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Marion Barry, Jr To Give Keynote Address For DuBois Business Summit In Greenbelt, Maryland

Lanham, MD (PRWEB) October 30, 2004

The presenters of the Dubois Business Summit, scheduled for November 18, 2004 at Martin’s Crosswinds are excited to announce their Luncheon Keynote Speaker, Marion Barry, Jr. Mr. Barry, the charismatic former mayor of the nation’s capital, will speak on the topic, “African-American Entrepreneurial Empowerment: Creating The Plan.”

Mr. Barry is a native of Mississippi. After coming to Washington, DC in 1965 to establish a local chapter for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he went on to become “the most dominant politician in the nation’s capital.” Marion Barry, Jr. has served on the District of Columbia Board of Education, City Council and as Mayor, which he held for 16 years.

Marion Barry, Jr. is credited by many with reshaping the District’s ailing economy and finances by first introducing an accounting system to determine the city’s exact financial standing. In 1984 he watched as Wall Street greeted the District as it moved into the bond market with the highest credit rating possible. Mr. Barry also created an Office of Business Development to attract businesses to the District.

Mr. Barry took office as mayor in January 1979, assembling a team of top aides from the ranks of the civil rights movement and declaring he would reform the government he inherited, reduce a staggering deficit, empower citizens and rebuild a sense of “community.” Jefferson Rogers, who has known Marion Barry, Jr. since 1962, characterizes him as “the most effective cultural politician” in recent modern history, a Mississippi sharecropper’s son who learned to be tough.

Mr. Barry has built a legacy of championing for those individuals and causes that have been sorely disenfranchised. When he first became mayor, Mr. Barry says the city had “mostly all-white people doing all the work, making all the money.” Throughout his years, Mr. Barry pushed hard to increase the number of D.C. contracts going to minority contractors. When he arrived, he says the number was about 3 percent; it was 47 percent when he left.

At the age of 68, Marion Barry, Jr. has re-entered the world of politics with his recent overwhelming election as a District of Columbia City Councilperson representing Ward 8. Mr. Barry has been called a “quick study in terms of seeing the importance of a particular project’s economic value.” He wasted no time in building bridges to the business community, holding weekly brown bag lunches that had, by the end of his first year in office, included 400 to 500 business people.

“When you want to understand the complexities of working through both the federal and a local bureaucracy, to create a plan for economic empowerment for minority residents & businesses, and overall social reform, there is no one better to hear from than the ‘DC Mayor for life’ Marion Barry, Jr.,” says Joshua Smith, Chairman of the Summit and President/CEO of the Coaching Group, LLC. “I believe that we will gain positive insight on the visions of Mr. Barry and how he views the economic climate for today’s African American Businesses.”

The Dubois Business Summit is designed for the business owners in the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan area to come together and learn how to improve and grow their business and to network with other successful business owners. The Summit is being brought to you through the collaborative efforts of: The Harlem Remembrance Foundation, Prince George’s Black Chamber of Commerce, The Maryland/DC Minority Suppliers Council, Maryland Small Business Development Center, and the Prince George’s County Minority Business Opportunities Commission.

For more information on the summit or for sponsorship opportunity please contact Tomeka Johnson of The CAMMAY Group, LLC at 301-918-8418 or check the website at http://www.pghrf.org/dubois.

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Contact:                             

Tomeka Johnson or

Carolyn Mills-Matthews

(301) 918-8418

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