The first part explained where we are today, this time is a look at the history of how we got here.
Omaha has the interesting rough and tumble history you would expect of a frontier town, but the real beginnings, the birth of the city took place in North Omaha.
The first black man in Nebraska was York the man servant of William Clark in 1804. It was noted in 1819 there were several African American men presumed to be slaves living at Fort Lisa a trading outpost. In addition to Fort Lisa built in 1812 in 1823 Cabanne's Trading Post took its place along the banks of the Missouri.
Founded in August 1846, Cutler's Park was an early tent settlement for pioneers of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who were on their way from Nauvoo to Salt Lake City, Utah. Although the Mormons had permission from the US government to occupy land temporarily, Native American tribes argued about whether they should pay a fee or taxes. The Mormons had been putting up hay for the winter from the grasslands.
Winter Quarters
The disagreement between the Oto and Omaha over the Mormons' use of the land persuaded the pioneers to move that fall three miles (5 km) east to a bluff by the Missouri River where the Oto did not demand a tax. There they created a settlement called the Winter Quarters. Here the Mormons built shelters for the winter: 800 cabins and sod huts. The settlement included a store, bank and town square, and by the spring a gristmill, which became called Florence Mill. The town effectively ceased to exist in 1848, after the entire population had continued their trek west.
After the Winter Quarters were abandoned other little settlements sprang up. In 1854 Florence was founded and remains today one of several still thriving historic districts in North Omaha. A bank was built, both the bank and the original Mormon grist mill are standing today two of the oldest buildings in Omaha. In 1854 Nebraska also became a territory by virtue of the Kansas-Nebraska Act that allowed the territorial legislatures to determine their stance on slavery. 1854 marked the arrival of Sally Bayne the first free Black person in Omaha.
Other blacks came to Omaha many from the South using the underground railroad which had a link in Nebraska City near the Kansas border. Altho slavery was abolished in Nebraska the clause was written in such a way as to allow only free white men the vote. That clause held up Nebraska statehood for nearly a year. In the 1860's there were 81 African Americans in Omaha, ten are believed to be slaves.
By 1867 enough blacks gathered in community to found St. John's African Methodist Episcopal Church in the Near North Side neighborhood. It was the first church for African Americans in Nebraska. The first recorded birth of an African American in Omaha occurred in 1872, when William Leper was born.
Before Omaha's African-American residents gathered in North Omaha, they lived dispersed throughout the city. By 1880 there were nearly 800 black residents, many recruited by Union Pacific Railroad as strikebreakers. By 1884 there three black churches had been founded. By 1900 there were 3,443 black residents, in a total city population of 102,555.
Black men and women quickly formed social and community organizations, such as the Women's Club in 1895, devoted to education, respectability and reform. In addition, the community began to create its own newspapers, such as the Progress, the Afro-American Sentinel and The Enterprise in the 1880s and 1890s.
Blacks also quickly distinguished themselves in public life: in 1892 Dr. Matthew Ricketts was the first black person elected to serve in the Nebraska Legislature and in 1895 Silas Robbins was the first black lawyer admitted to the Nebraska State Bar Association.
The migration of black families from the South after the end of the Civil War joined with those who had come by the Underground Railroad and eventually growing every year after the end of reconstruction in 1876. Regardless of how African Americans appeared to thrive all was not perfect or even close. In 1891 an African American man,
Joe Coe was lynched for allegedly raping a white woman. The police stood by and let it happen.
In 1899 A local black singer named J. A. Smith died while in custody at the Omaha jail. Arrested for "loud talking" on a public street, Smith and an accomplice were moving through the building when he and an officer had an altercation, and he struck out. The officer struck back at Smith, who fell against a bench and later died. A police examiner thought there was something resembling a stiletto wound in the back of his skull. Anton Inda, the officer, was charged with murder.
From the beginning Omaha was known for lawlessness and corruption with gambling and prostitution rampant and ineffective policing. We stand now in history at the threshold of the 20th century and the real ugliness that mars everything beautiful and good that is Omaha
**UPDATE Thank you so much for including my diary in Community Spotlight