Flowers of Buffalo: Abra Lee and Gardeners in Black History
Urban Farm Day starts tomorrow and includes a full day of talks, tours, and food markets. I am planning on going to the talk at Big Big Table, where everyone and anyone in the community has a place to eat. Heather McCarthy and Stephanie Smith will discuss creative ways to use abundant local resources to create sustainable foodways in Buffalo, NY.
Urban Farm Day is also a culminating event, as it marks the end of Buffalo’s main flower festivals. In a two month span, Gardens Buffalo Niagara and the City of Buffalo have hosted the East Side Garden Walk, Garden Walk, and Urban Farm Day. The city’s private and community gardens as well as urban farms have attracted thousands of visitors. The flowers have been ‘on fleek’. I’m sorry to see the season changing.
Forgive me if I feel bittersweet about the end of summer. I know that there is much beauty left in season, even as the fall descends. Autumn can be majestic, too. But, in the end, winter is coming, and last year’s winter storms were among the deadliest in recent local history…
I appreciate, nevertheless, some of the great moments from this summer. One that I found particularly inspiring was the book talk by ornamental horticulturist and historian Abra Lee. Just a little over a month ago, Ms. Lee visited Buffalo, and with her book presentation, inaugurated the flower festival season. It’s fitting to reflect on Ms. Lee’s talk as we approach the end of another successful summer for urban gardeners, farmers, and flower enthusiasts.
Community News
On Wednesday, July 19, 2023, I stopped at Spot Coffee on Delaware and Chippewa for a hot Mocha with oat milk (no whipped cream) and a smores bar. It was mid-morning, and I was working in the office. I live about a mile north on Summer…
While I finished my meal, I read the Challenger newspaper, which was available at the coffee shop for patrons. The Challenger is an historically black American newspaper in Buffalo, NY. It’s been running for many decades, the major black newspaper in town currently, and Al-Nisa Banks, the newspaper’s managing editor and backbone, is on the Freedom Wall, Buffalo’s monument to black American excellence.
In the Challenger, I found a promotional ad for Abra Lee’s talk – a free community event, hosted by the Nash House Museum, a stalwart historical and cultural institution in the city of Buffalo.
Reverend J. Edward Nash, Sr. (1868-1957) was also spotlighted on Buffalo’s Freedom Wall. Historians seeking to understand Reverend Nash’s impact on local society, culture, and politics should consult the Nash Papers hosted by Monroe Fordham Regional History Center at Buffalo State University.
Abra Lee and Contributionism
On Thursday, July 20, 2023, Abra Lee, ornamental horticulturalist and Black historian, presented research from her forthcoming monograph, “Conquer the Soil.” This public lecture inaugurated the 2023 Garden Walk series of events, coordinated by Gardens Buffalo Niagara, which includes the East Side Garden Walk, on July 22-23, 2023, and the Buffalo Garden Walk, on July 29-30, 2023. In other words, Buffalo has a two-week flower festival – and Abra Lee got us started.
The Nash House Museum and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House co-hosted the Abra Lee lecture. Sharon Holley and Jesse Fisher, representing Zawadi Books and Martin House, respectively, introduced Abra Lee. Several community gardeners were recognized, including Gail Wells from the Buffalo Freedom Gardens, whom I met years ago when I started at Buffalo State University. It was great to reconnect with her.
Abra Lee is the Director of Horticulture at the Historic Oakland Foundation, where her goal is to make Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia, “one of the great gardens of the world.”
Ms. Lee’s lecture drew from stories collected in her forthcoming book, Conquer The Soil: Black America and the Untold Stories of Our Country’s Gardeners, Farmers, and Growers. In a delightful 60-minute presentation, Ms. Lee celebrated 15 or more black American gardeners who, as she explained, left lasting impacts on their communities. At the heart of her research was the passion to uncover and showcase the major contributions that black Americans have made to the field of ornamental horticulture and agriculture. Black Americans have already created some of the great gardens of the world, and Abra Lee, one might say, was standing on the shoulders of the ancestors.
Abra Lee’s work reinvigorates one of the major interpretations of African American history. With a sharp focus on the contributions of black Americans, the purpose of her research was not to highlight directly the institutions of racism, which have historically marginalized and concealed the creativity of black American gardeners. Rather, her goal (in part) was to translate the evidence of their greatness into contemporaneous jargon that leaders in the field of ornamental horticulture use. This translational approach might facilitate a fuller appreciation of what black American gardeners accomplished as autodidact master gardeners, no matter the pervasiveness of antiblack racism pockmarking the black American gardeners’ experiences.
City of Flowers
In Buffalo, NY, flowers have long been a unifying force in the black American community. Ms. Lee showcased news clippings from Buffalo’s black newspapers in which black gardeners were acknowledged. I, too, have encountered stories about black Americans in Buffalo blessed with a green thumb.
I study Buffalo in the 1960s, especially 1967, the year that race riots, Dr. Martin Luther King visited, and Arthur O. Eve ushered in the Educational Opportunity Program in Buffalo, NY. 1 year. In my research, I have found articles in the 1967 Challenger announcing annual flower festivals at Willert Park housing development. I’ve also come across photos of ‘flower lovers’ like Cap pictured below. The so-called ‘City of Good Neighbors’ – Buffalo, New York – is also a city of flowers.
