayor Barry, he said, "I gave your father his first job."

NNAMDIYes. He would remember that.

BAKERHe would. He had a very, you know, great memory. And one of the things -- if I can just say this -- we -- as I listened to the conversation, you know, he had a complex administration. He had four of them, you know. I'm going into the second and it's just -- the first terms -- I say to anybody -- the first two terms of the Barry administration I thought were the best government run, you know executives in America.

BAKERI think Barry I and Barry II, I think on how you include as much as possible all of the city -- and as I said I was a resident there -- and services, and making people feel that government can actually respond to you. You know, you don't -- you can't always solve the problems, but people who feel like government, it can help, then in that sense I think you can…

NNAMDIYou cannot do a Baker III and IV, right? Because you're term limited.

BAKERI am term limited. This is it.

NNAMDIThis is it for you.

JAFFESo and if there were term limits here, Marion Barry would be a hero.

NNAMDIYeah, that's because Barry I and Barry II were very good. Rushern, I'm very sorry, we're just about out of time. And I just wanted to thank you for joining the conversation and putting in your two bits.

BAKERThank you. And you guys have a great day.

NNAMDISandy Allen, I interrupted you when I was talking about how you see the future of the city in general and of Ward 8 in particular.

ALLENWell, I'll have to say that I see Ward 8 growing. WE are now moving into a new era in Ward 8. There's a new population. When Mayor Barry became council member and I left, there was only 11 percent homeownership in Ward 8. That has grown tremendously. More people -- if you put a house on the market in Ward 8, in Anacostia, it only stays for two or three days. So that lets you know that people are now coming. We're getting ready -- and all of this is because Councilmember Barry made sure that his -- that the agencies responsible for housing and of the people, knew that he needed -- they needed something to make them want to come.

NNAMDIUsing his bully pulpit, which is what he always did. I'm afraid we're just about out of time, except I have to read from Bill Duggan of Merry -- Madam's Organ. He says, "Marion Barry would stop in at Madam's Organ over the past 15, 20 years for what he called his rib fix. But the fun part was that on almost every visit he'd ask to get up and sing with the band. Usually starting with 'Stormy Monday.' He sang with the late great Bobby Parker, with soulful Stacey Brooks, and even with former Hungarian ambassador to the U.S. Of course he knew how to work the crowd and the place would go wild. A video of his last 10-minute performance with Bobby Parker last year is now being loaded onto Madam's Organ website."

NNAMDIYes, he loved to sing, if not that well.

JAFFEHe was the best at that.

NNAMDIHarry Jaffe is national editor at Washingtonian and co-author of, "Dream City: Race, Power and the Decline of Washington, D.C." Harry, thanks for joining us.

JAFFEI was happy to lend my voice and my recollections.

NNAMDIFrank Smith is a former member of the D.C. Council, founding member of Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, founder and director of the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum. Frank, always a pleasure. And Sandy Allen is a former member of the D.C. Council who represented Ward 8. Thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.