Photo of the wax Marion Barry from Madame Tussaud’s by pollyesther

The legends we celebrate during Black History Month are manifold, and the District is fortunate that heroes from Frederick Douglass to Charles Drew called Washington home. But as February comes to a close, the Root examines the more notorious figures from black history, summoning a rogue’s gallery of 21 individuals that they’d just as soon forget altogether. Number one on this list? Right up front, there’s hizzoner: former mayor and current Ward 8 Council member Marion Barry.

Now, Barry is well known to the nation as a man of appetites, and perhaps better known by his friends and enemies closer to home as a politician who neither takes money that isn’t owed to him nor pays money that he owes in a timely fashion. But Idi Amin, who the Root names at #17? There is a bad, bad man for you. Idi Amin, our Mayor for Life is not.

Marion Barry’s crimes are more pop-cultural than political, at least considered along the Root’s spectrum, which runs from Barry and former Baltimore mayor (and The Wire inspiration) Sheila Dixon to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and El Jefe — two other very, very bad men who close out the list. It would appear that the listicle ranks these figures, in the main, by ascending order of heinousness — with Barry ranked relatively least offensive, Rafael Trujillo out there beyond the pale, and Omarosa falling somewhere in the middle. Middle, but closer to the war criminals. Sounds about right.