Civil rights movement in Omaha, Nebraska
With a history of racial tension that starts before the founding of the city, Omaha has been the home of numerous overt efforts related to securing civil rights for African Americans since at least the 1870s.
[1] Prior to the formal founding of the civil rights movement in Omaha, several African Americans secured status that was relevant to later struggles.
With Standing Bear, a Ponca chief on trial, local journalist Thomas Tibbles, Omaha Susette LaFlesche and General Crook himself testified on behalf of acknowledging Native American rights.
Standing Bear won the case, securing the right of his tribe to leave their Indian Territory reservation and return to their Nebraska homelands.
[2] The first record of community violence against blacks in Omaha occurred in 1891, when an African American man called Joe Coe was lynched by a vigilante mob for allegedly raping a white girl.
While these incidents terrified the population of African Americans in the community and effectively segregated them from the rest of the city,[3] the civil rights movement in Omaha did not gain large-scale momentum until the 1920s.
"[5] An early organized effort for civil rights in Omaha was the creation of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1912, Episcopal minister, Father John Albert Williams playing the role of first president.
[7] Other civil rights organizations soon formed in Omaha, part of the early 20th century spirit of reform that generated many progressive groups.
In the 1920s, the Baptist minister Earl Little founded the Omaha chapter of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association.
[10] Starting in 1920, the Colored Commercial Club organized to help blacks in Omaha secure employment and to encourage business enterprises among African Americans.
Starting with a circulation of 6,000, it quickly became the city's only African-American newspaper, featuring positive news, role models and activities throughout the community.
The paper strongly supported the local civil rights movement, for which it often featured successes and highlighted the challenges facing blacks in Omaha.
The Star reported proudly on the career of Captain Alfonza W. Davis, who fought with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II.
[14] Eventually, North Omaha sent a succession of African Americans to the State Legislature between the 1920s and WWII, starting with John Andrew Singleton and Ferdinand L. Barnett in 1926, Dr. Aaron Manasses McMillan (elected in 1928) and followed by Johnny Owen.
Focusing on ending the Omaha and Council Bluffs Street Railway Company's policy of not hiring black drivers, the boycott was successful.
[21] Other notable activists important to Omaha's African American community during this period included Rowena Moore, Lois Mark Stalvey, and Bertha Calloway.
Starting in 1963, the Black Association for Nationalism Through Unity (BANTU) was a unique Omaha youth activism group that organized African American students in the city's high schools.
Focusing on black power and self-determination, BANTU claimed concessions from the Omaha City Council, with Senator Edward R. Danner lobbying the Nebraska State Legislature on their behalf.
[28] In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Black Panthers were actively organizing Freedom Schools in Omaha's public housing projects.
[29] In 1970, Black Panther leaders David Rice and Edward Poindexter were charged and convicted of the murder of Omaha Police Officer Larry Minard with a bomb.
[32] Achievements of the movement in Omaha included the desegregation of city facilities in the late 1950s, the 1964 event of Omahan Gale Sayers becoming the first African American NFL player to share a room with a white player,[33] and the 1966 production of the Oscar-nominated documentary A Time for Burning, which tracked the sentiment of 1960s white Omaha towards African Americans.
While the Omaha civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s did not gain its goals of passage of state laws to ensure equal housing and job opportunities, it did succeed in securing integrated school busing, and employment with the municipal transit company, for example.
Because of a term-limit bill enacted in the Nebraska State Legislature, Chambers was not allowed to immediately run for reelection when his term expired in 2009,[34] so he waited until 2013 and ran again.
[39] In May and June of 2020, thousands of demonstrators filled Omaha streets to protest the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other police killings.
