Heritage Moments

Hard to believe it today, but until 1984, a man could be arrested for asking another man to sleep with him. That intrusive law wrecked the lives of hundreds of men in New York State before it was finally abolished, thanks to the courage of two Buffalonians.

The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was a landmark event for the labor movement, its impact still felt by every worker in America today.

Along the Niagara Frontier the War of 1812 was a special kind of hell, a futile succession of battles and skirmishes that left death and devastation in their wake.

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.