“You gon’ come to our city and decide you don’t like Black people. Man, you don’t know a damn thing about Black people…We never go to no neighborhoods and take people out.”

Barbara Massey Mapps, sister to victim Kat Massey, 2/15/2023

      Two years ago on 5/14 a white boy drove 200 miles to Buffalo in a military kit worth over $2000 to kill Black people. Which he did. On that day, at approximately 2:30 pm, hundreds of lives were ruptured.  Personal life stories are now framed by “before” and “after”.  Or as survivor Fragrance Stanfield said, “The person I was literally died on May 14th and I am a different person.  I am somebody else.”

     The counter to the massacre by the victims of that day is humbling. They’ve been speaking about their love for those who died, exposing their raw wounds, and sharing their struggles for survival — for some against leaving the house, for others against using alcohol to numb their pain — since and still.

     Imagine what it takes to make one’s grief, pain and rage so public just to get people to see the ugly reality and danger of White Supremacy.   “White supremacy”.  Words insufficient to the describe the insidious and often silent character of its power. A power not of individual White people but, a power of ideas, values, and most importantly practices. (Even so, we Whites know that we live our lives with a certain kind of ease and without a certain kind of pain.)

     Next, listen to Mr. Garnell Whitfield, Jr., whose 86 year-old mother, Mrs. Ruth E. Whitfield,  was murdered that day:

     “Remember where this country came from. Remember what’s been done to us. Generationally.  Remember that. You want to honor my Mom’s legacy? Remember where she came from and how she had to struggle her entire life because she was a Black woman in America. Remember, she died, not being completely accepted and free.”

       Deserving of acknowledgement are those who have forced their wounds into calls for justice and action. Think of The Pursuit of tRuth Conference or the food drives by the children of Geraldine Talley along with the non-profit, Agents for Advocacy, started by her son, Mark.  Think of The Lieutenant Aaron Salters Memorial Scholarship Foundation, established by Salter’s lifelong friend and colleague, Earl Perrin, Jr. or the vacant city-owned lots that are now maintained by Damone Mapps, in honor of his murdered aunt Kat Massey, who cared for them when she was alive. Think of NPR’s “Buffalo, What’s Next?”

     Turning anguish into action, out of survival, is something Black Americans have done since their enslaved bodies were first brought to this land. Think of Margaret Garner, who in 1856 killed her two-year old daughter with a butcher’s knife rather than see her returned to slavery. Think of Mamie Till, who in the midst of her grief insisted that the casket containing Emmett’s brutalized body be left open because, in her words, “I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby.”      

     For too many, still, Black lives don’t matter.

     At last year’s “Moment of Remembrance” I watched the faces of the seated guests of honor — relatives of the murdered and wounded — as they listened to the elected officials that spoke.  Mayor Byron Brown, Governor Kathy Hochul  and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer. They looked exhausted sitting under that tent, feeling the weight of the air and the weight of the day. Again, they tempered their rage and made public their grief.  With the police presence so heavy it felt like an intrusion.      

     I left. I do not know how the families or Black Buffalo got through not just that memorial, on that now sacred tarmac, but that day — Mother’s Day no less.

     I think of the victims’ direct descendants. They will carry the weight of the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of that day and its aftermath. They will inherit 5/14 as a post-memory. They will absorb many of the stories, images, and feelings as if they were their own. 5/14 will become their dominant experience and their invested narrative.

    That man/boy who did this, and all of his accomplices, should be charged with the crime of causing generational trauma.  

      To commemorate 5/14 we must stay present and honor those who died and those who survived. We must remember that 5/14 is still so very raw for so many people. We must salute the collective responses to such hate.  Lastly, we must acknowledge and honor the continuous history and legacy of Black love and Black resistance.