Barry placed African Americans in thousands of middle- and upper-level management positions in the city government that in previous generations had been reserved for whites, according to the Washington Post.
“He was really the architect of creating a local government infrastructure in the early days of home rule,” Frederick D. Cooke Jr., Barry’s longtime friend and attorney, told the Post in 2014. “He helped it to diversify to be more inclusive. It had been a stilted, segregated entity, and he made it possible for people to believe they could have a seat at the table.”
