We know now after the Race Riots of 1919 the white citizens of Omaha stepped up their efforts to segregate African Americans in North Omaha. They accomplished this by Redlining so Black people could only get loans on homes in North Omaha and by covenants forbidding the sale or renting of a home to anyone other than a white person. We know businesses regularly posted "no coloreds" or "White Only" signs and even those like Kresge's who would sell you food at the lunch counter but not let you eat it there. Neither the Omaha or Council Bluffs Railway and Bridge Company would hire African Americans. Many businesses who served blacks thru the back door would not hire them.
For a period of fifty years from the date of this deed, no person of other than the Caucasian race shall be or become the grantee or lessee of said property or, except as a servant in the family living thereon, be granted the privilege of occupying the same.
It was so much more, everything was separate right down to your insurance agent, where your kids could go swimming, or you could picnic or see a movie, or enjoy a baseball game. Soldiers coming home from WWII celebrated VJ Day at separate USO clubs. Still North Omaha tried to flourish, tried to have the good life and succeeded for a while, but thousands of lost jobs, businesses who continued to be unwilling to hire Blacks, three waves of white flight spelled decline. The good paying jobs were gone and the only thing left were low paying demeaning jobs. The poorest of the poor crammed into the Logan Fontenelle Projects . The economy of North Omaha collapsed, poverty sky rocketed and social problems increased. Schools and education suffered, city services were reduced and the results of years of neglect began piling up.
In the summer of 1963 Peter Kiewit saw the hand writing on the wall, there were riots that summer including the Birmingham Riots. Don't let this happen to Omaha. He had a plan to start hiring African Americans, a model he thought would work in any city. It wasn't adopted.
1963 Civil rights The Citizens Civic Committee for Civil Liberties, or 4CL, led by Black ministers, rallies to demand change civil rights for all African Americans in Omaha through picketing, stand-ins during city council meetings, and other efforts.
1963 Civil rights The Omaha Human Rights Commission is created, holding a rally of more than 10,000 people later in the year. However, organizations such as 4CL were suspicious that the Commission, led by Omaha's mayor, was a stalling tactic.
There was the more than 50 years of organizing, praying, community activism, sit ins, boycotts, marches, picketing, letters and pleas all falling on deaf ears.
It was sweltering the summer of 1966, tensions were high and on July 4th a blistering 103 degree day ignited riots in North Omaha. Refusing to go home the rioters demolished police cars and fire bombed businesses along 24th Street. The riot lasted three days causing millions of dollars in damage to Black businesses before the National Guard was called in to break up the riots. On August 1st the rioting started again after a white off duty police man shot and killed a 19 year old Black man during a burglary. Three more buildings were firebombed, it took 180 riot police to stop the crowds. The TV stations and the Omaha World Herald were criticized by community leaders for blaming African Americans their joblessness and deteriorating neighborhood. An all too familiar refrain by whites, pull yourself up by your bootstraps but stop complaining you have no boots.
This was the summer
A Time For Burning was filmed here.
From the film. At one point another Omaha Lutheran minister, the Rev. Walter E. Rowoldt, of Luther Memorial Lutheran Church, states that "This one lady said to me, pastor, she said, I want them to have everything I have, I want God to bless them as much as he blesses me, but, she says, pastor, I just can't be in the same room with them, it just bothers me." Rev. Rowoldt and other ministers also discuss the concern that blacks moving into white neighborhoods will decrease property values.
In March of 1968 George Wallace was running for President, he stopped in Omaha to make a speech at the Civic Auditorium. That night a group of high school and college students protested outside the Civic. Counter protestors arrived and a number of people were injured in the melee. There were charges of police brutality because in addition to the injuries an African American teen was shot and killed. The fleeing protesters damaged cars and businesses. the next day there was a near riot at Horace Mann Junior High until Ernie Chambers visited the students and calmed them down.
June 29, 1969 Omaha exploded again, this time a white police officer James Loder, shot 14 year old Vivian Strong in the head killing her.
From the Examiner.On June 24, 1969, 14 year-old Vivian Strong was shot to death. The headline in the Omaha World-Herald the next day was, “Negro Girl Killed By a Police Bullet At Housing Project.”
Vivian was shot on a Tuesday evening at the Logan Fontenelle housing project where she lived. The young teenager was shot in the head, a few doors down from her home, by Omaha patrolman James Loder. The police had received a call about a break-in at a nearby building and were arresting a suspect when Vivian and her friends, who had been playing records in an alley, went to see what was going on.
Nineteen year-old Linda Bradley, a next-door neighbor, was keeping an eye on Vivian for her mother, Linda told the Omaha World-Herald what happened next: “Then we started to run. We were just running to see what the cops would do. Then that [Explicative] shot her, right in the head. He didn’t hollar or shoot in the air or anything. There was only one shot.”
A crowd immediately gathered and by midnight bottles were being thrown at police cars on North 24th Street. Vandalism and a firebombing of a business occurred in the early morning hours.
The next night an entire ten-block area on North 24th Street had rioting. Police escorts for firefighters combating the flames were used. Twenty-one people were treated at Omaha hospitals after being assaulted. Twelve persons were arrested in the rioting which continued through Thursday night.
Omaha’s Black Panther chapter stationed armed guards outside the office of Greater Omaha Community Action which stayed open as a sanctuary for residents from the violence as groups of youth swarmed through the area throwing bottles at police and expressing their outrage at Vivian’s death.
Loder was acquitted.
In August of 1970 an Omaha police officer died in a house bombing. The two men charged with the crime,
David Rice and Ed Poindexter were leaders of the Black Panthers in Omaha. They were charged and convicted of a crime they had nothing to do with, they remain in prison today, political prisoners, victims of the last vestiges of acceptable overt racial animus.
Omaha was quiet for the time being but North Omaha was still in the sights of the city and the extension of US Hiway 75 (North Freeway) would change North Omaha forever. The freeway cuts North Omaha almost exactly in half, separating those neighborhoods and neighbors by a four lane highway with very limited local access. The project lasted from 1970 to 1983 and the impact on North Omaha was devastating. More than 600 people were displaced. The government payments for their homes and relocation were woefully inadequate more than half of those displaced were unable to purchase another home. Those unlucky enough to be homeless moved into the projects. None were able to move out of North Omaha. What few whites left in the area moved to the suburbs because they could. While Interstate Highways are generally looked on as an asset to a community, living and working on top of one is a health hazard. The pollution from car emissions exacerbated the ongoing respiratory problems so common in North Omaha. Law suits were filed to stop the construction but a judge refused to stand in the way.
At long last African Americans started getting representation in the government, their political voice was a long time coming.
In 1981, after City Council elections were changed to be based on district representation, Conley became the first African American elected. He served until 1989. In 1992, Carol Woods Harris became the first African American elected to the Douglas County Board and served until 2004.
African Americans have been represented on the Omaha School Board since 1950 when attorney Elizabeth Davis Pittman was elected. De facto school segregation, however, persisted in Omaha long after that date with school boundaries tailored to match residential areas, which had de facto segregation.
Brenda Warren Council, a former member of the Omaha School Board and the City Council, narrowly lost the 1997 mayoral election, losing by 700 votes to Mayor Hal Daub. In 2003 Thomas Warren, Brenda Council's brother, was appointed by Mayor Mike Fahey as the city’s first African-American Chief of Police for the Omaha Police Department.
In 2005, Marlon Polk was appointed by Governor Dave Heineman to serve as a District Court Judge, the first African American to do so in Nebraska. He was assigned to serve in Douglas County. In 1970 Ernie Chambers became the city's second African American elected to the state legislature. Chambers has won every election since then, and in 2007 became the longest-serving Nebraska Senator in history.
**
I don't grow up in Omaha altho my family has lived in the same house I live in now since 1950. I didn't move here until 1996 after all of this was history. Omaha is a beautiful city with an ugly racist heart. The consequences of what we have done here makes me so angry I can barely speak. Look around where you live this is all around you, it is still happening all over this country every single day.
What has happened in Omaha and continues to happen, those sins are not exclusively ours they are committed all over the country in towns both big and small. It simply didn't matter what African Americans did the deck was so completely stacked against them, white Omaha was never going to let them win even the smallest of victories. Everything that happened and continues to happen is because of what WE did and did not do. We created the problems, we dished out the never ending misery, we destroyed their communities, their families, their lives, we have to start owning this and fix it.
**
This is not the end of this series, I plan to continue it as The Town Where I live. It will allow me to do more exploring into the causes and any progress that is made. And to celebrate their accomplishments which were not inconsiderable and in some cases miracles given the obstacles put in their way. Hope to have interviews with some of my favorite North Enders and some videos but it will probably be a week or two before I have the first one done.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3