Marion Barry Jr. was born March 6, 1936 in Itta Bena, Mississippi to Marion Barry Sr. and Mattie Cummings, a family of sharecroppers. Mattie was 17 when her son was born. She eventually fled the difficult life and remarried.
Barry Jr. worked a variety of jobs over the course of his childhood. An incident at one of those jobs would spark his civil rights activism.
