Browse Items (81 total)

Six months after the assassination of Dr. Barnett Slepian, a Buffalo OB-GYN who performed abortions, rhetoric from both sides of the abortion debate was reaching a critical level. It was the eve of another planned pro-life mass demonstration. WIVB-TV…

Highlights Buffalo's unique role in the abolitionist movement. Uses reenactments, old photographs and drawings, and interviews with historians and preservationists such as Dr. Monroe Fordham, Jesse Nash, Jr., George Arthur, Rev. William Henderson,…

Western New York is a leader in presenting re-enactments at authentic sites dating back to the days of abolitionism. Learn why these Underground Railroad sites are now gaining national attention. See how efforts have begun to document and preserve…

This television special documents the Buffalo visit of the Freedom Schooner Amistad, a replica of the infamous slave ship. Thousands of school children were among Western New York visitors who viewed the cramped quarters from which African captives…

The organized struggle for civil rights in America had its early roots in Buffalo, New York in 1905. Hoping to create a great "current of protest," W.E.B. Dubois and fellow activists met at the home of Mary Talbert and voiced their demands for…

The election of Byron Brown as Buffalo's first African American mayor came one hundred years after the nation's modern civil rights movement was born on the Niagara Frontier. The Niagara Movement, which began in 1905, was the forerunner of the…

Series of reports on the life of Rev. Bennett Smith of Buffalo, who marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s. He died on August 7, 2001. Reports cover Rev. Smith's funeral, attended by New York Senator Hillary Clinton, and the Rev. Jesse…

Buffalo civil rights leaders reflect on Dr. Martin Luther King's dream vs. reality. Revisits the urban riots of the turbulent 1960s. The series raises the question: Are Buffalo's African American citizens better off now than they were during those…

On January 29, 1989, the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa visited Buffalo to seek help in ending apartheid in his country.

Apartheid, which means “apartness” in the language of Afrikaans, was the name given to the official separation…

U.S. District Court Judge John Thomas Curtin (August 24, 1921 - April 14, 2017) was interviewed by WIVB-TV Senior Correspondent Rich Newberg on April 18, 1995. The subject was affirmative action.   Judge Curtin issued rulings establishing minority…