Buffalo community activist Rosa Gibson dies at 78
When a series of assaults and burglaries in Buffalo’s Masten Park neighborhood in 1982 sparked safety concerns, Rosa Gibson responded. From the kitchen of her Best Street home, she helped organize a Crime Watch program that grew to include 50 members who conducted twice-a-week, night-to-dawn patrols.
The program, supported at first by donations, eventually received a state crime-prevention grant and grudging respect from a wary Police Department.
“We had to argue to get ours. But I know when I’m entitled to something, I’ll fight for it. I really don’t know why the opposition was there at first. I guess it was because we were a little nobody,” Gibson said in a 1985 interview. “But we said this is our community and we are going to protect it.”
Gibson, who was never afraid to challenge government officials over everything from the city’s garbage fee to police response times in her neighborhood, died Friday at 78.
The tireless community activist, known for the lush gardens she helped nurture on vacant East Side lots through her Community Action Information Center, died in Millard Fillmore Hospital, following a battle with cancer, said Renetta Johnson, Gibson’s great-niece.
The cancer had been in remission for 20 years but returned recently, though Gibson didn’t even tell family members and close friends until a short time ago, Johnson said.
“She was still active in her causes, active in her garden, up until a few weeks ago,” Johnson said. “She always was thinking of others before she thought of herself.”
The Gadsden, Ala., native was an exceptionally active member of the community, serving as president of the Concerned Citizens of Masten Park Community Block Club No. 1 in the 1980s.
Gibson was named a 1984 Buffalo News Citizen of the Year in recognition of the club’s Crime Watch program and its innovative “Night Out” program, the first of its kind locally.
“She was a strong voice for public safety and neighborhood activism, and citizen empowerment, and her passion and enthusiasm for the City of Buffalo will be greatly missed,” Buffalo Mayor Byron W. Brown said in an interview.
Gibson’s not-for-profit organization, now the Community Action Information Center, and its volunteers maintain vegetable and flower gardens on vacant Wohlers Avenue lots.
The organization also distributes food to needy families.
“Her love for her community — that drove her. That was her passion,” her great-niece said. “She hated for the community to be considered the ghetto.”
Gibson frequently took on elected and appointed city officials on behalf of her neighbors and other residents.
In 1985, when the city was hashing out the details of a project to convert War Memorial Stadium into an amateur athletics facility, Gibson complained that residents weren’t included in the planning.
“I admired her greatly because of the work she was doing. We did not always agree, but we agreed to disagree, and that’s OK,” said David A. Collins, longtime Masten District representative on the Common Council, who was on the Council at the time.
Over the years, Gibson was a persistent critic of the city’s garbage fee, leading protests with former Mayor James D. Griffin.
Well into her 70s, Gibson continued working on her gardens — including a “shoe garden” featuring flowers planted in donated shoes — and on important citywide issues.
In 2007, she criticized the Brown administration for not putting any surveillance cameras on the East Side. Officials relented and posted two cameras at East Side intersections.
This April, Gibson was at a hearing complaining about delays in much-needed renovation work at what is now the Johnnie B. Wiley Amateur Athletic Pavilion.
She had a way of making a point. In 1993, after she was fed up with the city’s inaction over illegal dumping in her neighborhood, Gibson organized a protest to get out her message.
When a large pile of trash ended up in the street, Gibson and two others were fined $1,000 each for illegal dumping. How did Gibson and the others pay their fines? In pennies, painstakingly collected from local banks, because Gibson vowed not to simply write the city a check.
“I was as determined about getting those pennies as I am that this area is going to look like any other decent area of [the] city before I leave this world,” she said in 1993.
Gibson’s many honors included the 2000 Medgar Evers Civil Rights Award from the Buffalo Chapter of the NAACP. She also received the Minority Bar Community Service Award, Buffalo Police Community Service Award and the National Conference of Community and Justice Brother/Sisterhood Community/Volunteerism Award.
The former Rosa Holley left her native Alabama for Detroit, where she had family, before moving to Buffalo.
It was here that she met her husband, Fred, to whom she was married briefly and who pre-deceased her.
Gibson earned an associate’s degree at Niagara County Community College and a bachelor’s degree in nursing from D’Youville College.
She worked for 19 years as a nurse with the Niagara Falls School District, beginning in the late 1970s, and was believed to be the first black nurse hired in the district.
In addition to her extensive volunteer work, Gibson enjoyed spending time at area casinos, her great-niece said.
Service arrangements are incomplete.
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