In 1885-86, James F. Gluck, a young attorney in Buffalo, N.Y., received from Mark Twain half of the manuscript of his recently published novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Gluck was collecting letters and manuscripts by important writers for what was to become the Buffalo Public Library. Twain probably responded favorably to Gluck’s request for the manuscript because the novelist had once been a Buffalo resident and an editor-owner of the Buffalo Express. Twain believed the first half of the manuscript probably had been destroyed by the printer. But it was discovered in 1991 in the attic of the Hollywood home of one of Gluck’s granddaughters. Apparently Gluck had planned to bind the first half of the manuscript for the Buffalo library but, following his unexpected death in 1897, the manuscript went to Hollywood with his widow, who moved there to be closer to her daughter. With the help of William H. Loos, the Buffalo library’s curator, the two halves of the manuscript were reunited in Buffalo in 1992, 105 years after they had last been together.

Loren

Video by Dan Tham

Hodan Isse stands in front of the building that she hopes will soon become a bustling center for the Somali community in Buffalo

Villified today by some as America’s enemies, immigrants and refugees actually may be saviors of the nation’s disintegrating cities.

The Rust Belt cities of Cleveland, Ohio, and Buffalo, Ny., among the poorest in America, have in common empty buildings, shriveling business districts and shrinking populations.

The 2010 census put Cleveland’s population at 396,815, its lowest in 100 years. Buffalo, the nation’s eighth largest city in 1900, has shrunk from 580,000 in 1950 to 261,310 in 2010.

The population numbers translate into human tragedies—underemployed and unemployed workers and homeless people. In Cleveland, Walter P. Ginn, executive director of Family Promise of Greater Cleveland, said the media focus on the visible homeless, individuals on the street and under bridges.

But the stagnant economy has caused, Ginn said, a “fairly drastic increase” among homeless families, who traditionally have tried to stay with their relatives and friends and therefore remain invisible. Now, whenever one of Family Promise’s apartments for homeless families becomes available, the agency receives 30 calls within an hour.

Priscilla Cooper of Family Connection Center

Ginn said the pay level for available work—increasingly fast-food and housekeeping jobs—has gone from $12/hour three years ago to $10/hour. Priscilla Cooper, of Family Connection Center, describes the experience for Cleveland’s black women, 50 percent who are impoverished. They are forced to take housekeeping jobs: “The very poor are doing the same thing they were doing in slavery.”

Karen Brauer, the Salvation Army’s director of social services for Cleveland also bemoans the job crisis: “We’ve lost our industry. It’s very, very scary.” Her comment reminds me of a 2008 book by a friend, Richard Longworth, titled Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism.

Longworth recalled the days when Cleveland was 50 percent foreign-born—Italians, Germans, Slovaks and Poles. With the shrinking industrial base, that 50 percent dropped to barely 4 percent. “We even have a hard time attracting illegal immigrants,” Ronn Richard, president of The Cleveland Foundation, told Longworth.

In Buffalo, however, the presence of refugees and immigrants, not only Hispanics, creates a different atmosphere. Refugees from war-torn Somalia, for example, continue to arrive daily. Hodan Isse, a professor at the University of Buffalo’s School of Management, takes us on a tour of the west-side Somali community.

Abdinoor Jama and Aden Aden, who fled their native Somalia, started a clothes mending business in a Kenyan refugee camp. Today they operate Jubba Food Store and Tailor on Buffalo’s Forest Ave. “This area is up and coming,” Isse said, “and that’s because of the refugee population.”

Ali Mohamed opened Hatmy Market, 278 Grant St., seven years ago. He has expanded into serving the Nepali community as well as Somalis, employing a Nepali meat cutter. A nursing student at the University of Buffalo, he hopes to continue his business while working three 12-hour shifts each week as a nurse.

Newcomers to America are 30 percent more likely than natural-born citizens to start businesses, according to the Small Business Administration. Edward Roberts, founder and chair of the MIT Entrepreneurial Center, is often quoted as saying, “Immigration itself is an entrepreneurial act.”

Isse, a founder of Help Everyone Achieve Livelihood (HEAL), shows us a large building on West Ferry St. that was purchased for about $20,000. After a $240,000 renovation, it will house HEAL offices and community meeting space on the second floor. The West Side Bazaar—20 vendors from Africa, Asia and Latin America—will sell their wares on the first floor.

Mohamed A. Mohamed, former prime minister of Somalia

Mohamed A. Mohamed, a New York State regional compliance specialist for civil rights who served as Somalia’s prime minister for nine months in 2010-2011, recalls the years he spent helping establish the Buffalo Immigrant and Refugee Empowerment Coalition (BIRAC), which serves about 20,000 Buffalo residents from 20 countries. BIRAC started after-school programs, mobilized people to vote and endorsed candidates.

It also helped immigrants buy their own homes. For $1,000-20,000 five years ago they purchased rundown houses that they then upgraded. Mohamed added, “You won’t see them at $20,000” today. The immgrants’ purchases helped eliminate neighborhood blight and restored houses to Buffalo’s tax rolls that might otherwise have faced demolition.

So Buffalo’s immigrants and refugees have given the city a vitality that Cleveland lacks. Whatever challenges they bring to Buffalo’s schools and social service agencies, there could be a worse problem for the city. The immigrants and refugees could stop coming.

Loren Ghiglione

New York State Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Catholic, agonized about his vote on legalizing same-sex marriage in the state. In the end, as the video indicates, he decided the denial of rights to same-sex partners took priority. He was one of four Senate Republicans who provided the votes necessary to legalize same-sex marriage in New York. Grisanti represents New York’s 60th Senate District, which includes Buffalo, Grand Island and Niagara Falls.

Video by Dan

Margaret Sullivan, editor of the Buffalo News

“Intern to editor.” It has a nice ring to it. And in 19 years at the Buffalo News, Margaret Sullivan did just that. She’s been the top editor at the News for 12 years, and one of her goals has been to enrich her newsroom through diversification. Sullivan is the first female editor in the paper’s long history.

She estimates that diversity in the newsroom has increased from 3 percent to 12 percent. Recently she observed just as many women at the news conference table as men and several people of color, she said.

“Overall it’s a good thing because it really reflects on our readers,” she said.

In April, Lisa Wilson, 41, became the only black female sports editor in the country at a large paper, “which is just shocking to me,” Wilson said. ‘I can’t be the only one qualified.” She considers it a “tremendous honor.”

Lisa Wilson, executive sports editor at the Buffalo News

Wilson joined the News in 1998 as a sports copy editor and steadily worked her way up.

“It’s not as hard as you might think,” Wilson said. At the beginning of her career, she might have talked sports a little more to prove her knowledge in a traditionally male-dominated section.

“But now, I don’t think so,” she said. “Everyone knows I’m a female and I run the sports section.” She’s been “in the trenches” with the newsroom staff, to the point where being a black female editor doesn’t make much of a difference.

Sullivan too said she felt like she had paid her dues, although there have been many times when she was the only woman in the room.

“You can feel alone,” she said. “It’s not an entirely pleasant feeling.”

Sullivan prefers to represent her individual views, she said. She laughed when an opinion editor asked her for the women’s point of view for an article. “I thought that was hilarious because I could never try to represent 51 percent of the population,” she said.

In fact, Sullivan represents a tiny percentage of the population. She’s a newspaper editor in Buffalo, one of only an estimated 30 in the city’s history.

“One of them was Mark Twain, and one of them was me!” she said. “It’s a great legacy.”

Alyssa

A fabulous way to end a long day of interviews. We were blessed with inordinately good weather during our stay in Buffalo, New York. Here’s proof, along with some snapshots of Niagara Falls, just as the sun was setting.

Video by Dan