Beyond the Railroad

05/06/2024

Rest in peace, Gail Wells - NYC native, Buffalo transplant who helped bring Buffalo’s rich Black history to the world.

01/01/2024

09/10/2023

09/10/2023

Ailey mourns the passing of Delores Browne, a pioneer of Blacks in Ballet and long time friend, supporter, and collaborator of the organization.

Delores had an illustrious dance career and notably appeared in the same Ailey performance in which 'Revelations' first premiered in 1960.

As a sixteen year old at the Judimar School in Philadelphia, she taught a young Judith Jamison. Later in New York in 1974, Browne became the first director of The Ailey School’s scholarship program.

We’re so thankful for Delores’ contribution to both our organization and the dance community as a whole.

15/05/2023

Happy Mother’s Day to Ms. Pauline Copes-Johnson of Auburn, N.Y., great great grandniece of Harriet Tubman and eloquent keeper of the flame (looking sharp, Ms. Pauline). Thank you, , for letting me borrow your photo of your mom - and Happy Mother’s Day to you too!💐🌺🌸

26/11/2022

From Irene Cara’s publicist.

26/11/2022

Sad news. Rest in peace, Irene Cara.

Irene Cara died in her Florida home this week, her publicist, Judith A. Moose, confirmed on Twitter Saturday

16/08/2022

From my friend, Kevin Cook:

One of our Le Moyne Neighborhood residents Melesa Murry tragically lost her son Tre'jan in 2020 to more senseless gun violence here in Syracuse. Miss Murry has organized a book bag giveaway to be held at Kirk Park on September 3rd. She has given permission to post her Cash App account information in the event anyone would like to make a donation. We are having some tough times with violence here in Syracuse lately. Let's try to do something positive to keep our spirits and hopes up!

16/05/2022

Geraldine Talley, 62, was one of 10 people killed in Saturday’s racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo. Talley, a longtime executive assistant, was known for her mouth-watering cheesecake, family members told .

16/05/2022

Andre Mackneil, 53, was one of 10 people killed in Saturday’s racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo. Mackneil, who was engaged, was at the grocery store to buy a birthday cake for his 3-year-old son, according to family members and .

16/05/2022

Store security guard and retired Police Officer Aaron Salter, 55, was one of the 10 people who died in Saturday’s racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, according to . Salter died trying to stop the gunman and was “a hero in our eyes,” Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said.

16/05/2022

Heyward “Tenny” Patterson, church deacon and father, was one of the 10 people who died Saturday in a racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, reported. Patterson reportedly would drive residents without transportation back and forth to the store.

15/05/2022

Katherine “Kat” Massey, 72-year-old civil rights and educational advocate, was one of 10 people who died in a racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo Saturday, according to the . “She was unapologetic about making sure our community was not ignored,” former Erie County Legislator Betty Jean Grant told the news organization.

15/05/2022

Celestine Chaney, 65, one of the 10 people fatally shot in Saturday’s racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, was reportedly a breast cancer survivor and grandmother to many. She was in the grocery store to buy ingredients for strawberry shortcake and could not run fast enough to escape the bullets, according to .

15/05/2022

Ruth Whitfield, 86, the mother of former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield, is one of 10 people who died in Saturday’s mass shooting on Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side, according to the .

15/05/2022

Roberta Drury, 32, is one of 10 people who died in Saturday’s racially motivated mass shooting on Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side, according to .

15/05/2022

Pearly Young, 77, fed Buffalo’s needy, according to . She is one of the 10 people who died in Saturday’s mass shooting on Buffalo’s predominantly Black East Side.

28/02/2022

Good morning, BTR fam, and happy last day of Black History Month. My apologies for not being present for the last week or two. This is a one-person operation and I've been supporting and helping a family member in the hospital and facing some challenges. I'm the sole person handling that situation, which is why I've been absent. Thanks for the engagement. I look forward to better times and more throughout the year.

14/02/2022

11/02/2022

On day 11 of Black History Month, Beyond the Railroad is recognizing Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the country’s first Black woman physician.

Crumpler was born in 1831 in Delaware and was raised by an aunt, who was a nurse. She was always smart, and she attended private school in Massachusetts. By 1852, she was practicing nursing in Charlestown, Mass. She was self-taught because the first formal school for nursing had not yet opened.

Crumpler studied at New England Female Medical College in Boston and became a doctor of medicine in 1864, the first Black woman in the country to do so. She became part of a rare group. Just four years before, there were only 300 female doctors in the country and none were Black. She married twice, first to Wyatt Lee, who died, and then to Arthur Crumpler.

After the Civil War, Crumpler and her second husband moved to Richmond, Virginia, where she cared for the indigent, women, children and formerly enslaved people, often having to turn a blind eye to the then-open racism of the South. In 1883, she published “A Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts,” which is based on the medical observations of her career.

The Crumplers returned to Boston, living in Beacon Hill, and then to Hyde Park, New York, where she died in 1895.

Photos: Public domain

10/02/2022

On day 10 of Black History Month, Beyond the Railroad is celebrating Nick Gabaldon, California’s first documented well-known Black surfer. Historians have hailed Gabaldon for excelling in surfing at a time when segregation was rampant. And in immersing himself in the sport, Gabaldon was taking part in something that was part of his ancestry. Contrary to popular belief, surfing did not originate in Hawaii or California but on the shores of Ghana in West Africa.

Nicolas Ronaldo Gabaldon was born in 1927 in Los Angeles. His mother was Black and his father was Latino.

Gabaldon taught himself how to surf on a stretch of Santa Monica Beach called “Negro Beach” or “The Ink Well Beach.” It was an area where Black Americans felt safer from race-related harassment.

After serving in the U.S. Navy Reserve during World War II, Gabaldon enrolled at Santa Monica College and surfed in his free time. In 1949, Gabaldon began venturing to the surfing mecca of Malibu, sometimes paddling the 12 miles to get there.

Sadly, the sport that Gabaldon loved ultimately took his life. In 1951, he crashed into a pier in Malibu. His surfboard was found the same day but his body was not found until three days later at Las Flores Beach in Malibu.

The first known account of surfing was written in 1640 in Ghana, a country on the western coast of Africa. Africans rode boards ranging from 3-feet t0 12-feet, and sometimes canoes. They were prone, sitting, kneeling or standing, according to historian Kevin Dawson, author of “Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora.”

(Photo: Public domain)

09/02/2022

On day 9 of Black History Month, Beyond the Railroad honors Fannie Barrier Williams, an equal rights activist from Brockport, N.Y., who helped create the NAACP.

Barrier Williams was born on Feb. 12, 1855. She, her parents and two siblings were among few Black families in Brockport, a village outside of Rochester. Oddly, they were not harassed because of their race and Barrier remembered her Brockport days as a time of innocence. She said it was good to have a happy childhood, but it set her back in terms of learning how the rest of the country was dealing - or not dealing - with race.

After graduating from a teacher’s college that is now the State University of New York at Brockport campus, Barrier Williams moved to Washington, D.C., to teach. It was here that she first experienced widespread discrimination.

Barrier Williams enrolled at the School of Fine Arts, where educators separated her from her white classmates with a screen. When she complained, the school told her that allowing the screen was the only way she could remain. At the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, she was asked to leave after students from the South threatened to quit.

She returned to Washington and met her husband, law student S. Laing Williams. After marrying in Brockport, the couple moved to Chicago, where Barrier Williams became active in politics and reform. She worked with Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington to push for changes as a leader in local political clubs.

She later helped create Chicago’s Provident Hospital, which included a training school for Black nurses. She also helped found the Frederick Douglass Center settlement house and Phillis Wheatley Home for Girls.

Barrier Williams began giving speeches at global meetings promoting women’s rights, and integration of the women’s movement. She allied with scholar W.E.B. DuBois, working with him and others to create the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

After her husband’s death in 1921, she returned to Brockport, where she died in 1944.

(Photos: Barrier Williams, public domain; Barrier Williams home in Brockport, State University of New York at Brockport)