Buffalo's Road to Recovery

Fragrance Harris Stanfield: I haven't been inside the fencing around store since the FBI left, so this is different.

Trymaine Lee: On the morning of July 14th, I was riding in the passenger seat of Fragrance Harris Stanfield’s black Ford Expedition. Fragrance was driving through East Buffalo in Buffalo, New York, to the corner of Jefferson and Laurel, headed to the Tops grocery store, where she began working in December of last year. Fragrance started off as a cashier, and things were going well, so well that she worked her way up to a front-end supervisor, overseeing the clerks and other customer-facing employees. But when we met, she hadn't been there for two whole months. Have you considered not working in that store?

Stanfield: Honestly, I have. I just don't want to be driven away from what I was doing by such a horrible incident.

Archival Recording: Tonight, authorities say the alleged shooter planned it all.

Lee: On May 14th, Fragrance was at Tops working when a white gunman opened fire on customers and employees, killing ten black people and wounding three others.

Archival Recording: It started around 2:30 Saturday afternoon in the parking lot of this Tops Friendly Market store in a predominantly black neighborhood in Buffalo. The alleged shooter wearing full body armor and tactical gear, targeting people of color.

Lee: Fragrance cowered with everyone else, wondering if her life would be next.

Stanfield: I literally gave up for a moment. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe I was going to die.

Lee: In the two months since the shooting that shattered so many lives, Fragrance told me she'd been mentally preparing for this day, when she would finally return.

Stanfield: But so far, you know, I do try to organize my brain around going back to the store and what that looks like, just try to imagine it or envision it periodically, so that I can prepare myself for it. And I still am a little too emotional, like my body memory is just still too strong of what happened.

Lee: So you don't feel like you're ready-ready to get back there just yet?

Stanfield: Not yet. No.

Lee: As Fragrance continued driving, we passed countless telescope homes, a common sight in East Buffalo where housing plots aren't wide, but they are deep, allowing homeowners to add additions to the back of their houses over time. They reminded me of the shotgun homes I've grown familiar with back when I lived in New Orleans. Fragrance wasn't headed to work just yet. She was going to a private ceremony for store employees.

Stanfield: It just seems that there's a forgotten space that the workers at the store are also victims. And for us to be asked to make all these accommodations even for the community as much as we love the community and we work for the community, we were there. You know, we're still human beings and we are still healing so I mean --

Lee: Eight weeks doesn't seem like much time at all.

Stanfield: It's not. No, it's not a lot. It's not a lot of time at all.

Lee: What have these last two months been like for you?

Stanfield: The first month really wasn't that hard for me. I was very disconnected from everything. It's almost like it didn't happen to me. Everyone wants to know, "You were there? Oh, my God, what happened? Can you walk me through what happened?" And that you just hear that so often, you just do it, like your brain just does it.

Lee: For decades, the Jefferson Avenue Tops has been the only full service supermarket in East Buffalo.

Stanfield: This is a food desert and that is a problem.

Lee: But food deserts don't happen by accident. During the Great Migration, millions of black people left the south to make a new home in northern cities, and many settled here in Buffalo. For decades, East Buffalo was a thriving black community. But like in so many other cities, the 1960s brought the so-called era of urban renewal.

Archival Recording: The city was building a new kind of urban environment. One of the most devastating activities they engaged in was the building of what was known as the Kensington Expressway or Route 33 that literally came through and split the east side in half.

Lee: Together with economic depression, the loss of manufacturing jobs and the crack epidemic, East Buffalo fell on hard times. The black-owned grocers and delis that used to serve the community went out of business, leaving behind corner stores and mini marts with subpar food and expensive prices.

Archival Recording: There were literally no supermarkets in the black community, and you had to travel great distances to get something to eat.

Lee: For more than a decade, activists and community leaders fought to bring a grocery store to the neighborhood. Finally, in 2003, Tops Friendly Market opened its doors.

Stanfield: This is the oasis. This is the only place you can come right now.

Lee: So when Tops closed its doors in the aftermath of the massacre this spring, residents in East Buffalo were left once again without a place to shop for fresh food. People had to travel further amidst record high gas prices. And others had to take buses and other transport, where before they could have just walked to the store. And the closure of the Jefferson Avenue Tops wasn't just about losing access to food.

Stanfield: Some of the people who died fought for this Tops to be here for our community. And it's not just a grocery store, it's a place where we would meet and talk and connect. I'm not sure how that part is going to work now that it's the scene of this horrible massacre.

Lee: The same day I rode with Fragrance to Tops, the store held an invite-only ceremony to commemorate the reopening of the market. Store employees, city officials and others gathered at Tops, where they reflected on the impact of the tragic shooting.

Archival Recording: Thank you, God, for those who have worked for the past two months, for those who have provided food, money support and a shoulder to cry on. Thank you for those who kept the peace in our community during one of the most tragic times in our city's history. Thank you that the spotlight on Buffalo has not been about how we tore up our community, how we came together to rebuild our community.

Lee: The next morning, the store reopened its doors to customers. Emotions were mixed. Some people in the community felt like the store should have stayed closed or been torn down all together, that the place holds too much blood, too much trauma for them to ever return to. But Fragrance, she told me she believes the good of the store outweighs all of that.

Stanfield: As a grocery store, because it is still that, people in this community need that. We need it back. You know, they need a place where they can walk and get groceries, and I think that part is really significant. They need to open for that. So should we have gotten rid of the only place right now, or should we be looking for ways to fix the fact that this is the only place? And that's going to take some time. And I think the community, as a whole, unified and in solidarity should work to fix that problem, you know, fix that this is the only store we have.

Lee: I'm Trymaine Lee and this is Into America. Today, we go to East Buffalo for the reopening of Tops Friendly Market. For years, Tops provided sustenance in the form of food and community. But that's exactly what made Tops vulnerable to the racist attack on May 14th. The gunman chose this location because it was a central spot in a neighborhood, with one of the highest concentrations of black residents in upstate New York. Now, the community is forging ahead, coming together and working to heal.

As Fragrance and I pulled up to the grocery store that morning, the weight of the moment hung over us, suspended in the air. We're pulling up to the grocery store right now and I want to ask you how are you feeling. This would be your first time back here inside of that fence. How are you feeling right now?

Stanfield: Honestly, I don't know still. I don't know, this is different.

Lee: Yeah.

Stanfield: Very, very different. I don't know. Physically, I can feel the thought of the possibility of even going close enough to be in the building.

Lee: What did that feel like?

Stanfield: There's a tightness. You know, I feel a tightening of all my core muscles right now. Honestly, all of the rush of everything is starting to settle in. I can feel that I'm this close.

Lee: Later that day, after the opening ceremony, Fragrance and I sat on her back porch in East Buffalo, reflecting on her experience. Exactly two months before we met, she was working at shift at the market, standing next to her daughter, Yahnia Brown-McReynolds, who also worked at the store as a supervisor. Around 2:30 p.m. Fragrance remembers feeling a familiar pain in her body, one that creeps into her left shoulder and neck during stressful moments.

Stanfield: I still remember how horrible it felt, and it was just getting worse and it felt like someone had ripped the skin off of me right in this area.

Lee: So she reached out to Yahnia.

Stanfield: I believe my hand was on her arm because I was about to nudge her and tell her the pain that I was in. So I'm picking up my keys, I turned to tell her like, "This is bad, whatever this is." I didn't even get to tell her and gunshots rang out.

Lee: And where did these gunshots come from?

Stanfield: They were outside the front door. So we knew they were outside, no one moved. No one did anything. How desensitized are we as black people in the community that you hear gunshots and you know they're gunshots and you don't do anything?

Lee: But you just thought they were like normal gunshots

Stanfield: We just thought it was outside.

Lee: Wow.

Stanfield: We just waited until the second set.

Lee: At that moment, Fragrance knew something was very wrong.

Stanfield: You knew they were in the building. That's scary. That's when we started to panic. That's when we started to move. But we saw the security guard because we're like, you know, "Where is he?"

Lee: The security guard was Aaron Salter Jr., a retired Buffalo police officer. Salter had seen the man shoot several people in the parking lot. So he ran into the store to warn employees and customers. Then he turned back to face the gunman again.

Stanfield: He was right there, and he was engaged because there's gunshots, there's him backing up, there's him reaching, and my brain won't let me see the whole of what I saw.

Lee: The gunman shot and killed Salter right there and moved into the store firing round after round. Salter’s warning had given people a chance to run and hide for safety down aisles and towards the back of the store. In all the confusion, Fragrance remembers being knocked down.

Stanfield: When I was on the ground, in Aisle 12, I did think about how bad it was for a moment because I literally gave up for a moment. I just figured out that I was dying there.

Lee: Because you had seen other people at that point?

Stanfield: No, I did not look. I didn't look. I heard them, though. I heard them all.

Lee: But some way, somehow, Fragrance pushed through the fear and got herself up and fled to the back of the store.

Stanfield: I don't know how I got off the floor. I do remember running. I'm on my sock feet, I remember slipping and I'm thinking I'm going to fall again. That's all I could think because I'm going to fall and I'm just dying in this aisle. I'm not going to make it. But I did. I made it to the back. When I hit the doors and they opened, it was just like, "Oh, my God, like, I really made it." You know, I'm off the floor and you just felt like, you know, you crossed the finish line, but you didn't, you still hear more gunshots and you're like, "Oh, my God, I'm still here." You know what I mean? I'm still in the building. What are you thinking? You hit the doors, but he could come in here too.

Lee: Then it dawned on her, Yahnia, her daughter wasn't there.

Stanfield: I was literally screaming. I'm screaming. Now, how crazy is that? You're trying to get away from the danger. You hear the danger getting closer and I'm literally screaming at the top of my lungs, "Where's my baby? Where's my baby?"

Lee: Fragrance finally reunited with her daughter outside the store once police arrived on the scene and took the shooter into custody. That's when she learned that Yahnia had been trapped near the front of the store, crouched behind a register for the entire ordeal.

Stanfield: She heard everything, every gunshot. She heard every gunshot. She heard everyone got shot.

Lee: How old is she?

Stanfield: She's 20.

Lee: And she heard every single one of the shots?

Stanfield: Everything.

Lee: Fragrance started working at the Jefferson Avenue Tops late last year. She's also a substitute teacher, a singer and a community activist. But a lot of that dried up during COVID.

Stanfield: I'm employed by Tops. But I also get to see all the people I normally see in the community at all these events, you know, people who know me from singing, people who know me from the school, people know me from Kwanzaa, or Juneteenth, or whatever. So it helped me in a lot of ways to just still be able to find a way to serve the community, and still be here and be seen, and still get to hug people and love people and still stay engaged.

Lee: Fragrance was born and raised in East Buffalo, and this warmth and closeness define the neighborhood she grew up in.

Stanfield: As a kid, I mean, you know, running outside. And you know, we were at church most of the time when I was kid. When we weren't at church, we were at community events. So I was always out in the community anyways, but we had a lot of fun.

Lee: And that sense of community in Buffalo's Black East Side has been generations in the making, beginning with the Great Migration.

Stanfield: Well, my grandmother came up to Buffalo from Ohio, and she went to Ohio from Alabama. Now, the reason she left Alabama was because she was actually in a very abusive relationship. That's why she left Alabama and went to Ohio. She was working in like a beauty salon and stuff. And so she came to Buffalo to just change things up really. She had a cousin who was living here. She came here. She was walking down the street and then that guy just said, "Are you looking for a job?" And she was like, "Yeah, I'm looking for a job." "Well, you stop walking right there. You got a job today."

Tim Newkirk: And my family originally came from North Carolina.

Lee: Tim Newkirk is a local pastor and another East Buffalo native, who can trace his roots to the Great Migration.

Newkirk: During that time, it was the steel industry. It was the manufacturing plants. You know, you go up north, you can get a job. You can walk across the street and get another job. And they were giving out opportunities to people who are coming from out of town.

Lee: Today, Buffalo is regularly listed as one of the most segregated cities in the country. But back when Fragrance and Pastor Tim's families got here, it wasn't like that.

Henry Lewis Taylor: Through most of the history of African Americans in Buffalo, they lived side by side in residential areas with white immigrant workers in the eastern side of the city.

Lee: Henry Lewis Taylor is a professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Buffalo.

Taylor: That was an area where heavy industry was located. And on the eastern portion of Buffalo during these early periods, that was a region's breadbasket.

Lee: But by the 1950s, as more black people were moving into the city, white residents started moving out into the suburbs, taking their businesses and resources with them.

Taylor: I call it the great homeownership rush in the suburbs. And as African Americans move, they move into these older, decaying neighborhoods on the eastern side of the city where whites would vacate.

Lee: Segregation define the time, but Pastor Tim says the black Buffalo community looked inward and grew strong.

Newkirk: When a lot of Caucasian people started moving out, you know, you had Caucasian businesses that sold TVs, you know, sold furniture, and then everyone says, "So now what happens?" You know, you have African American business owner that opens up and say, "I'm going to do likewise."

Lee: Responding to the needs of the growing population, black-owned enterprises flourished. There were hotels, drugstores, restaurants, candy stores, and even a Negro league baseball team. Pastor Tim saw the vestiges of these businesses when he was growing up here.

Newkirk: You had a store that was in a community that you knew by the name of the owner and the family. So you know, you have vegetable markets right out in front of the store as you pick out vegetables, fresh fruits and vegetables. You went inside the store, and then you went to the back and you got your meats and your cutlets. And then in the side, you had, you know, your dry goods and your products. You know, we had more mom-and-pop shops. So one of the things that took place, you had black-owned businesses that knew the geographic design and knew the temperature and the culture of our community.

Lee: But then came the Route 33 Expressway. As Professor Taylor explains, starting in the early ‘60s, the city of Buffalo wanted to connect the growing suburbs with Buffalo’s downtown and a new airport.

Taylor: And so they built this expressway that literally came through and split the east side in half.

Lee: according to Professor Taylor, the city chose the east side because compared to other parts of the city, it had the lowest property value. And while he says this decision may not have been explicitly racially motivated, the way it tore apart the east side had a disproportionate impact on the black community.

Taylor: Right before they begin the process of building the interstate, African Americans began to purchase housing along the Humboldt Parkway. Realtors hid from them. The idea that that beautiful, beautiful Parkway would soon become a highway, where houses that they bought at market rates were devalued.

Thousands of cars would be coming through the neighborhoods and communities spewing out all kinds of pollution, generating all kinds of respiratory issues including asthma, and sending shockwaves of deterioration throughout the east side. This was a form of predatory investments, designed to build blocks of millions of dollars and to create the capital to allow whites to move into the suburbs. So here in Buffalo, early on, we moved from a state of exclusion to one of predatory inclusion.

Lee: Pastor Tim recalls his family talking about life in East Buffalo before and after the expressway.

Newkirk: So what the highway did was divide it, you know, divided the community. Yes, it got people to point A and B faster. But that community, how many people on that highway benefited by stopping off to these mom-and-pop stores? How many people took a walk in a community? How many people invested in the neighborhood gardens that was in these communities for years?

Lee: And over the years, the grocers that Pastor Tim remembers all shut down, leaving the community with nothing but corner stores that had overpriced stock and limited fresh options.

Taylor: Buffalo was a classic example of food apartheid.

Lee: Food apartheid, Professor Taylor calls it this because the usual term "food desert" implies that it's naturally occurring. But really racist policies led to this reality.

Taylor: And I never will forget a woman telling me, she said, "Dr. Taylor, bags and babies and buses don't mix." And she was talking about the complex, difficult journey to grocery shop.

Lee: By the early ‘90s, the community had grown fed up with their lack of grocery stores. So a group of activists got together and tried to create one of their own.

Taylor: And then the prevailing idea was to establish a food cooperative called our market. And this was the sentiment of the vast majority of people, and so they fought and they battled to get that.

Lee: But that dream didn't pan out.

Taylor: The city’s established leadership decided it was better to go with the corporate store model.

Lee: Together, community activists, including a young Pastor Tim and city leaders lobbied different supermarket chains in the area. But Pastor Tim says companies simply didn't see a benefit in coming to East Buffalo. That was until the city pulled together about $3 million in grants and taxpayer money as an incentive for Tops Friendly Market to open a location there.

Newkirk: It took ten years, you know, to actually get it opened. And when it did, it became the place and the center of attention for everyone in the community.

Archival Recording: You'll taste the difference. Tops never stops saving you more. Tops never stops.

Lee: Tops arrived in 2003. And for years, it remained the only accessible supermarket for thousands of black residents on the east side. When we come back, what Tops means to the community, why it became a target, and the future of East Buffalo.

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Lee: Tops supermarket has now been reopened for about a week. Many people still don't want to return to the store. They feel like the pain is too much to hold. But the closure was a blow to the thousands of residents who depend on it to eat and live. According to the University of Buffalo, the next nearest Tops is about a 40-minute ride away on public transportation. Other major grocers are about a 25-minute ride away. That extra distance has been challenging for the community. But Fragrance says there's been some help.

Stanfield: So Tops did truck-in some items to the Resource Center, which was right on East Ferry, about two, three blocks down, and they were able to access toiletries and things that were given out free. Also, to purchase groceries, there was a discount code for Instacart to be able to order goods there. And also, there were two buses, one that took you to Price Rite, they get and met you at the library there. And another one right on the corner where this Tops is, that will take you to the Elmwood Tops.

Lee: And that’s one of the only grocery stores on the east side. Pastor Tim says Tops has been a central force in the community since it opened, providing services beyond food.

Newkirk: You know, you had the produce section. You had a lot of pastors and churches and organizations would use the mini delicatessen, the Subs, and fried chicken and fish fries on Fridays. And then you had the drugstore. You had to check-cash in place and then the bank inside to help people set up bank accounts to pay utility bills.

Lee: Despite the many challenges in the area, Fragrance Harris Stanfield, these residents came to the Jefferson Avenue Tops to feel connected to one another.

Stanfield: Sometimes people weren't even shopping. They will still just come in just to greet you, "I was driving by and I thought I would stop and see if you were here, you know, and check on you." And it's really nice. And we do the same. You know, we see people out in the community. We might stop and check on them, "Hey, I haven't seen you in the store in a while. Everything okay? You have everything you need?" So it's really community.

We know about everyone's cookout, working at the store, "Oh, you're cooking out today? I see you got some ribs. Oh, yeah, girl, I came back because I forgot the mustard." We know everything. Somebody is making Sunday dinner. How do we know? Because they came in and bought all the fixings for Sunday dinner.

Lee: Tops became this unexpected center of Buffalo's black community because of decades of segregation, commercial disinvestment, and a neighborhood torn apart by expressway. So before the shooting, the store was almost guaranteed to have a high concentration of black shoppers. And that's why the gunman who posted online about wanting to kill black people to protect the white people from genocide, targeted this Tops.

Allegedly, the gunman picked Buffalo because it was the city closest to him, with the biggest black population. According to a Washington Post analysis of online posts supposedly written by the 18-year-old white man, he looked up the zip code with the highest number of black residents, leading him to the east side. Then, he picked the grocery store.

The gunman has pleaded not guilty to first degree murder, as well as 27 federal counts, including hate crimes. Some of the crimes carry the potential of the death penalty. In the two months since this racist attack, the store had been closed for a complete renovation. The company said it wanted to give the store a new feel and pay tribute to the victims and the survivors. There is now a memorial wall fountain at the entrance to the store, inscribed with the poem written by Buffalo's poet laureate and recited by Tops employee during the opening ceremony.

Archival Recording: Let the hopeful healing waters flow, ushering in a rebirth of our sense of self. Let the flowing waters remind us of time, current, yet fleeting like life itself, large yet within reach just as the ancestors.

Lee: Before the shooting and the two-month renovation, people say the Jefferson Avenue Tops was a little worse for wear. Apparently, I haven't been in there, but I heard it was a little --

Stanfield: Oh, yeah, you heard right. Our store was stuck in time. We had registers that were breaking down and our Easy Scan that needs to be repaired, and we had technicians coming in. Our bottle room just needed everything.

Lee: Why did it take this?

Stanfield: That's a good question. That's a good question. But that is what I mean when I say this massacre just uncovered things that already existed. So let's try to get all the stuff that needs to be done done. While the spotlight is on it, while people are willing, while we have the money, while we have the manpower, while we have the attention, whatever it is that we have, let's use those opportunities and let's get some things done because we need a lot.

Lee: Is now the time to also put pressure on somebody's corporations and communities?

Stanfield: Oh, yeah.

Lee: Now that the spotlight is on there, everybody is paying attention, is now the time to push?

Stanfield: Exactly. This is the time. This is the time to push that too.

Lee: Fragrance says this push shouldn't stop with Tops. She says East Buffalo deserves variety and choice when it comes to supermarkets, just like the white neighborhoods.

Stanfield: We really have to ask those hard questions to these other corporations, "Where's Wegmans? You know, where is Dash’s?" But other than that, you know, we just have to learn to invest in what we really believe in and we have to ask the hard questions to the corporations who aren't doing anything, and stop being so hard on the ones who are.

Lee: Fragrance hasn't decided when she’d return to work. The trauma from the shooting still affects her deeply. Earlier this day, when she pulled up to the market's gated fence on the morning of the ceremony, she had a lot of emotions weighing on her mind and heart. But as the ceremony unfolded, she fell back into her familiar routine with your colleagues. Where there a moment today when you saw them, that you got some of them in your arms?

Stanfield: Oh, yeah. Oh, we always do this. This is what we do, hugging each other, "So glad to see you," who you haven't seen. We could have just seen each other yesterday. We still act the same way, you know.

Lee: Because you mean so much to each other, because you've been through some things together.

Stanfield: And we're bonded in a way that we weren't before.

Lee: The day of the ceremony, just outside the fence of the supermarket, there was a little patch of grass where residents had left dozens of flower bouquets, wreaths, and messages for those who were killed in the shooting. It was a bright wash of color in an otherwise grayed out landscape, for the unimaginable had happened, now an homage to black life bloomed in its place. For many residents, like Fragrance, that's the sentiment they have to move forward with. They refuse to stand by and allow the shooting to take away the very thing that was central to their way of life, their community. They have no other choice.

Stanfield: We don't have much. And if you let them take away the only thing we have, then we're left to be dependent. And keeping that in mind, we have to not allow that to happen. We can't allow him to come in and take away what we have.

Lee: We're on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook using the handle @intoamericapod. If you want to write to us, our email is intoamerica@nbcuni.com. That was intoamerica@nbc and the letters U-N-I.com.

Into America is produced by Sojourner Ahebee, Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Mike Brown, Aaron Dalton, Max Jacobs and Joshua Sirotiak. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producer is Aisha Turner. Special thanks this week to our colleagues, Tony McGowan, Bob Riggio, Peter Shaw and Will Yuek (ph). I'm Trymaine Lee. We'll be back next Thursday.