- Mayor of Washington D.C. during the early 1990's, Barry was arrested, convicted and served time for possession of crack cocaine. He later was elected to the city council and then re-elected mayor.
- Stepfather of Lalanya Masters.
- Was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.
- During his years at college, fraternity brothers gave him the middle name Shepilov, after Dimitri Shepilov, a purged member of the Soviet Communist Party.
- Third of ten children born to Marion Barry, Sr. and Mattie Cummings Barry. His father died when Barry was in elementary school and his mother moved the family to Memphis, Tennessee, USA for better employment prospects than small town rural Itta Bena, Mississippi, USA.
- His nickname, "Shep," was given to him by friends when he first became a nationally known civil rights leader, and was a reference to a politician from the Soviet Union, Dmitri Shepilov, who, while Shepilov was the Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs, participated in a plot to oust Soviet leader 'Nikita Khrushchev in 1957. Barry readily adopted the nickname, and even took the full last name as his own middle name (Barry had not been given a middle name on his birth certificate), thereafter being known as Marion Shepilov Barry, Jr.
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