Web Page
On March 24, 1942, Joan Catalano was the first woman inspector to be hired by Martin-Nebraska. Women were later hired as inspectors in receiving, detail manufacturing, general assembly, finishing and planting, hangars and flight test, and modifications departments at the plant.
However, there were ominous indications that these gains might ... Read more
Web Page
Between 1910 and 1920, the African American population of Omaha doubled from around 5,000 to 10,315. Those 10,000 blacks made up five percent of Omaha’s population. Blacks made up only around one percent of the population of the state. Even with these small numbers, the rate ... Read more
Web Page
In 1886 — more than 20 years after the Homestead Act was signed — an itinerate photographer in Custer County, Nebraska set out to produce a photographic history of his county. Over the next 15 years, Solomon D. Butcher produced 1,500 images, hundreds of stories, and a remarkable record of a remarkable time in the history of Nebraska and the U.S.
When Butcher was 24 years old in ... Read more
Web Page
Colonel Paul Warfield Tibbets, Jr. was airplane commander of the 509th that was responsible for dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. In 1942, Colonel Tibbets was Squadron Commander of the 340th Bomb Squadron, 97th Bombardment Group that was destined for England. Tibbets flew 25 missions in B-17s.
In March 1943, Colonel Tibbets returned to the United States to test the combat capability of Boeing’s new Super Fortress, the B-29. In September, 1944, he ... Read more
Web Page
When homesteaders arrived on the Great Plains, they found a challenging environment where survival was the goal. The native tribal people had been meeting these same challenges for thousands of years and had evolved complex economic, agricultural and cultural methods of coping. What was life like for the Native Americans in the mid- to late-1800s on the Great Plains?
By the mid-1800s, the Pawnee, Omaha, Oto-Missouria, Ponca, Lakota (Sioux), and Cheyenne were the main plains tribes living in the Nebraska Territory. ... Read more
Web Page
What is it like to be born and raised an American, but to be considered an enemy because of where your parents were born? That’s what happened to many Japanese Americans in World War II.
Racism and war hysteria motivated the U.S. government to forcibly move more than 120,000 Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans from their homes on the west coast to internment camps between 1942 and 1945. Nebraska’s central location kept its Japanese American citizens comparably safe from this process, ... Read more
Web Page
In the later years of the nineteenth century, the number of homesteaders who mostly were farmers (also called "grangers") grew. This put pressure on the ranchers who were using large areas of public lands to graze their cattle. Not only were homesteaders taking the land, but they were taking the land with access to water, which the ranchers’ cattle needed.
This conflict between homesteaders and cattlemen was rooted deeply in two very different traditions of land use. The ranchers were mostly ... Read more
Web Page
During World War II, there were shortages of many items across the U.S. because certain supplies were needed for the war. Civilians (people who were not in the military) had to do without some products.
Nebraska’s greatest contribution to winning the war was in food production. Even Nebraska families who did not live in rural areas got involved with the nationwide "Victory Garden" program. Nebraskans were encouraged to plant gardens to help ease the food shortage. Almost half of all vegetables ... Read more
