Buffalo, New York (CNN) --
Phylicia Dove can't hold back tears as she speaks of the massacre that ripped through her community's shelter in Buffalo's Masten Park neighborhood.
"Tops Market was a place of community, a safe space to come together, to talk, to be together," he told CNN.
"There's no one here who hasn't visited this Tops. It was ours. Even if it wasn't the best, it was ours, and now our secure space has been infiltrated and taken away from us, and that's something we mourn."
Beloved Tops is the only supermarket within a mile radius of this mostly black neighborhood.
Getting it to settle there took more than a decade.
It has now been marked by a massacre whose remains are evident in the sections of police tape that now surround the store.
But the true guardians of this supermarket are the hundreds of residents who have gathered on Jefferson Avenue, crying, praying and beginning their harrowing journey to healing.
The tragedy began when a typical Saturday grocery shopping turned into a violent nightmare when 18-year-old Payton S. Gendron arrived in Tops and fatally shot people inside and outside the store, according to police.
Eleven of the thirteen victims, ranging in age from 20 to 86, were black.
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Gendron described himself as a white supremacist in an online hate speech.
And residents want the world to know that what happened in their community was an act of terrorism.
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"This needs to be labeled a racist hate crime and we want it to be known that he is a white supremacist," Dove said.
"We also want this to be talked about as terrorism, and to call it something softer is an insult to the families who are grieving today."
The massacre left this close-knit community angry and heartbroken, but Eastside residents like Tony Marshall have not let their grief distance them from others.
Tony Marshall spends most of his days at Tops, picking up and dropping off employees and shoppers.
Marshall spent hours in the sun, grilling hot dogs on the corner where Tops loomed behind him, just feet from where he discovered the bodies of three of his friends the day before.
"It was chaos," he says, looking out over the Tops parking lot.
"People crying, people screaming, and I joined them when I saw those bodies, all by the door. Bodies of my friends."
Marshall, affectionately known around town as "Mr. Tony," is cooking for hundreds of mourning residents on Buffalo's East Side.
The minibus driver, who spends most of his days in Tops picking up and dropping off employees and shoppers, says he is "emotionally drained."
"It started the moment I arrived and saw my people on the ground and it hasn't ended since," he told CNN.
"There's nothing more I want to do than be here, because this is one of those issues where if we let that pain fester, none of us are going to want to be here. And if we're not here, once again the community suffer."
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Sounds of hope and pain surround the apple, brief laughs mixed with audible cries.
Across the street and under a tree with flowers and candles in honor of those who lost their lives, a man wraps his arms around a woman whose tears seem endless.
Beside them, a group of young people walk around a small microphone, shouting words of hope.
"They won't break us!" shouts a woman.
The names of the victims are written in chalk on the ground near the supermarket.
People surround Elea Daniel in prayer as she cries on Sunday.
"God says we have to love no matter what happens," said Daniel, who was trying to find forgiveness for the man who attacked his community and took the lives of 10 people.
As the community begins its efforts to heal and rebuild, Dove, a local business owner and activist, says she can't help but worry that this may not be the last time tragedy strikes a Black community in America.
"Where can we exist and be black and be safe?" he asks.
"And if it's not our supermarket, or our church, or any other place we've been shot at before, where are we going to exist freely?"
"They hate us, and now they're after us"
Heavily armed and wearing tactical gear, Gendron, who is originally from Conklin, New York, traveled about 200 miles to Tops with the intention of continuing his massacre beyond the supermarket, according to police.
His choice to attack Tops was not random;
in his hate speech, the author, who identifies himself as Payton Gendron, says that the Buffalo supermarket is in a zip code that "has the highest percentage of blacks which is pretty close to where I live."
The zip code that includes Tops, 14208, is 78% black, according to the Census Bureau's 2020 American Community Survey.
It is among the top 2% of ZIP codes nationwide with the highest percentage of black population and has the highest percentage of black population of any zip code in upstate New York.
"He knew what he was doing when he came after us," Raqueal "RaRa" Watson, who was born and raised in the area, told CNN.
"It scares us, especially as a mother, that someone might come here just to kill us. None of us slept last night. This will cause us permanent trauma."
Tops was her local grocery store, she says as she sits in a chair in front of the Jefferson Avenue memorial, where a woman lays flowers before bowing to offer a prayer.
Calvin Albrow and Raqueal "RaRa" Watson pose for a photo in front of the supermarket.
Aaron Salter, the "hero" security guard who confronted the suspect but was fatally shot, watched her grow up in that store, she says.
But despite the memories and love she had for Tops, the mother of three said she and her family don't plan on going there again.
"All we did was be black," Watson said.
"The whites are taking everything from us. Even the only supermarket in our community. That's what they're doing to us."
Dove, the community activist, herself a mother herself, says she is consumed by another question: How to explain the incident to her two young children, who she fears may one day be the victims of similar incidents deeply rooted in anti-Black racism. ?
"We shouldn't have to teach our kids that at some point the color of their skin is going to mark them as different and could mark them as a target," Dove said.
"In this country we are hated, and now we are persecuted. How do you explain to a child that there was a massacre in a supermarket because someone hates their skin? What age is the right one for me to tell them that this can happen to them? they?".
"Growing up without thinking or knowing that your skin is a problem is a privilege that black bodies do not have," he added.
Mount a memorial near Tops
People watch a rainbow circle the sun as they cry and pray on the street outside Tops.
"It's about making the invisible visible"
Martin Bryant leans on the porch of his home, which is down the block from Tops, as his two nephews stand by his side.
The three spent the day standing in front of their house, unable to accept that the neighborhood they see now, still plagued by police, journalists and dozens of mourners, is the same one they call home.
Bryant was 33 years old when Tops made his way into his neighborhood.
After living in the same house on Jefferson Avenue his entire life, he finally owned a local grocery store.
It is a blessing that many people take for granted;
a trusted place to go for last-minute dinner ideas, sweet cravings, or to casually wander from aisle to aisle flipping through a handwritten shopping list.
So when Tops opened its doors in 2003, life was turned upside down when this community got the store they had dreamed of and fought for for over a decade.
"Tops was a huge boost to the community. We had our own supermarket. It wasn't a 7/11 convenience store, it was a real grocery store. It made everyone happy."
Bryant told CNN.
"Local leaders fought hard for it and the location was perfect because it's right next to two bus lines."
A video of the supermarket's grand opening shows a level of joy from residents, who are seen cheering and filling the aisles of their new store, eerily contrary to the horror seen within those very walls on Saturday.
"For the community that had lived for a long time without fresh fruits and vegetables at their disposal, this was a sign of progress, a sign of being and feeling recognized," Dove said.
"A sign that the East Side mattered and was an area of the city worth investing in. It was about making the invisible visible."
From left to right, Darious Morgan, Martin Bryant and Jordan Bryant on the steps of a relative's home, two doors down from Tops.
Before Tops, residents had to rely on a "dirty corner store that was never stocked" or travel to neighboring areas to shop.
When winters were bad, it was especially hard, Bryant said, and for seniors and low-income residents who couldn't afford cars, things were even more dire.
Now, Bryant fears for the elderly and underprivileged in his neighborhood, who might no longer feel safe going to Tops.
"Older people go there. My mom, who was in a wheelchair, could go there any day she wanted to buy a few things," says Bryant.
"We try to be hopeful, because what are they going to have if they don't have Tops? Even I wouldn't want to go back in there."
The closest grocery store is a Wegmans, which is about 6 miles away.
Although it's a 15-minute drive away, public transport can make the journey take up to an hour.
“To have that one space taken away from us, held in 2003, so not too long ago, the only supermarket in what really is a food desert, is traumatic,” Dove said.
"It's a feeling that we were kicked when we were already on the ground, so it's a different level of pain that we feel. We didn't have much, and what we had left was taken away."
Tops Friendly Markets said in a statement that the store will be closed "until further notice," but the community fears it may never reopen.
And even if it does, Bryant says, getting through the parking lot and into the store where the bodies were held might seem impossible.
"We are broken, possibly forever," Dove said.
"Will we ever be the same? No. Will we rebuild? Yes. Because we have no choice. Black people in America have never had a choice."
People surround Deazjah Roseboro, 12, as she comforts her 8-year-old cousin, Jerney Moss.
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