Legions of D.C. residents are expected to converge on the 1800 block of Good Hope Road Southeast this weekend in honor of Marion S. Barry Jr., for whom the corridor has been officially renamed.
The D.C. Council approved legislation earlier this year that changes Good Hope Road to Marion Barry Avenue. While the name change, for some residents, brings about anxiety about demographic changes on the horizon, others, like “Presto,” have wholeheartedly embraced it.
Presto, an organizer and music producer, said that Barry’s legacy will evoke pride along a corridor that has experienced exorbitant violence, the likes of which claimed the life of his best friend Bernard “BJ” Hodges and, most recently, injured one of the young people Presto serves through his nonprofit, Project Purpose DC.
Presto recounted watching then-Ward 8 Council member Barry help Ron Moten and Juahar Abraham of Peaceoholics broker a truce between his neighborhood, Choppa City, and Woodland Terrace. He said that experiencing that moment with Hodges and other young people inspired his decision to join the Marine Corps in 2007.
Presto would serve and rise through the ranks of the Marines for a decade. He later returned to his old stomping grounds to help young people, just as he said Barry did for him and several others. For Veterans Day, Presto and other members of Project Purpose DC took a group of young people to the National Museum of the Marine Corps, located not far from Marine Corps Base Quantico in Prince William County, Virginia, where he was stationed for two years.
On Nov. 16, Project Purpose is scheduled to host “Healing through Poetry” at the Capitol Hill Boys Club Artist Gallery on Marion Barry Avenue. That event features Queen Gwalla the DC Poetess and a slew of other spoken word artists, some of whom hail from the Anacostia community.
Presto said this counts among numerous efforts to help young people explore their interests and overcome the allure of the streets. Though he expressed doubt that conditions would change overnight with the renaming of Good Hope Road, Presto told The Informer that people can unify around Barry’s legacy to improve their lives.
“This is a good way to hit ‘reset,’” Presto said. “Marion Barry did a lot for our people. As long as that street is named Marion Barry Avenue, young people will look up and say his name. He fought [for us] and was on the ground. The impact is definitely felt [because] a lot of us went right when we could’ve gone left. That’s a great thing.”
Further Cementing the ‘Mayor for Life’s’ Legacy
During the latter part of April, Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) signed into law the Marion Barry Avenue Designation Act of 2023, which officially designated Good Hope Road in Southeast as Marion Barry Avenue.
This milestone follows the 2018 unveiling of a statue in Barry’s likeness outside of the John A. Wilson Building in Northwest and the naming of a room in Busboys and Poets’ Anacostia location in Barry’s honor a year later.
Council members Trayon White (D-Ward 8), Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4), Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), Matt Frumin (D-Ward 3), Robert White (D-At Large), Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7), Anita Bonds (D-At Large), Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), Christina Henderson (I-At Large), Kenyan McDuffie (I-At Large), and Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1) introduced the legislation in January.
The council unanimously approved it during two readings in March and April.
An emergency declaration designated the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Operations and Infrastructure, along with any other office of the mayor’s choosing, as the entity responsible for helping residents and business owners living along Good Hope Road secure identification and other documentation reflecting the name change.
Barry, widely known as D.C.’s “mayor for life,” died on Nov. 23, 2014, at the age of 78. At the time of his death, Barry was in his third consecutive term as Ward 8 D.C. council member.
Throughout his nearly 50-year political career, Barry served as an at-large school board member, at-large D.C. council member, Ward 8 D.C. Council member, and, most notably, as D.C. mayor. He did so, at times, with overwhelming support across the District, especially from residents living east of the Anacostia River.
Barry, who served as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, made history in 1979 when he became the first civil rights activist elected mayor of a major U.S. city. His most notable accomplishments as mayor include the D.C. Summer Youth Employment Program that many D.C. residents credit with giving them their first job. He also expanded the D.C. government and shepherded contacts to minority-owned firms, which in turn expanded D.C.’s Black middle class.
By the late 1980s, amid an explosion in crack cocaine use, D.C.’s murder rate skyrocketed and the local government experienced deficits that affected essential city services. All the while, Barry’s drug and alcohol abuse became more of a focal part, which inspired a federal investigation.
In 1990, Barry suffered the only electoral loss of his political career when Sharon Pratt Kelly defeated him in his mayoral reelection bid. At the time, Barry was standing trial for drug possession charges stemming from an FBI sting.
Upon his conviction and release from federal prison in 1992, Barry reentered D.C. politics. He ran for the Ward 8 council seat under the slogan “He May Not Be Perfect, But He’s Perfect for D.C.” defeating the incumbent Wilhelmina Rolark. In 1994, he secured another mayoral term when he defeated Kelly.
That moment in D.C. politics, in part, affirmed Barry’s resonance with D.C.’s mostly Black electorate.
Years later, under intense pressure from congressional Republicans and the D.C. Control Board, Barry decided not to run for mayor again. He spent the rest of his life and political career as a consultant, and mostly as the Ward 8 council member. In that capacity, he advocated for economic development, criticized the marginalization of Black businesses in the ward, and continued his grassroots work with many of those who would continue in his stead, including Ward 8 Council member White.
White, in his second term as Ward 8 council member, often mentions Barry and the late William O. Lockridge among his mentors. White’s office opted to reserve comment about the renaming for the ceremony, scheduled for Nov. 18.
Going Beyond a Street Renaming
Marion Barry Avenue starts at downtown Anacostia at Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and extends east into Ward 7 to Naylor Road and Alabama Avenue in Southeast. In recent years, the D.C. Department of Transportation and other agencies have set their sights on improving traffic flow at the intersection of Marion Barry Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue.
The corridor has also experienced a bit of economic development with the opening of storefronts and sit-down restaurants. However, residents and advisory neighborhood commissions, in particular, have expressed frustration with open-air drug markets, the presence of a methadone clinic and liquor stores, and violent crime.
In October, Council member Pinto conducted a public safety walk along portions of Marion Barry Avenue. The Office of Deputy Mayor for Public Safety is expected to provide a report in December about long-term interagency responses to substance use along the corridor.
As reported in a previous Informer story, a Bowser administration official said that move is in deference to residents who are frustrated with plans that haven’t seemed to work.
Muralist and teaching artist Mark Garrett said he sees the newly named Marion Barry Avenue as a call to the D.C. government to directly improve the material conditions of the people along the corridor. He told The Informer that anything less than that would be an affront to the values that Barry represented.
Earlier this year, Garrett and his colleague Dietrich Williams turned a vacant laundromat on the 1600 block of Good Hope Road into the Capitol Hill Boys Club Artist Gallery.
Garrett said the space facilitates the development and representation of artists from Wards 7 and 8 who’ve been left out of mainstream galleries. He told The Informer that the gallery’s location gives him and Williams access to those who they’ve always wanted to represent.
They have set out to accomplish that goal through an artist residency program, art club, and long-term relationships with neighborhood elementary and middle schools.
In December, the Capitol Hill Boys Club Artist Gallery will host a showcase that features art created by an Anacostia resident who lost his life earlier this year. Garrett said he’s conducting that showcase with support from the artist’s family, particularly his widow, who’s also an artist.
This project follows the completion of a mural in honor of the late Hodges.
In speaking about the violence and drug activity that has overtaken soon-to-be Marion Barry Avenue, Garrett noted what he described as the bigger picture. He said that residents can’t easily access a full-service grocery store within walking distance of their homes. This is one of several quality-of-life issues that deserve the city’s attention, Garrett told The Informer.
“There’s a froth of money that wasn’t here during Marion Barry’s time to usher in all the changes needed to create a new scenario,” Garrett said. “But it doesn’t always include the likes of poor and disenfranchised people having a livable wage, affordable housing and access to safe and healthy grocery stores. It goes to show you that in the heart of Anacostia, there are changes that need to be made.”
If people knew Good Hope Road’s rich history and Naylor Road named after a slave owner would’ve been a perfect street renamed after Marion Barry Avenue. D. C. Council Members sold us out period!