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Kareem Weaver, an Oakland California NAACP activist, believes literacy is our most important civil right. With a focus on Black and brown children, Kareem demands to bring science-based reading instruction to Oakland schools and has garnered national interest by taking on the publishing industries. Between a series of meetings with Buffalo-area educators recently, he stopped to have this important...

Activist Nate Boyd updates his campaign on behalf of Tops workers and survivors who were not necessarily in the store at the time of the shooting but are still impacted by it. Then, a team from the University at Buffalo Law School has started to look at freedom from debt as a civil right. The School of Law’s Civil Rights and Transparency Clinic Supervising Attorney Paulette Campbell, and student a...

Once again today, instead of our usual selection of highlights from a variety of previous interviews, we are bringing you excerpts of a single episode from an outstanding guest: Rev. Kwame Pitts. Pitts runs the Community of Good Neighbors mobile food truck in Buffalo, and works with the Oasis Community of spiritual people who aren't necessarily religious. She's outspoken on racial equity and is a...

WBFO’s Thomas O'Neil-White talks with Jelicia Jimenez and Ruqayyah Simmons, co-founders of Black Boys Read Too about ways to address the large disparities in literacy achievement by getting books in children’s hands in Erie and Niagara Counties. Also today, entrepreneur, musical artist, publisher, and producer Robert Grant. He wants to educate more people of color through his payment processing ex...

Inside Buffalo’s food desert, Rita Hubbard-Robinson takes Dave Debo on a tour of the East Side site where she hopes to develop a food hub, with hydroponics, a farmer’s market and a health education center. Then on a day when SNAP (food stamp) benefits drop back to pre-pandemic levels, Trina Burruss, CEO of the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County looks at what that sudden $200 cut means for under...

Fruit belt activists Dennice Barr and Kelly Camacho pull back the curtain on tenant troubles at McCarley Gardens. Then, Black history storyteller, Karima Amin shares some of her work.

LaShelle Roberson of TOLL (To Our Legacy and Legends) talks of her work with children who have lost their parents to homicide. Then Mark Overall from the Urban League Young Professionals stops by.

Today's Producers' Picks program features highlights of only one interview. Instead of our usual segments, we spend the entire hour bringing you an early February interview with Rev. Darius Pridgen - taped shortly after he announced he would not run again for Buffalo city council. In a wide-ranging chat, he discusses why, looks back on his terms as President of the Buffalo Common Council, and talk...

Today a look at Black history in Buffalo and the influence Marcus Garvey had on the region in the early 1900s. Malik "Lion" Blyden, president of Buffalo's branch of Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League talks about the historic sites in Buffalo, how Garvey's ideas on self-reliance can resonate today, and why he feels many of those ideas have been ignored in f...

Aitina Fareed-Cooke talks with Jay Moran. She is an artist and entrepreneur who was born and raised in Buffalo. In early life, she lived in a foster home and speaks freely about how that experience--and the labels of low expectations attached to it--drove her to find herself through art and creativity. Her Get Fokus'd Production is a media arts company that works, in part, to highlight emerging lo...

Author and lecturer Emmanuel Kulu talks at length about his work with Buffalo Public Schools and elsewhere, infusing African history - from Egypt and the entire continent of Africa - into the teaching of Black history.

A chat with Dr. Peggy Brooks-Bertram, an author and longtime advocate for the teaching of black history, she is one of the founders of the “Uncrowned Community Builders” database of prominent African-American men and women in Western New York and is the author or co-author of several books, including one that gathered letters to First Lady Michelle Obama, and another similarly for Vice President K...

This week's Producers' Picks program is a complete summary of Wednesday's victim impact statements and sentencing of Payton Gendron for the racist massacre at Tops on May 14.

One day after the Tops shooter was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, we hear the bold remarks from Judge Susan Eagan, humanizing those he killed, and outlining the scope of systemic racism. Then, we go in depth with Erie County District Attorney John Flynn.

Hear a complete recap of Wednesday's court proceedings, including family members talking of those Gendron killed in the Tops Massacre on May 14. Also legal analysis, and blunt commentary from Judge Susan Eagan as she sent him to jail for life without parole.

Deidra EmEl is the Executive Director of the WNY Peace Center. She joins Jay Moran for a preview of their Women's March 2023, their Embracing Buffalo: Frank Conversations series in May, and a range of other initiatives promoting social justice and equity.

Fresh off her recent Black History Month speech at Buffalo State University, author Jessica Wilson talks with Jay Moran. She is a clinical dietitian and consultant, whose experiences navigating the dietetic fields as a Black, queer dietitian have led her to write "It's Always Been Ours: Rewriting the Story of Black Women's Bodies." Then a visit with Penny Beckham, the volunteer director of The Pla...

Instead of a typical Producers' Picks program that includes highlights of previous interviews, today our producers have picked three intense interviews on opioid addiction and treatment. Jay Moran talks with Nick Gazzoli, Senior Program Director at Horizon Village, "Karl" a 27-year old in the residential treatment program at Horizon Village, and Horizon Health's Parent and Family Support Coordinat...

Jay Moran talks with three vendors from the Broadway Market’s Buy Black Buffalo initiative. Hear from Alisa Officer of Unapologetic Coffee, Lynette Elliott of E-Scent-ials Body Care and Shawn Thurmond from Glamorous Embellishments. Then hear a conversation with Jodi Lynn Maracle, an artist in Buffalo working to bring a greater awareness of Indigenous culture, legacies and lived experiences to the...

SUNY Buffalo State University Professor Steve Peraza talks about his work documenting Buffalo's civil rights history, contrasting it to the more traditional narrative that is put forth about racism in the South. Then Sherman Webb-Middlebrooks and Antoine Johnson explore the fatherhood initiative at the Buffalo Prenatal Perinatal Network talking about ways to help support fathers and families in Bu...

Today as part of Black History Month, we tell the story of LeRoi Johnson. He shares his journey from the Perry Projects in Buffalo to being a student activist at Canisius College in the late 60s, and his role as manager for his brother Rick James, the MaryJane Girls and other acts in the 80s. A prominent attorney, he is an internationally known artist with the exhibition "LeRoi: Living in Color" u...

Hear a Black History Month talk with Dr. LaGarrett King, director of the University at Buffalo's Center for K-12 Black History and Racial Literacy Education. Also Northwest Bank's Jonathan Graves and Rick Hamister on some new home ownership and financial literacy programs on Buffalo's East Side.

In our weekly “Producers’ Picks” episode we bring you highlights of recent interviews with: —Rev. Kinzer Pointer on training UB Med students on poverty and empathy--Charley Fisher III, BUILD Inc. --UB family sociologist Ashley Barr on how racism effects families and romantic partners--Greg Brown, longtime East side resident and the sports columnist for the Challenger Newspaper

Just after he announces he is leaving his Ellicott district seat on the Buffalo City Council, president Darius Pridgen of True Bethel Baptist Church joins us for the entire hour to talk about his future, what the city needs to progress, and a overview of the changes in education, segregation and related issues over his 12 year tenure.

We start off Black History Month with documentary filmmaker Tarabu Betserai Kirkland and the story of his mother's eyewitness account of civil rights struggles in the south before moving to Buffalo. He's the director of "100 Years From Mississippi" and also tells his own story of fighting for civil rights at Canisius College with Buffalo-based artist LeRoi Johnson. Then NAACP President Mark Blue j...