Racial Tension in Omaha, Nebraska - Civil Rights Movement-era

Civil Rights Movement-era

In 1947 a student-led civil rights group called the DePorres Club was forced off the Creighton University campus, where they started. Mildred Brown, a community activist and publisher, invited them to meet at the Omaha Star, the paper she directed for the African-American community for decades.

Omaha jazz legend Preston Love reported that in the 1950s he saw signs in Omaha restaurants and bars that said, "We Don't Serve Any Colored Race", but that he was always welcome as a musician. In the 1950s, the United Meatpacking Workers of America (UPWA) helped use their power to have businesses in Omaha integrate their facilities.

The late 1950s and early 1960s was the period which Lois Mark Stalvey wrote about in The Education of a WASP. She recounted her activist efforts to desegregate a middle-class West Omaha neighborhood for an African-American surgeon and his family who wanted to live in the area. Such efforts took place in a different environment from the struggles of most working-class families in North and South Omaha.

In 1955, the State of Nebraska took Omaha's main amusement park, Peony Park, to district court. The state believed that the park, founded in 1919, violated Nebraska Civil Rights Law when African American swimmers at the Amateur Athletic Union Swimming Meet held at the park on August 27, 1955 were discriminated against. In State of Nebraska v. Peony Park, the Nebraska Supreme Court found that two African-American participants were illegally barred from the meet because Peony Park barred them from the pool. On September 7, 1955, the court fined Peony Park $50 and costs of the trial. Additional civil suits were settled out of court. The Omaha Star newspaper reported extensively on the trial, using the opportunity to highlight segregationist policies around the city as well as the city's burgeoning civil rights movement.

By the early 1960s, economic progress by many African Americans and ethnic Americans became unraveled in the massive job losses caused by restructuring of railroad and meatpacking industries. By the mid-1960s, North Omaha had much more poverty than before and increasing social problems. On July 4, 1966, tensions broke out in a riot after a day of blistering 103 degree weather. Refusing a police order to disperse, African Americans demolished police cars and attacked the North 24th Street business corridor, throwing firebombs and demolishing storefronts. Businesses in the Near North Side suffered millions of dollars in damages. The riot lasted three days. The National Guard was called in to disperse the rioters. Less than a month later, on August 1, 1966, riots erupted after a 19-year-old was shot by a white off-duty policeman during a burglary. rioters firebombed three buildings and 180 riot police were required to quell the crowds. Leaders in the community criticized the Omaha World-Herald and local television stations for blaming African Americans for the conditions they faced in their deteriorating neighborhoods, when the problems of joblessness and decreased maintenance were beyond city and regional control. That same year, 1966, A Time for Burning, a documentary featuring North Omaha and the social problems, was filmed. Later it was nominated for an Oscar for best documentary.

In March 1968 a crowd of high school and university students gathered at the Omaha Civic Auditorium to protest the presidential campaign of George Wallace, the segregationist governor of Alabama. After counter-protesters began acting violently toward the activists, police brutality led to dozens of protesters being injured. During the melee, an African-American youth was shot and killed by a police officer. Students' fleeing the outbreak attacked businesses and cars, causing thousands of dollars of damage.

The following day a local barber named Ernie Chambers helped calm a disturbance and prevent a riot by students at Horace Mann Junior High School. Chambers was already recognized as a community leader. After finishing his law degree, Chambers was elected to the Nebraska State Legislature. He went on to serve a total of 38 years, longer than any of his predecessors. Robert Kennedy visited Omaha later that year in his quest to become president, speaking in support of Omaha's civil rights activists.

An African-American teenager named Vivian Strong was shot and killed by police officers in an incident at the Logan Fontenelle Housing Projects in June 1969. Young African Americans in the area rioted after the teenager's death, and looted along the North 24th Street business corridor. Eight businesses were destroyed by firebombing or looting. Events went on for several more days. This is the last noted riot in Omaha.

In 1970 an African-American man named Duane Peak was arrested, and quickly implicated six others in a bombing at a vacant house in North Omaha that killed a police officer. On August 31, local Black Panther Party leaders David Rice and Ed Poindexter were arrested in the case, despite not having been originally implicated. In 1971 both men were convicted of murder in the controversial Rice/Poindexter Case, and in 1974 a retrial of Rice and Poindexter was denied by the Nebraska State Supreme Court.