As Dr. Kenyani Davis makes her rounds at the Community Health Center in Buffalo, New York, she is still trying to process it all, after a mass shooter murdered 10 members of the neighborhood she serves.

"It's a community that got affected, especially when you're talking about a hate crime," Dr. Davis said. "It was every emotion at once."

In the days that followed, her team got to work — something they have always done.

"If they needed us in a medical component, we were there," Dr. Davis said. "If they needed us as community leaders, we were there. If they needed us as friends, if they needed us just to create an open space, we were there." 

Across the city, other organizations recognized the need for mental health services, too. 

"We were in the crowd with the community in front of Tops praying, crying, just being there, an ear for them to to express themselves," said Melissa Archer, New York Project Hope program coordinator.

When it came to treatment, Archer, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, noticed people on the city's east side, made up of mostly Black residents, were hesitant to seek help.   

"People want to see people that look like them so that they don't have to explain certain things they feel," Archer said.

SEE MORE: What Buffalo, NY Is Like Two Months After Tops Mass Shooting

According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, only one in three Black adults with mental illness receives treatment.

The National Alliance on Mental Illness say that's mostly due to socioeconomic challenges, stigma surrounding mental illness and mistrust of the medical industry. Black people are often victims of health care bias when those providing the treatment lack cultural awareness.  

"I think one of these things that this event has shed light on and empower people to do is to speak the truth," Dr. Davis said. "When we were there, we had people saying, 'We are angry at White people."

For community leaders in Buffalo, that meant offering more counselors with shared experiences and cultures. 

Part of the healing process means meeting people where they are, and for some mental health professionals, that meant setting up shop two minutes from where the incident took place.

The Buffalo Urban League team says the numbers have increased since moving into the neighborhood and making more Black counselors readily available, all thanks to temporary funding from FEMA through New York Project Hope.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of racial/ethnic minorities within the psychologist workforce more than doubled between 2000 and 2019, increasing 166%. However, researchers predict that increase will still be inadequate to meet the demands of minority patients.

In the meantime, doctors there say they'll continue to stand in the gap for as long as possible.

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Brick by brick, Deryl McKissack is building on a legacy. If you've ever taken in the magnitude of memorials, you've seen her handiwork.

"In a project like this, you know, there are a thousand moving parts," McKissack said.

For her, it's in the blood. She's part of a long line of architects, builders and dreamers.

"My family goes back to my great-great-grandfather who was a slave and came to this country in 1790. And he was a builder as a slave. And he passed a trade of building down to my great-grandfather," McKissack continued.

He would pass it down to his sons, who would become the first Black licensed architects in the southeast and officially start the family business in 1905. But it didn't end there. McKissack's father also took on the family legacy and her mother continued the work after his illness.  

"I started at six in the family business with my father. He would take us to work with him on Saturdays. I'm a twin and my mother needed a break," McKissack said. "And so he would take us on Saturdays and prop up on the drawing boards — because we didn't have computers back then — and he would have us draw."

In 1990, armed with a degree in civil engineering and $1000, McKissack launched her own firm.

"I had a lot to prove," she said. "I was one person. I was Black. I was female in a male-dominated industry. Why would anybody want to work with me?"

But somebody did eventually, after she picked up the phone and reached out to 150 potential clients.

"I don't need a handout," McKissack said. "If you give me an opportunity, I'm not going to let you down. And I built on that. My first client was Georgetown. I started with a $5,000 fee project and within six months I signed a million dollars worth of work with them."

From there, the repertoire grew from the U.S. Treasury restoration to modernizing D.C. area schools, to the design of Ghana's Cape Coast museum and project management on several U.S. airports.

"This particular job, you know, there was work on a taxiway in the apron all around the concourse. There was a lot of different activities here in the concourse."

But it was the appointment as architect of record for the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial that solidified McKissack's own stamp on history.

"I think about my ancestors and what they went through, the atrocities they went through — Jim Crow laws and you name it, slavery and all of that — for me to be sitting here today and even be sitting there then would just bring tears to my eyes because there had never been a time when a Black firm had designed something on a national mall."

Today her firm handles more than $15 billion in projects. But it wasn't a crystal stair. She says she faced misogyny and racism along the way.

"I've been discriminated against by Black men as well as White men," McKissacks said. "You want to say, you know, 'It's just a white male world and da da da da da.' But that's not true when you're a woman coming into this. And it's microaggressions in the sense that you can see them huddling together. You're left out."

A joint report from two architectural organizations found 2% of the nation's architects identify as African American. The barriers of obtaining licensure include the cost and a lack of support from their employer.

McKissack says she has come up with a plan to diversify the industry, enlisting some of the biggest firms in the country.

"Board members need to be Black in those companies so that there is a true understanding at the top of how policy makes Black people feel uncomfortable or how things are said and written," McKissack said. "So there are microaggressions, and then there's Black companies that need to be sustained."

Because like the McKissacks before her, she's laying a foundation she hopes lasts for generations to come.

"I believe that everybody is unique," she said. "They come here with a special purpose. And when they find that purpose, nothing can stop them. And as long as they're working and walking in that purpose, nothing can stop them."

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The Seattle Kraken say they will make National Hockey League history during Thursday night's game against Winnipeg when play-by-play announcer Everett Fitzhugh and analyst JT Brown team up to form the first all-Black television broadcast crew to call an NHL game.

Fitzhugh and Brown will appear on ROOT Sports Northwest. Fitzhugh is Seattle's radio play-by-play announcer but will be moving over to the television side for one night while regular TV announcer John Forslund works the national broadcasts for Vegas and Colorado on TNT. 

Seattle senior vice president of marketing and communications Katie Townsend said the team had planned for Forslund to miss a small number of games for national broadcast duties during the season and have Fitzhugh step in. She said having Fitzhugh and Brown team up during Black History Month adds even more significance. 

"We are fortunate to have an incredibly talented broadcast team. Everett and JT moved into NHL broadcasting this season, worked hard and have made an immediate connection with our fans," Townsend said.

Fitzhugh was Seattle's first broadcast hire in the summer of 2020 after working in the ECHL. 

Brown retired after playing parts of seven seasons with Tampa Bay, Anaheim and Minnesota. He last played during the 2018-19 season.

This story was originally published by Alex Livingston of Newsy, and the Associated Press contributed.