The former mayor of Washington, D.C., Marion Barry, died at age 78 on Sunday, the Associated Press reported.

Barry is known for his fighting spirit. He was first a leader in the south for the civil rights movement, and later in D.C., while pursuing strong local government for the city to manage its own affairs rather than by Congress.

But his success during his four terms, beginning in the late 1970s, was overshadowed by his arrest for drug use during a crack cocaine epidemic.

It occurred when he was found one night in 1990 lighting a crack pipe, and caught on video during an FBI sting operation, ending his career in the capital. He was caught in a motel with a much younger woman and famously uttered, "Bitch set me up."

His family said he died at the United Medical Center, after having been released from another hospital Saturday because he collapsed outside his home. No cause of death was given.

President Barack Obama remembered the former mayor in a speech Sunday.

"Marion was born a sharecropper's son, came of age during the Civil Rights movement, and became a fixture in D.C. politics for decades," Obama said. "As a leader with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Marion helped advanced the cause of civil rights for all. During his decades in elected office in D.C., he put in place historic programs to lift working people out of poverty, expand opportunity and begin to make real the promise of home rule."

Washington's new mayor-elect Muriel Bowser praised the inspirational legacy Barry left behind, including his establishment of jobs for black families for generations.

"He has left a strong legacy for so many young people to follow," Bowser told AP. "He has left lessons about how he helped people in this city that will carry on for years and years to come."