Jeff Z. Klein (Niagara Frontier Heritage Project)

There isn’t a soccer fan on earth who is unfamiliar with the Mexican national anthem, and how stirring it sounds when tens of thousands of Mexico fans sing ¡Mexicanos, al grito de guerra! at stadiums around the world. But how many know that this rousing tune was written by a Buffalonian?

For over a century, the Group of 7 has had an almost mystical hold on the Canadian imagination.

Allegany County is as rural, Republican, and conservative as any in New York State. Yet in the winter and spring of 1989 and ’90, its people banded together to successfully resist the placement of a nuclear dump within the county’s borders.

When John Lewis, the last of the great figures of the Civil Rights era, died at age 80 in 2020, Americans reflected with near-universal admiration on a life well lived. And, thanks to Lewis himself, they knew of the pivotal role that Buffalo played in molding this national icon.

James Monroe Whitfield was a remarkable figure in a remarkable time: a free Black man who owned his own home and his own business in pre-Civil War America; a renowned Romantic poet; and a leading voice in the abolitionist movement.

Gerda Weissmann Klein lived a life of unimaginable sadness, loss, and misery, yet paradoxically, one of soaring hope, happiness, and achievement.

Imagine driving across the continent on unpaved roads, railroad ties and trackless wastes… in an open car with no heat, no windshield, no nothing.

Chauncey Olcott, a son of Buffalo and Lockport, did not set foot in the Emerald Isle until he was 40 years old.

Today, if you own a home across the Western New York suburbs and even in certain neighborhoods in Buffalo itself, you may still find “racial covenants” in your deed.