Published July 25, 2022
MSNBC spoke with Henry-Louis Taylor, Jr. for a story about the emotional challenges and other difficulties of returning to the local supermarket that was the site of a racist mass shooting in May. The piece included mention of Buffalo being among the most segregated cities in the country, which Taylor said was not always the case. “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. 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,” Taylor said. But that began to change with “the great homeownership rush in the suburbs” according to Taylor. “And as African Americans move, they move into these older, decaying neighborhoods on the eastern side of the city where whites would vacate.”
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