Washington D.C. has unveiled a statue of Marion Barry, the controversial former mayor who served time in federal prison for smoking crack cocaine.
Barry, who died in 2014 at 78, served four terms as mayor of the District of Columbia and another 16 years on city council, WTTG-TV reported. The eight-foot statue was commissioned by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
D.C. council member Brandon Todd said on Twitter that the statue was a "fitting honor" for Barry.
"Sometime after Dr. King had a dream and before President Obama gave us hope, Marion Barry provided opportunity," current D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said.
Bowser attended Saturday’s unveiling of the statue of the city's "Mayor for Life" with the district's U.S. House Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton and Barry's widow, Cora Masters Barry, per WTTG-TV.
A civil rights activist who came to D.C. from Memphis, Barry was elected mayor for the first time in 1978 but would be later dogged by charges of corruption, erratic behavior, and drug and alcohol abuse, Fox News reported.
A 1990 sting operation that entrapped him in a cocaine possession charge during his third term as mayor made national headlines and sent him to federal prison for six months, but a jury deadlocked on more serious charges, Fox News said.
Barry's popularity remained high among D.C. residents and he won a seat on city council again in 1992 after his release from prison and then his fourth term as mayor in 1994, per Fox News. He left politics but was elected again to city council in 2005 and remained there until his death.
"Even though I have great admiration for what Barry did for the city, I also had my disappointments," Rod Woodson, a D.C. lobbyist, told the Washington Business Journal. "But he was an extraordinarily engaging and intuitive politician.”
"Let's start with 14th Street. He said building the Reeves Center would draw people to 14th Street to do business with the D.C. government and it would energize the area. It did. The placement of Verizon Center was another prescient act. D.C. benefited from his stewardship. No doubt about it."