Mayor Brown donates 5/14 pounds to Buffalo Public Schools

Buffalo, New York (WBEN) – The city of Buffalo and surrounding communities will never forget what happened nearly two years ago at the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue, where 10 members of the black community lost their lives because of the ideologies of a misguided white supremacist teenager.

As we approach the two-year commemoration period of that horrific Saturday, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown on Friday donated 10 copies of Mark Talley’s book titled “5/14: The Day the Devil Came in Buffalo” at the Buffalo Public School District.

“What happened that day is still very hard, it’s still very painful,” Mayor Brown said.

“There are still individuals who were in the store that day who have not been able to return to work. This is important because as a community we don’t want to forget, we never want to forget what happened here on 5/14. We want to continue to respect and honor those whose lives were taken and we want to send a message to the nation that what happened here on May 14, 2022 must be taken end, must stop. Things like this continue to happen in rural, urban, suburban and rural communities all over the world.

Mark Talley lost his mother Geraldine Talley at the supermarket that day. The book is what the mayor describes as “a very powerful and raw account from a son’s perspective of his mother being taken from him in a senseless and brutal way and the impact on him as a son “.

“People ask me, ‘Is this book appropriate for the Buffalo public school system?’ And I give my honest answer, probably not. But neither does slavery. We need to talk and discuss the bad with the good,” Talley said.

Buffalo Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Tonja Williams notes that the book itself will not be readily available in school libraries, but will be accessible at designated parent centers and will be distributed to administration and to school staff.

“District leaders will be conducting a review of the book because it contains information that we need to look at developmentally and see how we can help make the events covered in the book teaching moments for our children that are appropriate developmentally, because we have children from the age of three who go up to the age of 18,” notes the superintendent.