John LaFalce: Every year the United Way has to pick one volunteer in the entire United States and they designate that person as the outstanding volunteer of America.

They call the award they give the Alexis de Tocqueville Award.

One year they gave the award to Bob Hope.

One year they gave it to a former president of the United States, Jimmy Carter.

And in 1998, they gave the outstanding Volunteer in America award to our own Connie Eve, I now give you Connie Eve.

[applauding] Connie Eve: Thank you, thank you.

Connie: We have the power to change just 50 of the right talented, committed women.

We can do almost anything.

Almost anything.

There's tremendous power in that.

She has touched so many lives and has made such a difference and she hasn't stopped.

She's still working.

male: So we're gonna do it this way.

Okay, real nice, one, two, three.

Connie: For whatever reason, I had very good memory skills when I was little, so I skipped a lot of grades and my sisters and brothers always told me I was talented and this and that, you know how they go on and on, but they made me think I could do just about anything I wanted to do, and I did.

♪♪♪ Connie: I'm gonna be over by, you know, where I usually sit.

male: In particular today and Arthur Eve they begin another year grant that they may grow in wisdom and grace and strengthen their trust in your goodness all the days of their lives through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.

Connie: West Virginia, lady.

Sold that church and moved here, but I've been coming to Saint Philip's now for 66 years because Art and I were married at Saint Philips, and I love the smallness of it.

Leecia Eve: My father had a much more public role as a member of the state assembly and as a deputy speaker of the state assembly and his constant unwavering commitment for justice and economic and educational opportunity, but my mother was equally fierce but in a different way when it came to her work as an educator but also her work in founding Women for Human Rights and Dignity and in effect raising five children heavily on her own for 6-7 months of the year when my father was in Albany January through June, July, sometimes in August from Sunday evening to Thursday evening.

female: So good to see you after about 20 years.

Arthur: A pretty good couple.

Some call them the power couple.

My mother would get a bunch of her girls together and organize rallies, cookouts, you know.

She would take the lead on a lot of stuff just to support my father.

My father was a state assembling man which made him the highest ranking Black official in Washington.

There were no state senators, Black state senators, was no Black congressmen and so went to the airport and rode with my father and picked up Dr. King.

Then shook his hand at the airport.

Then we all went to Klein Hand's Music Hall where he spoke and I knew it was a big thing then, but I didn't realize how big it was so, you know, to years later on.

Leecia: During the Attica prison uprising in September of '71, my father went into Attica Prison at the prisoner's request to try and alleviate the crisis that he went into that prison knowing he might not come out alive, but he went in anyway.

I grew up in a household where service was not something you did on the side, it was the core of what you did.

male: You got your girls over there.

Look at that.

Nice, one, two, three.

Shine look down.

Connie: We had been introduced to a buffalo that was very, very racist.

Quiet racism but systemic, systemic.

Sixty years ago we saw what was happening.

We needed a voice.

Leecia: I mentioned Attica.

My father's run historic run for mayor in '77.

I was 13 at the time.

On this lawn, there was a cross, a small cross that was burned.

When my father ran for mayor, I've had to pick up the phone and hear people yell.

As a child, I was exposed to a lot of things that most children or most adults probably shouldn't be.

Sheela Allen: Buffalo's driving ban is back with us again today.

In effect, for the second time in the city of Buffalo, the no driving ban imposed by Mayor McCaskey as of midnight found police making sure the restrictions are being obeyed.

Connie: After the blizzard of '77, the stations suddenly had nothing to talk about and that's when the woman took the life of her three children.

Matthew Gryta: It was one of the top cases in the late 70s.

For both On broadcast medias and radio and television, you know.

Because there were many people in Buffalo who felt she was guilty as sin and there were other people like Constance Eve who realized she was mentally troubled, but, you know, she wasn't getting the kind of help she needed.

Connie: We know that no mother takes the life of her children except to deny them going into slavery.

We've read those stories, yeah.

We know how the criminal justice system works.

We're not naive about it.

If you don't have some numbers you can dial or can afford top-notch legal representation, you've got a problem and dial back 30 years, 40 years, the further back you go, you couldn't even think about representation.

You just got shot on the spot or sent to jail for the most minimal thing.

I have friends who were alive when you had to get off the street if you saw a Caucasian approaching, you had to get off the street till they come past.

That's how long I've lived so.

Matthew: At the time there was so much racial animosity in the town that when the four children were taken for the day they were buried, there were whites who would drive by the African American church on the east side of Buffalo and just make fun of Blacks and drive away, you know, that's how much racial animosity existed at the time.

Connie: So, Gail Trait, for whatever reason, I found myself asking to see her and my husband arranged this to go to the holding pen to see her.

She just looked dehumanized.

We formed an organization called Women for Human Rights and Dignity.

We realized we had to first get so many of them out of jail 'cause once you become a record it's hard to undo and a woman becoming a part of the criminal justice system that's even harder.

Leecia: She took this horrific tragedy, Gail Trait's killing of her children and that caused her to peel back the layers of the onion of our criminal justice system as it relates in particular to women and their families.

And what can we do to prevent things like this from happening in the first place?

Barbara Howe: At that time, politically, there were a lot of people in the New York State legislature who want to build more prisons, okay.

And then there were other people, the Arthur O. Eve Sergeant ledger, who wanted to have fewer prisons 'cause they knew if you build prisons, society would fill them with Black people, right?

That's simple.

So they did it, I say they did it the New York way.

You do both.

When you do things the New York way you build more prisons for the part of the legislature that wants more prisons and you build more alternative facilities.

Connie: I wanted to provide an alternative to incarceration as the first program to give them an opportunity to serve their time with us while they got psychological help, help for their children, some kind of training or begun to get their GEDs 'cause most of them so often were not a high school graduates.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Barbara: One of the houses became a place where Women for Human Rights and Dignity did other events and eventually had some women who had been sentenced to alternatives to incarceration to be there.

I remember being in that home too.

So I can picture three different homes that I was in on more than one occasion doing the work, the good work of Connie Eve.

Connie: People came all kinds of talents and skill, physical, mental, financial, everything and just put their thing in to help it work.

female: You're saying that people came, but you have that way of pulling people.

Connie: Well, it's work.

female: And you can motivate people and that always to me was such a special gift that you have.

Connie: It's work, but you know I never thought about it 'cause we were moving so fast because other folks identified with what we were trying to do.

female: Good, my Connie.

Connie: So our organization grew from first just being organized with teams of volunteers of all kinds of professions and plain old this people wanting to help were talented whatever they did.

One crew fixed breakfast for everybody.

One crew fixed dinner when we came back from the prison.

Everybody had something to do.

So we began by just doing workshops in the prisons for women.

Every woman, some of the most talented, gifted women there, beautiful inside and out, just caught up in their time, caught up in their time making bad choices or being sucked into bad choices.

Cheryl Marie: I didn't.

I thought that I was just this, my life is ruined, and that's what I had to accept and deal with.

Cheryl: Two years I was hooked on crack cocaine and then one day my mother said to me, "I don't know who you are, but when you see my daughter Cheryl, you tell her I'll be here waiting on you."

And that's when the cycle fell and I ended up being incarcerated and I knew that this was not my-- I was just lost.

So that's why I applied for Mrs. Eve program so that I could have a chance to better myself and not get caught up in the vicious cycle that the criminal justice system has us.

So, I put in a letter and they got back to me and I instead of doing prison time, I was able to serve my time in one of her homes.

So that's how I got to meet Mrs. Eve.

We had actually was basically what it was, it was a structural environment and at the same time we were able to keep our dignity and that's what was good about it because everybody doesn't need to be incarcerated.

Sometimes we just need to be guided in the right direction.

They just need a structure, loving, caring environment.

female: And community, yeah.

Cheryl: Yeah, and community and that's what Mrs. Eve offered.

Amitra Wall: You know, one of my fondest memories is being in the building and sitting alongside of her next to her wrapping presents and talking and listening to her share her stories while my two kids were still young at the time were upstairs watching TV with other volunteers kids, so it's like a community like effort.

female: Is this our 15th Oscar party or something?

female: But I don't know that, but it's the best ever.

Leecia: That group of women reflects hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of service to the most vulnerable people in our community and we've lost some of those women.

Each Oscar party we celebrate the person that we lost that year.

As each year passes we become that much more appreciative of this event of our gathering 'cause we never know if we're all gonna be here for the next year or the next Oscar parties.

Barbara: It's just basically a time to people relax and watch the Oscars and eat too much and have a good time.

female: What I think is part of her leadership style is that she knows how to have fun also really kind of you kind of wanna be around her 'cause she's still... Barbara: That's where the energy, what?

She's 91, right?

The energy, the leadership style and that's the way she ran campaigns.

I mean, that's how she did it.

male: Now in Lift Every Voice and sing hymn number 26.

♪♪♪ female: I know.

She looked like the Winterland.

Connie: My great grandson.

female: Oh my God.

Leecia: Women for Human Rights and Dignity was founded, it's an organization that was a powerful force not just in Western New York, but beyond for decades that's being replicated now in communities across the country and for that leadership, that innovation, that foresight, the transformative efforts that she and her friends were leading when they formed this nonprofit.

She received the TOEFL Award from the United Way of America, which is its highest honor.

Barbara: This is Connie, just says it all to me.

When we were giving clothing, for example, to the women in prison, right, hats and coats and socks, whatever it was, and all cleared through the Department of Corrections, of course, that we could bring these things.

She didn't want the women to have gently used anything.

She wanted the women to have new everything.

Now to me that says everything.

Cheryl: She didn't hold back.

She didn't judge us.

We didn't feel less than, we felt equal to and better.

We made her feel better about ourselves and our well-being.

And that's where the dignity comes in.

That was the best thing she ever came up with was Women's Human Rights and Dignity because dignity is so important.

Amitra: Because I never and I believe Mrs. Eve would not want to be viewed as some savior coming in.

We're not there to save, we're there to love on and provide the support for others.

Those individuals do not need saving, they need dignity and the respect this is reaching out and showing others that we are a community more than just the words but in the deeds.

Connie: You don't know when you're young what your parents go through to provide a good life for you.

They just did what they had to do.

My father worked in the coal mines and my mother had given up when she married my father, who wanted lots of children because he was an only child of a mixed arrangement.

He was born on a plantation from the owner's daughter and an African American father, but my father always wanted a large family, and my mother and father decided an 11th child was in order.

When my father retired as a coal miner because he was near retirement by the time I was well into my early years of high school, he was already into retirement and my eldest brother had provided the money to buy our home, but what was important, not the home, the land that went with it.

So my father grew everything.

Talk about just one seed Johnny Apple Seed, apple trees, great farmer, peach trees, plum trees.

All the land all around and grew and grew and my mother was a marvelous homemaker, you see, and my father provided by being very resourceful.

We grown pigs and chickens.

How parents then could make something out of almost nothing.

My first garment when I started school, when I started elementary school, and I will never forget it was a navy blue cotton dress with yellow bonnets all in it.

The material was from a bag of hog feed, the sack.

That whole feet came in and my mother designed the most darling dress and bonnet.

She always said if she could just live to see her children grown and able to take care of themselves and with decent spiritual depth and they carried out her wishes and we worked together.

female: So you all helped each other.

Connie: So, we didn't know we were poor 'cause we had each other.

male: Lord, we know that that darkness is about being separate and being alone and Connie is so beautiful at helping to bring together and connect and we pray Lord that you be with us today as we move forward for this Juneteenth festival and acknowledge Connie as the queen of the festival.

All this we pray in the name of Jesus, amen.

Connie: Oh, you're on target always.

female: So what do you think about Connie as being the queen of the... Esther Annan: She's represented very well.

She's our elder.

Without her and her strong will, I wouldn't be.

I wouldn't be if it were not for her and all that she put forward for me to be here.

And that's what a queen mother is.

They take the charge, they go before, they're the wiser one, they've been there, they have the wisdom and they give it to us to understand our roots.

Connie: This is beautiful.

I can actually when I'm sitting Saturday the beauty on the dress.

Esther: You'll see it, it's just gonna, you sit like this and it'll just.

Connie: That is a gift to you when people tell you that you've been able to help them do something with what they have.

Amitra: The work that Mrs. Eve has done should be applauded.

It should not just be the work of one person or a committed for who gets burned out.

It should be the responsibility of everyone in the community.

Esther: Mrs. Constance Eve as the queen of our community, your Corbo Ashanti royal beads are priceless and represent your royalty and power.

Connie: And so our strategic planning tells us that the challenges we face will unfortunately continue well into the 21st century.

♪♪♪ Byron Brown: The first festival after May 14 was very somber, was very reflective.

This is going to be a more celebratory festival.

Kathy Hochul: And to tell the rest of the world that one year and a month after we made international news as being the scene of one of the most heinous acts of White supremacy in our nation's history, here we are to say we are back even stronger, more united than ever before.

Connie: Only with the power of collective action, bringing together people of like minds.

Like the lady told me one year, Mrs. Eve, my background is not the same educationally, but I know how to do A, B, and C. I said bring it on 'cause I don't know how to do A, B, and C. I can do the D and F if you bring on the A, B and C. And that's what we were able to do.

female: That's wonderful.

Connie: Fifty women.

Oh my God.

Darcy, I'm telling you could change the world.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ...