On Wednesday past, I had the great good fortune to meet in Dublin the Boston architect Michael Murphy who designed the six-acre Lynching Memorial site in Montgomery, Alabama - a place that once heralded itself as the premier slave trading site in the Heart of Dixie.
His evocative and inspiring work takes your breath away - a suitable way to remember how the mob could snuff out Black lives with impunity right up until the second half of the 20th century.
It was an appropriate if unsettling primer for my visit the following day to the great city of Buffalo, a nexus of Irish American activity and site of the famed 1866 Fenian invasion of Canada but also scene of a racist massacre which could hold its own with the worst atrocities of the age of slave pens and plantations. HURT: The author with Councilwoman Zeneta Everhart outside Tops Supermarket. Her son Zaire was shot and injured by the white supremacist who killed ten African-Americans in the May 2022 massacre.
On 14 May 2022, an 18-year-old avowed segregationist and advocate of the Great Replacement Theory — the belief that black people are forcing white people from 'their' lands, most recently espoused in Newtownmountkennedy — drove 200 miles to a supermarket in overwhelmingly Black East Buffalo and went on a killing spree.
Three minutes of furious fire from an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle and 18-year-old Grayton Payton had taken 10 black lives. His victims ranged in age from 32-86 and included a church deacon who ferried shoppers without their own transport back and forth to the popular Tops Supermarket.
After live-streaming the atrocity, the shooter, protected by body armour which deflected the shots of an off-duty police officer, gave himself up. He is now in jail serving life without parole and awaiting to hear whether the US government will succeed in a bid to execute him.
Zeneta Everhart, mother of Zaire Goodman, injured in the racist Buffalo mass shooting, testified before Congress this morning. Zaire, a 21 yo Tops employee, was shot in the neck. Her words for Congress: “This is exactly who and what America is.” pic.twitter.com/w3Hs9TK496
— Stephanie Wash (@WashNews) June 8, 2022
Of the three wounded, two who survived were apparently spared because they were white.
The third was Tops staffer Zaire Everhart (20) who took a bullet to the neck as he helped a shopper load shopping bags into her car. Somehow, miraculously, Zaire survived and the night of the massacre slept in his own bed.
On Saturday afternoon, I got to meet Zaire's mum, Zenata outside Tops - the only supermarket, as she explains, "for miles around" in an area still struggling with endemic poverty.
Since the shooting, Zaire has been elected to the Buffalo City Council where she and eight colleagues now make weighty decisions affecting the future of the Queen City. She is an imposing figure, standing over six feet tall, and in spirit and body, very much a tower of strength for her neighbours. It was a privilege to stand with her as shoppers stopped to chat, share news about family and trade information on housing or work issues even as we stood in the shadow of unspeakable sorrow. "THOUGH I SHALL WALK IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH": The ten victims of the Buffalo atrocity. 
At her side was Buffalo State Senator Tim Kennedy who is standing in a Special Election today to return a new Congress Member for Buffalo. Judging by the frequent pledges of support from the mostly African-American shoppers and the "have a blessed day" farewells, you can take it that he's a shoo-in.
As Zenata talked us through the attack and its aftermath, a lone man walked back and forth chanting and praying on the fringe of the Tops' carpark. For all the world, we could have been back a century-and-a-half, gathering in the wake of a lynching. "People come every day to pray for peace for the dead and healing for the survivors," explained Zenata. "This community is hurting."
Plans for two memorials in honour of the ten victims are proceeding apace even as the second anniversary of the atrocity fast approaches. With no other supermarkets in the area, the community supported the reopening of the Tops' store. Indeed, the staff there are regarded as heroes; some risked their own lives to hide shoppers from the rampaging gunman.
One year ago, Zaire Goodman was working at the Tops on Jefferson when he was shot in the neck because of the color of his skin. He survived.
In the days that followed, something beautiful was born out of tragedy: Zeneta & Zaire's Book Club 📚@news4buffalo @ms_everhart pic.twitter.com/QI7egOS9FT
— Jordan Norkus (@JordanNorkus) May 13, 2023
On my visit, two armed security staff, one male, one female, both wearing flak jackets, were on duty. The female guard had a message on her armoured vest - 'My pronouns are "Try Me"'. The pair were friendly — but also as serious as cancer. And no wonder, the previous security guard, Aaron Salter jr., a retired police officer, loosed off several shots at Payton that May day but his bullets failed to penetrate the attacker's body armour and he was cut down in the return fire.
Only a people with a resilient and hopeful spirit could carry the cross being borne by the community of East Buffalo — as the people of West Belfast, scarred by their own massacres, know only too well.
My sainted mother is always happy when she hears I have been to church but does add that once in a while I should try a Catholic service. Perhaps when they can preach like this. Rev Dr Leslie Braxton at Buffalo’s First Shiloh Church. 🙌🙏 pic.twitter.com/KQaWUVVyDp
— Máirtín Ó Muilleoir (@newbelfast) April 28, 2024
In fact, I had the great honour to witness that resilience and hope myself first-hand when I returned to East Buffalo the following day for Sunday service at First Shiloh Baptist Church.
The unforgettable highlight of an enthralling blink-of-an-eye-three-hour service (this from an author who you couldn't get to go to mass at gunpoint) was a soaring sermon by the Rev. Leslie Braxton. Indeed, he raised the roof so high it still hasn't come down. SOARING: Thanking the Rev Dr Leslie Braxton post-service
Starting, quiet as a church mouse, the good reverend, joked, cajoled and seduced the congregation with a learned and eloquent treatise based on Psalm 92: 12-15 - "the righteous shall flourish like a palm tree" — which is, he assured us, really about stamina and stature.
Thrown in was a powerful and animated rendition of Maya Angelou's 'And Still I Rise' as well a full-throated finale for the Blacks of Buffalo: "Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I fear no evil....Because God is still in me..."
Amen to that, say we — and to the power of Ten.
The ten victims of the Buffalo massacre were Aaron Salter Jr., 55; Celestine Chaney, 65; Roberta A. Drury, 32; Andre Mackniel, 53; Katherine Massey, 72; Margus D. Morrison, 52; Heyward Patterson, 67; Geraldine Talley, 62; Ruth Whitfield, 86; and Pearl Young, 77.
