By: Rene Childress

We will be continuing on our journey through the maelstrom that is the plight of African-Americans in post Civil War America. I say this because the elements that plunged this Nation into the thunderclap of civil war have not been resolved. The descendants of former slaves are still to this day being brutally victimized simply because of the color of their skin. We can look back over more than  a hundred and fifty years and we cannot find a decade of our history where there is not a mass murder or the lynching of African-Americans.

So to keep our conversation cogent with this premise, I have chosen to look into the twenty-first century. Our current episode takes us to the city of Buffalo, New York. 

It is a warm 79 degree  spring day. The skies are partly cloudy. It is a regular Saturday afternoon around 2:30 PM. 

The date is May 14, 2022. The staccato of gunfire shatters the solemnity of this warm spring day. Four customers at the “Tops Friendly Market “ are summarily executed in the parking lot as they were entering and exiting their vehicles in the parking lot. 

Their assailant turns his attention to the store and the occupants inside. He enters the store and begins hunting down and shooting the customers in the store all the while mouthing racial slurs against African-Americans. The final toll is thirteen shot, 10 dead. All the dead are African-Americans. 

He is armed with an AR-style rifle. It has been illegally modified to accept high capacity magazines. He has written on one of his weapons the racial slur “Nigger”. He is finally subdued by the Buffalo police after his shooting spree. He leaves in his wake ten people that will never be in the bosom of their family and friends.

They are: Celestine Chaney a 65 year old grandmother of nine and a greatgrand-mother of nine who along with her sister were at the “Tops’ market looking for small dessert cups, Andre MacNeil 53 years old was at “Tops'' buying a birthday cake for his three year old son, Katherine Massey 72 years old a  community minded block club member Matriarch was dropped off by one of her relatives to do her Saturday shopping, Ruth Whitfield 86 years old was also dropped off to do some shopping after coming from her daily visit to her husband of 68 years who has been confined to a nursing home, Roberta Drury 32 years old was at “Tops” to shop for the family of her adoptive brother who is recovering from Leukemia, Aaron Salter 55 years old, a respected pillar of the community a retired Buffalo P.D. lieutenant lost his life confronting the heavily armed assailant, Heyward Patterson 67  years old, a driver was picking up groceries for a client when he was gunned down, Pearl Young 77 years old a mother, grandmother and church mother was dropped off at “Tops'' after attending Saturday service to pick up a few things for Sunday dinner, Margus Morrison 52 years old was making a quick stop by “Tops” to stock up on some goodies for the weekly family movie night, Geraldine Talley 62 years old the mother of three stopped by “Tops” to get some luncheon meats for sandwiches.

They are all at different ages and stages in their lives. They all had different lives and outcomes and experiences. The two things they had in common on this tragic day was their skin color and their assailant. 

I will not use the assailants name. His description is a white male. He is 18 years of age. He lives over two hundred miles away from Buffalo in almost exclusively white township. 

He traveled three and a half hours twice to Buffalo. One trip was to conduct surveillance looking for the best killing field. The second time to carry out his heinous and cowardly deed. 

This young man is a product of our country refusing to address the institutional and cultural realities held over from slavery and its resultant segregation. America has not truly had a come to Jesus moment like the Germans. They don’t hide their racial atrocities. There are monuments large and small all over Germany indeed all over Europe exposing what happened during the rise of Fascism and Holocaust. The Germans teach their children never again.

Our current approach is to stick our children’s heads in the sand and complain  that these “Worst Stories Ever Told” are unfit for childrens’ ears. Some among  us feel white children will  believe they are guilty for their ancestors’ actions. How ridiculous. 

We should seize the narrative and tell them that right alongside the white nationalist there were  also the true forefathers and torchbearers of democracy. 

Our true story is that America has always been a beacon for freedom. We have also always had an undercurrent that has consistently been undemocratic and racist. It continually raises its head through the generations. We can only ensure that this beacon burns brightly by highlighting our ugly underbelly not by ignoring it. On to the next story.