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From May through September 1919, over 25 race riots rocked cities from Texas to Illinois, Nebraska to Georgia. In Omaha, the trouble began on September 25, when a white woman, Agnes Loebeck, reported that she was assaulted by a black man.
The next morning, the Bee reached new lows reporting the event. The headline was: "Black Beast First Stick-up Couple."
"The most daring attack on a white woman ever perpetrated in Omaha occurred one block south of Bancroft street near Scenic Avenue ... Read more
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Notable Nebraskan, Mildred Brown was born in Bessemer, Alabama in 1915 to a prominent black family. Her father was a respected minister. Later, Mildred would become a well-known and admired civil rights activist and leader of the African American community in Omaha.
At the age of only 16 in 1931, Mildred graduated from Miles Memorial Teachers College in Birmingham, Alabama. She became an English teacher. After marrying S. Edward Gilbert ... Read more
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The national United Service Organization (USO) was organized on April 17, 1941. It was created to serve the religious, spiritual, and educational needs of the men and women in the armed forces. USO clubs were to be financed by the public through voluntary contributions.
During the war, volunteers, mostly women, organized USO clubs throughout Nebraska. USO clubs sponsored a variety of activities for service personnel that included dances, sporting events, and dinners in the homes of local families.
The flag of the ... Read more
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There was a shortage of housing in Hastings because of the number of people who were moving there for jobs. In November, 1942, the construction company brought in about 100 Chippewa and Sioux Indians to work at the construction site.
Hidden racism in Hastings caused residents to assume that different racial groups needed separate housing. Even the local newspaper printed insults about the Sioux workers. As a result, a group of Sioux lived at the plant in tents.
Reba ... Read more
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A black man by the name of York accompanied the Lewis and Clark expedition as a slave to Clark. He had been a childhood companion to William Clark and made invaluable contributions to the expedition on many occasions. Clark reported that York was especially attentive to Sergeant Floyd during his final days. York also risked his life to save Clark in a flash flood on the Missouri River near Great Falls in present-day Montana.
York participated in the hunts to bring ... Read more
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The temperance movement in Lincoln of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a good example of how prohibition affected towns and cities across the nation. Lincoln had active temperance groups who believed the saloon was an evil institution that undermined the traditional values of family, thrift, social order and community prosperity. But the city also had groups who regarded alcohol as a normal part of social life and saw nothing wrong with having a drink, now and then.The ... Read more
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Behind the scenes of this racial situation was a political machine that may have contributed to one of the most ugly incidents in Nebraska history. In the first two decades of the 20th Century, Omaha had acquired the reputation of a "wide open" city controlled by a political machine run by Tom Dennison. In 1910, one estimate put the number of prostitutes in the city at 2,500 women. Dennison was a professional gambler who had little education or social standing. ... Read more
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"It was something different to see minority people. . . . their presence was a little uncomfortable for some residents in the community."
—Elaine Hatten, Hastings, NE
Rick Wallace interviews Willie Trip about his experiences at the Hastings Naval Ammunition Depot during World War II. An NET Television’s THE WAR: NEBRASKA STORIES interstitial,excerpted from NET Television’s series, Next Exit. Courtesy 2007 NET Foundation for Television
Racism was a serious problem in World War II. The defense factories needed more workers than small towns ... Read more
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City and state officials began asking for federal troops to come to Omaha while the riot was still building — as early as 6:20 p.m. on the evening of September 28th, more than four hours before Brown was killed. But, because the requests were directed to both local Army posts, Fort Crook and Fort Omaha, and to the War Department in Washington, the signals were confusing. The Army intervention proceeded slowly at all levels.
Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Wuest, commander of Fort ... Read more
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In the first Nebraska territorial census of 1854, there were only four slaves listed. In 1855, Sally Bayne arrived in Omaha and is counted as the first free African American to settle in the Nebraska Territory. Before that, both slaves and free blacks had traveled through on the Oregon Trail and settled on the west coast. Gradually, along with ... Read more
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As Nebraska entered the 20th century, its ranchers had learned from ranching experiments of the 1870s and 1880s and the Depression of 1898. Ranchers did well with their improved herds and high demand. Meatpacking was by far the state’s leading business. Cattle ruled Nebraska’s economy.
But there were also big problems.
The jobs provided by the expanding stockyards and packing plants attracted a wave of new immigrants to South Omaha. And particularly during ... Read more
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On November 11, 1918, World War I ended and America emerged victorious. But as thousands of soldiers returned from Europe ready to forget the terrible carnage they had seen, they arrived in a country with serious social and political problems that the war had simply swept under the surface.
There have always been racial divides in America. People tend to identify themselves as members of one group or another. Tensions ... Read more
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The Homestead Act of 1862 was a piece of inspired legislation. It allowed anyone who was over 21 or the head of a household to own land. The Homestead Act became a symbol of newfound freedom for many African Americans. The day that the Homestead Act went into effect — January 1, 1863 — was the same day that President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Many Black Americans began looking to the west as a place where ... Read more
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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
