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BUFFALO – Less than 24 hours after an armed man stormed the grocery store where Tony Marshall had worked for years, killing 10, Marshall returned to the top.
He turned the hot dog over on a grill just outside the perimeter of the warning strip, handing it out to mourners and passersby. While working, he wore a red shirt with the Tops Friendly Markets logo. “It’s a public store,” said Marshall, 59. “It means everything to us.”
This was the opinion shared by many in this mostly black part of the city. For the residents, the peaks were more than just a source of food and medicine. In a neighborhood with few shops or public places, the grocery store was a place for public events and gifts, a place for meetings and gatherings.
“It was more than a shop. It was a place where you could meet a friend, relative, girlfriend, “said Jerome Bridges, another Tops employee who survived the attack by barricading himself and several others in a conference room. A place to go out, shop and have a good conversation while you do it.
Many East Side residents said they sometimes spend their free time in the Tops parking lot, having long conversations with people who look like complete strangers, that is, strangers, until they find out they live a block away from each other or are members of an extended family or often visit the same restaurant.
This sense of community is needed, Marshall said, as a form of protection in a city where many black people face discrimination and abuse throughout their lives.
Buffalo is the seventh most segregated city in the country for black Americans, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. The black population had an average household income of $ 28,320 in 2019, according to a report by the University of Buffalo, with 31 percent poverty. White people have an income of $ 49,156 and a poverty rate of 9.1 percent.
“I’m crazy about Buffalo, I love him here; it can be a beautiful city, ”said Regina Williams, 59, sitting in a car with her daughter and granddaughter near the Tops. But it is so segregated that they have to do something about it. They are not doing anything about it. Nothing. “
In the first few days after the shooting, many residents here saw the horrific act of racial violence as one of the many injustices that permeated their lives and sometimes for generations.
Even the fact that the East Side has such a concentration of blacks is in itself the result of discriminatory practices, residents said. And it was this segregation that turned the neighborhood into a target for the 18-year-old shooter, who maintains racist and white views of supremacy.
“Someone four hours away knows where to come to target blacks. You don’t even live in this community, but you know where to come to get all the blacks. That’s sad, “said Shirley Hart, carrying a plate of one of Marshall’s freshly baked hot dogs. “This is the experience of the Black Man in America. We all deal with this, in one aspect or another. It may not be so much in our hands, but we are experiencing it. “
The center of Buffalo is on its western side, embracing the Niagara River, which separates New York from Canada. There are lush green parks with benches or art inside. The streets are smooth. The trees are large and abundant.
But when you drive farther, and especially after you meet the main street, the landscape begins to change. The roads are getting rougher. There are fewer trees. Empty batches appear more often. The corner shops are scattered around, but there are also covered with boards.
Jefferson Avenue, in eastern Buffalo, is the busiest strip in the area. The library, radio stations, barbershops and cigar shops are on or near the street. It’s the same with the tops.
The grocery store was built in 2003 after a long community campaign. Before it opened, neighbors had few options for a supermarket.
“Everyone goes to Tops because she’s in a hood,” said Tara “Judy” Clark, 58, standing in front of the Buffalo Community Fridge food closet. She was carrying a bag of products she had just picked up.
James Baldwin nodded, adding that there are few public parks or other gathering places in eastern Buffalo so locals can get to know the peaks. And many residents avoid driving because they are afraid of the police, said Baldwin, 60.
“We like to stay close because we are stopped if we dare to go out,” he said.
He said that even just being on the corner of the street – as he was doing at the time with Clark nearby – made him nervous because he was exposing him to the police patrolling the area. You never know when an officer might show up and “make a problem out of it,” Baldwin said.
“The only time we can have fun or meet other people is to go shopping,” Clark said. Now she is afraid to go, worried that the shooter may return to her community.
“The devil was really, very busy with this man,” she said.
Baldwin quickly replied, “This is not the devil. This is America. They made it, they raised it, they put it there. ”
Buffalo’s large and vibrant black community can be traced back to the early and mid-1900s, when black people fleeing racist violence in the South came to Buffalo as part of the Great Migration. They were drawn to his composure, the freedom he offered by Jim Crow’s laws, and the abundance of jobs. Buffalo was once one of the largest centers for the production of steel and flour for grinding and was a railway center.
With the rise of the black community, red lines, urban renewal, and other practices have displaced it in the East, which has become the beating heart of black life in Buffalo. It has “a very cultural history that dates back a long way, mainly focused on the African-American community,” said Carl Nightingale, a professor of Buffalo history. “Full of all sorts of wonderful blues clubs, jazz clubs, hip-hop clubs, barbecues, soul food venues.”
Since then, the community has fought for recognition and equal status. But the failures were numerous.
In 1958, employees built Kensington Highway, a highway project that virtually separated the neighborhood from the rest of the city. Many of the shops and boutiques that relied on traffic to and from the business center had to close their doors.
In 1972, the Buffalo Bills moved from the East Side to the suburbs. Several businesses that served visitors to the football stadium were forced to close.
To this day, if you drive on roads that were once surrounded by city travelers, the old structures remain – boarded up shop windows and abandoned homes. Long, empty city blocks full of grass and garbage.
The last battle is gentrification. Some locals told the government entices luxury apartments and high-rise buildings in the city center, which leads to rising house prices in the city. East Side residents are worried that they will be more expensive in their own neighborhood.
“They build it in the community, and the people who live in the community can’t even afford it,” said Angela Stewart, 61, a pastor who grew up on the East Side but no longer lives there. “I think it’s kind of crazy. How do they even get along if you plan to treat them that way? “
Residents say police brutality is also a problem. Yvonne King, who lives near the Cannons, said she drives her 16-year-old son to and from school, although it is only a few blocks away because she fears the police.
Despite the difficulties, the community has somehow flourished.
In 2007, East Side members formed the United Buffalo Front to address issues in their community, from police to food insecurity and education.
In 2016, the East Side Bike Club came to life. Every Saturday, East Sider residents wear neon T-shirts and ride bicycles – donated to those who don’t have their own – all over town. As cars signal support, residents can see different parts of their community and learn a new way to exercise or transport.
The club has workshops for residents to learn the rules of the road and how to repair their own bikes.
On Saturday, they will be in Martin Luther King Jr. Park at 9:30 a.m., driving around their East Side neighborhood.
They will pass the peaks that were once a source of community and food. They will mourn the people who have lost, and they will remember another institution from the East taken away from them – this time, hopefully, only temporarily.
“This is America. The system was not created for us, it was built on our backs, “Hart said. “It’s sad, but unfortunately we’re just used to it and we’re dealing with the hand they gave us.”
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