From Publishers Weekly
Elected mayor of Washington, D.C., in 1978, sharecropper's son Marion Barry Jr., a leading civil rights activist, began a descent into cocaine and alcohol addiction and demagoguery that mirrored the racially polarized city's decline. Jaffe, an editor of Washingtonian magazine, and WRC-TV political reporter Sherwood suggest that nearly two centuries of congressional domination of the capital, disenfranchisement and white racism have stunted local political traditions in Washington, creating a vacuum filled by power broker Barry. They blame the former mayor (sentenced in 1990 to six months in jail after a drug bust) for whipping up racial animosity, setting whites against blacks and scuttling a prime opportunity for advancing racial harmony. Their chronicle of the dream city turned urban nightmare sweeps from the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., in 1968, and the real estate boom and crack epidemic of the 1980s to the beleaguered administration of Barry's successor, Sharon Pratt Kelly.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Journalists Jaffe and Sherwood, long-time Washington, D.C., residents, have covered that city's politics for many years. Their book is based on interviews with over 200 people (but not former mayor Marion Barry) and a variety of other sources, including congressional hearings and reports, police and court records, and journalistic accounts. While the book traces the history of the city from the Civil War to the present, its central reference point is the 1992 murder of Tom Barnes, a young intern for Alabama senator Richard Shelby, a few blocks from the Capitol and the racial turmoil that arose when the senator questioned the ability of the largely African American government to run the city. Tracing former mayor Barry's career from his civil rights activism to his drug conviction, the authors provide a highly unflattering portrait of his weaknesses for sex, drugs, and political corruption. For them, Barry symbolizes both the tension between civil rights activists and Washington's African American middle class and the promise and subsequent failure of the social programs of the 1960s. Of interest to scholars of civil rights history, urban history, and political science; recommended for academic and larger public libraries.
William Waugh Jr., Georgia State Univ., Atlanta
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
William Waugh Jr., Georgia State Univ., Atlanta
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
