History of Omaha, Nebraska
The history of Omaha, Nebraska, began before the settlement of the city, with speculators from neighboring Council Bluffs, Iowa staking land across the Missouri River illegally as early as the 1840s.
When it was legal to claim land in Indian Country, William D. Brown was operating the Lone Tree Ferry to bring settlers from Council Bluffs to Omaha.
The club's violent actions were challenged successfully in a case ultimately decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, Baker v. Morton, which led to the end of the organization.
At the same time, Boss Tom Dennison compounded the city's vices in the notorious Sporting District, with the full support of eight-term mayor "Cowboy" James Dahlman.
Labor unrest in the 1930s resulted in organizing of the meatpacking plants by the CIO-FCW, which built an interracial partnership and achieved real gains for the workers for some decades.
Suburbanization and highway expansion led to white flight to newer housing and development of middle and upper-class areas in West Omaha from the 1950s through the 1970s.
Prior to European-American establishment of the city, numerous Indian tribes had inhabited the area, including the Pawnee, Otoe, Sioux, the Missouri and Ioway.
During the late 18th and early 19th centuries when they were the most powerful Indians along the stretch of the Missouri River north of the Platte, the Omaha nation moved on the western edge of present-day Bellevue, Nebraska.
After a smallpox outbreak, cultural degradation, the elimination of the buffalo, and continued property loss, the Omaha sold the last of their claims in 1856 and relocated to their present reservation in Thurston County, in northeastern Nebraska.
On the 27th, William Clark and Reuben Fields investigated mysterious earthen mounds close to where 8th and Douglas Streets and the Heartland of America Park are today in Downtown Omaha.
The first recorded instance of a black person in the Omaha area was "York", an enslaved African American who accompanied William Clark on the Expedition.
In 1853 William D. Brown operated the Lone Tree Ferry to shuttle California Gold Rush prospectors and Oregon Trail settlers across the river between Kanesville, Iowa and the Nebraska Territory.
Alfred D. Jones, Omaha City's first postmaster, platted the town site early in 1854, months after the Kansas–Nebraska Act created the Nebraska Territory.
Compensating for the absence of the law, many early Omaha pioneers formed a claim club to create and enforce a legal system to their advantage.
After Baker v. Morton in 1857, this type of land baron-like behavior was made illegal; by that time lots had been developed and Scriptown quickly became part of several neighborhoods, including Gifford Park, Prospect Hill and the Near North Side.
In January 1858 a group of representatives illegally moved the Nebraska Territorial Legislature to Florence following a violent outburst at the State Capitol in Omaha.
In 1856 the Omaha Claim Club donated two lots for the congregation to build a church, and soon after Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Episcopalians and Roman Catholics followed.
The Sporting District was an area in downtown Omaha where many of the city's vice activities happened, including gambling, prostitution, and grafting.
It killed more than 100 people, destroyed hundreds of homes, and cut a long swathe through the city, including the heart of North Omaha's Jewish and African-American commercial district, which suffered the most damage.
Social tensions simmered in the postwar years, as the nation adjusted to returning veterans, competition for jobs, and fears about labor unrest.
The "independent political boss" Tom Dennison was later implicated of contributing to racial tensions in an effort to turn out a reform mayor.
A mob of mostly white ethnic young men marched from South Omaha (rallied and led by a henchman of Dennison's) and converged on the Douglas County Courthouse, where the jail was.
The Nebraska chapter of the National German-American Alliance (NGAA) was founded and led by Valentin J. Peter, the publisher and editor of the German language Omaha Tribune in 1907.
In 1945 the Enola Gay and Bockscar were two of 536 B-29 Superfortresses manufactured at the Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Factory (now Offutt Air Force Base) in suburban Bellevue.
The incident was part of a large World War II campaign by the Japanese military to cause mass chaos in American cities.
[14][15] Civil rights activism in Omaha began in 1912 with the formation of a local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
It continued through the coming years under the influence of local leaders Whitney Young, George Wells Parker and Harry Haywood.
In the late 1960s, the student-led Black Association for Nationalism Through Unity (BANTU) adopted a more militant posture and got into confrontations with police following the shooting of a youth in the housing project.
In 1988 Omaha demolished a downtown district of brick warehouses called Jobbers Canyon, listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
It was the location of the first school and first hot air balloon ride in Omaha, as well as the city's Market House, which was razed 20 years after it was built.
