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1919 period of racial violence in Omaha, Nebraska, United States

Omaha Race Riot

Part of Red Summer
Photo taken showing the body of Will Brown later on being burned by a white lynch mob.
Date	September 28–29, 1919
Location	Omaha, Nebraska, United States
Deaths	iii

The Omaha race riot occurred in Omaha, Nebraska, September 28–29, 1919. The race riot resulted in the lynching of Will Brown, a blackness noncombatant; the death of two white rioters; the injuries of many Omaha Police Department officers and civilians, including the attempted hanging of Mayor Edward Parsons Smith; and a public rampage by thousands of white rioters who set fire to the Douglas Canton Courthouse in downtown Omaha. It followed more than than twenty race riots that occurred in major industrial cities of the United States during the Cherry-red Summer of 1919.

Groundwork [edit]

Three weeks before the riot, federal investigators had noted that "a clash was imminent owing to ill-feeling between white and blackness workers in the stockyards."^[1] The number of African-Americans in Omaha doubled during the decade 1910–1920, as they were recruited to piece of work in the meatpacking industry. In 1910, Omaha had the third largest black population amidst the new western cities that had go destinations following Reconstruction and during the Groovy Migration that started in the 1910s. By 1920, the blackness population more than doubled to over x,000, 2nd only to Los Angeles with most 16,000. It was ahead of San Francisco, Oakland, Topeka, and Denver.^{[2] [iii]}

The major meatpacking plants hired blacks as strikebreakers in 1917.^[4] S Omaha'south working-class whites showed keen hostility toward black strikebreakers. Past this time, the ethnic Irish—the largest and earliest group of immigrants—had established their ability base in the city. Several years earlier, post-obit the expiry of an Irish policeman, ethnic Irish had led a mob in an attack on Greektown, driving the Greek community from Omaha.^[5]

The urban center'due south criminal establishment, led by Tom Dennison and teamed with the Omaha Business Men's Association, created a formidable challenge for the moralistic administration of first-term reform mayor Edward Parsons Smith. With piffling back up from the Omaha City Council or the city's labor unions, Smith wearily worked through his reform agenda. Following several strikes throughout the previous year, two detectives with Omaha Constabulary Department's "morals squad" shot and killed an African American bellhop on September 11.^[6]

Sensationalized local media reports of the alleged rape of 19-year-former Agnes Loebeck on September 25, 1919 triggered the violence associated with Will Brown's lynching. The following twenty-four hours, law arrested 41-year-old Will Brown as a doubtable.^{[iv] [7]} Loebeck identified Brownish as her rapist; however, during questioning, Brown stated that Loebeck did not make positive identification, which Loebeck later refuted.^[eight] There was an unsuccessful attempt to lynch Chocolate-brown on the 24-hour interval of his arrest.^[half-dozen]

The Omaha Bee, which published a series of sensational articles most many incidents of black crimes, publicized the incident as i of a series of attacks on white women by blackness men.^[9] A political machine opposed to the newly elected reform administration of Mayor Smith controlled the Omaha Bee.^{[seven] : viii} It highlighted alleged incidents of "blackness criminality" to embarrass the new administration.^{[6] : 157}

Offset [edit]

At about ii p.chiliad. on Sunday, September 28, 1919, a big group of white youths gathered near the Bancroft Schoolhouse in South Omaha and began a march to the Douglas County Courthouse, where Dark-brown was being held. The march was intercepted past John T. Dunn, chief of the Omaha Detective Bureau, and his subordinates. Dunn attempted to disperse the oversupply, only they ignored his warning and marched on. Thirty police officers were guarding the courthouse when the marchers arrived. Past iv p.1000., the crowd had grown much larger. Members of the crowd bantered with the officers until the police were convinced that the crowd posed no serious threat. A report to that upshot was made to the primal law station, and the captain in charge sent fifty reserve officers home for the twenty-four hours.

Riot [edit]

Past 5 p.m., a mob of between five,000 and 15,000 people^[10] had crowded into the street on the s side of the Douglas County Courthouse. They began to assault the police officers, pushing one through a pane of drinking glass in a door and attacking two others who had wielded clubs at the mob. At v:15 p.m., officers deployed fire hoses to dispel the crowd, but they responded with a shower of bricks and sticks. Nigh every window on the south side of the courthouse was broken. The crowd stormed the lower doors of the courthouse, and the police inside discharged their weapons downward an elevator shaft in an attempt to frighten them, just this farther incited the mob. They again rushed the constabulary who were standing guard exterior the building, broke through their lines, and entered the courthouse through a cleaved basement door.

Information technology was at this moment that Marshal Eberstein, chief of police, arrived. He asked leaders of the mob to requite him a chance to talk to the crowd. He mounted to one of the window sills. Beside him was a recognized primary of the mob. At the request of its leader, the crowd stilled its bedlam for a few minutes. Chief Eberstein tried to tell the mob that its mission would best be served by letting justice accept its course. The oversupply refused to mind. Its members howled so that the chief's voice did not carry more than than a few feet. Eberstein ceased his attempt to talk and entered the besieged building.

By half dozen p.m., throngs swarmed about the courthouse on all sides. The crowd wrestled revolvers, badges, and caps from policemen. They chased and shell every African American who ventured into the vicinity. White civilians who attempted to rescue black civilians were subjected to physical abuse. The constabulary had lost control of the oversupply.

By 7 p.m., nigh of the policemen had withdrawn to the interior of the courthouse. At that place, they joined forces with Michael Clark, sheriff of Douglas County, who had summoned his deputies to the building with the hope of preventing the capture of Brown. The policemen and sheriffs formed their line of last resistance on the fourth floor of the courthouse.

The police were non successful in their efforts. Before 8 p.grand., they discovered that the crowd had prepare the courthouse edifice on burn. Its leaders had tapped a nearby gasoline filling station and saturated the lower floors with the flammable liquid.

Escalation [edit]

Shots were fired as the mob pillaged hardware stores in the business district and entered pawnshops, seeking firearms. Police force records showed that more than than 1,000 revolvers and shotguns were stolen that night. The mob shot at any policeman; seven officers received gunshot wounds, although none of the wounds were serious.

Louis Immature, sixteen years onetime, was fatally shot in the tummy while leading a gang up to the fourth floor of the edifice. Witnesses said the youth was the most intrepid of the mob's leaders. Pandemonium reigned outside the building. At Seventeenth and Douglas Streets, one block from the courthouse, James Hiykel, a 34-year-old man of affairs, was shot and killed.

The mob connected to strike the courthouse with bullets and rocks, and many civilians were defenseless in the midst of the commotion. Spectators were shot while women were thrown to the ground and trampled. Blacks were dragged from streetcars and browbeaten. Many members of the mob even inflicted minor wounds upon themselves.

First hanging [edit]

Nearly 11 o'clock, when the frenzy was at its elevation, Mayor Edward Smith came out of the east door of the courthouse into Seventeenth Street. He had been in the burning building for hours. Every bit he emerged from the doorway, a shot rang out.

"He shot me. Mayor Smith shot me," a immature human being in the uniform of a United States soldier yelled. The crowd surged toward the mayor. He fought them. 1 man striking the mayor on the caput with a baseball bat. Another slipped the noose of a rope around his cervix. The crowd started to drag him away.

"If you must hang somebody, then let information technology be me," the mayor said.

The mob dragged the mayor into Harney Street. A adult female reached out and tore the noose from his neck. Men in the mob replaced it. Civilians wrestled the mayor from his captors and placed him in a police machine. The throng overturned the car and grabbed him once more. Once more, the rope encircled the mayor's cervix. He was carried to Sixteenth and Harney Streets. There he was hanged from the metal arm of a traffic signal belfry.

Smith was suspended in the air when Country Amanuensis Ben Danbaum drove a loftier-powered car into the throng right to the base of the signal tower. In the car with Danbaum were City Detectives Al Anderson, Charles Van Deusen and Lloyd Toland. They grasped the mayor and Russell Norgard untied the noose. The detectives brought the mayor to Ford Hospital. There he lingered betwixt life and death for several days, finally recovering. "They shall not get him. Mob rule will not prevail in Omaha," the mayor kept muttering during his delirium.

Siege of the courthouse [edit]

Meanwhile, the plight of the police in the courthouse had become drastic. The burn had spread to the third floor, and officers faced the prospect of burning to death. Appeals for help to the crowd below brought only bullets and curses. The mob frustrated all attempts to raise ladders to the imprisoned police. "Bring Brown with you and yous tin can come down," somebody in the crowd shouted.

On the second flooring of the building, three policemen and a newspaper reporter were imprisoned in a safe vault, whose thick metallic door the mob had shut. The four men hacked their way out through the courthouse wall. The mob shot at them equally they squirmed out of the stifling vault.

The gases of formaldehyde added to the terrors of the men imprisoned within the flaming building. Several jars of the chemical had flare-up on the stairway, and its mortiferous fumes mounted to the upper floors. Two policemen were overcome.

Sheriff Clark led the 121 prisoners to the roof. Will Brown, for whom the mob was howling, became hysterical. Fellow prisoners allegedly tried to throw him off the roof, but Deputy Sheriffs Hoye and McDonald foiled the attempt.

Sheriff Clark ordered that female prisoners be taken from the building due to their distress. They ran down the burning staircases clad only in prison pajamas. Some of them fainted on the way. Members of the mob escorted them through the smoke and flames.^{[ commendation needed ]} Black women equally well equally white women were helped to safety.^{[ commendation needed ]}

The mob poured more gasoline into the building. They cut every line of hose that firemen laid from nearby hydrants. The flames were spreading rapidly up, and death seemed certain for the prisoners and their protectors.

Lynching [edit]

The sight of Volition Brown lynched, with his body mutilated and burned by a white crowd.

Iii slips of paper were thrown from the 4th floor on the west side of the building. On one piece was scrawled: "The judge says he will give up Negro Chocolate-brown. He is in dungeon. In that location are 100 white prisoners on the roof. Salve them."

Some other note read: "Come to the 4th floor of the building and nosotros will hand the negro over to you lot."

The mob in the street cheered at the final message. Boys and young men placed firemen'due south ladders against the building. They mounted to the second story. I homo had a heavy scroll of rope on his back, and some other carried a shotgun.

Two or 3 minutes after the unidentified men had climbed to the fourth floor, a mighty shout and a fusillade of shots were heard from the south side of the building.

Will Brown had been captured. A few minutes later, his lifeless torso was hanging from a telephone post at Eighteenth and Harney Streets. Hundreds of revolvers and shotguns were fired at the corpse every bit it dangled in mid-air. Then, the rope was cutting. Brown's body was tied to the rear end of an automobile. It was dragged through the streets to Seventeenth and Dodge Streets, four blocks away. The oil from cherry-red lanterns used every bit danger signals for street repairs was poured on the corpse. It was burned. Members of the mob hauled the charred remains through the business district for several hours.

Sheriff Clark said that black prisoners hurled Brown into the hands of the mob as its leaders approached the stairway leading to the county jail. Clark also reported that Brownish moaned "I am innocent, I never did it; my God, I am innocent," as he was surrendered to the mob.^[half-dozen] Newspapers have quoted declared leaders of the mob equally saying that Brownish was shoved at them through a blinding smoke past persons whom they could not see.

Aftermath [edit]

The lawlessness connected for several hours afterward Dark-brown had been lynched. Both the police force patrol and emergency motorcar were burned. Three times, the mob went to the urban center jail. The tertiary time its leaders appear that they were going to burn information technology (just never did). Meanwhile, Omaha officials requested assist from the United States Army, which had been going on long before Brownish was killed.

The riot lasted until three a.m., on the morning of September 29. At that hour, federal troops, nether command of Colonel John E. Morris of the 20th Infantry, arrived from Fort Omaha and Fort Crook. Troops manning machine guns were placed in the heart of Omaha's business organisation district; in N Omaha, the center of the black customs, to protect civilians there; and in South Omaha, to prevent more mobs from forming. Major Full general Leonard Wood, commander of the Central Department, came the next day to Omaha past lodge of Secretary of War Newton D. Baker. Peace was enforced past 1,600 soldiers.

Martial constabulary was not formally proclaimed in Omaha, but information technology was effectively enacted throughout the urban center. By the request of City Commissioner W.Grand. Ure, who was acting mayor, Wood also took control over the police department.

On October 1, 1919, Brownish was laid to residuum in Omaha's Potters Field. The interment log listed just 1 give-and-take next to his proper noun: "Lynched".^[eleven]

Causes and consequences [edit]

The Omaha Riot was denounced throughout the country. The arrest and prosecution of mob leaders was widely demanded. Constabulary and military authorities apprehended 100 of the participants on charges ranging from murder to arson and held them for trial. The Army presence in Omaha was the largest in response to whatsoever of the race riots, with 70 officers and 1,222 enlisted men. Past early Oct, the emergency had passed and the Army contingent declined to two regiments past the center of the month.

Omaha police would identify another 300 people wanted for questioning, including Loebeck's blood brother who had disappeared.^{[ citation needed ]}

The district court ordered a yard jury to convene and investigate the riots, and a grand jury was impaneled on Oct viii. Later a six-calendar week session, the grand jury issued a report that criticized the Smith administration for ineffective leadership and constabulary incompetence. Army witnesses testified to their belief that more prompt police action could accept controlled the riot.^[12] One hundred and twenty indictments were handed downwardly for involvement in the riots.

Of the 120 persons indicted for interest in the riot, most were never successfully prosecuted, and all were eventually released afterward serving no term of imprisonment.^[xiii]

IWW accusations [edit]

General Woods initially blamed the disturbance on the Industrial Workers of the World, equally part of the Crimson Scare and then prevalent in the U.Due south. This interpretation was non supported past the evidence, however.

Newspapers [edit]

Reverend Charles E. Cobbey, the pastor of the Beginning Christian Church, blamed the Omaha Bee for inflaming the situation. He was reported to have said, "It is the belief of many that the unabridged responsibility for the outrage tin can exist placed at the anxiety of a few men and i Omaha paper." The inflammatory yellow journalism of the Bee is credited by several historians for stoking emotions for the anarchism.^[14]

The U.Due south. Regular army was disquisitional of the Omaha police force for their failure to disperse the oversupply earlier information technology grew besides large. Other critics believe the Army was deadening to reply to the crisis; this was a event of communications problems, including the crunch acquired past President Woodrow Wilson'south having been incapacitated by a stroke. (Requests by the governor for federal military assistance had to go to the President'south office.)

Tom Dennison [edit]

Many within Omaha saw the riot within the context of a conspiracy theory, the straight outcome of alleged conspiracy directed past Omaha political and criminal boss Tom Dennison. A turncoat from Dennison's machine said he had heard Dominate Dennison boasting that some of the assailants were white Dennison operatives disguised in blackface. According to local historian Orville D. Menard, Dennison fomented the anarchism in the Gibson neighborhood near South Omaha.^[15] Dennison'south scheme was corroborated past police reports that one white attacker was still wearing the make-up when apprehended. As in many other Dennison-related cases, no one was ever found guilty for their participation in the riot.^[sixteen] A after grand jury trial corroborated this merits, stating "Several reported assaults on white women had really been perpetrated by whites in blackface." They went on to report that the riot was planned and begun by "the vice element of the city." The riot "was non a casual matter; it was premeditated and planned by those underground and invisible forces that today are fighting you and the men who represent good government."^[12]

Racial tension [edit]

The effect was office of an ongoing racial tension in Omaha in the early 20th century. There were attacks on Greek immigrants in 1909. The migration of many blacks into the city pursuing economical opportunities sparked racial tension in the state. Afterward the Omaha riot, the Ku Klux Klan became established in 1921. Another racial anarchism took identify in North Platte, Nebraska in 1929. There were also violent strikes in the Omaha meat packing manufacture in 1917 and 1921 and concerns most immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe.

Afterwards the riot, the city of Omaha, previously a city in which ethnicities and races were mixed in many neighborhoods, became more than segregated. Redlining and restrictive covenants began to be used in new neighborhoods, with African Americans restricted to owning holding where they already lived in greatest number, in North Omaha. Although segregation has not been legally enforced for generations, a majority of Omaha'south black population still lives in North Omaha.

Legacy [edit]

In the fall of 1920, Dr. George Due east. Haynes, an educator employed as Director of Negro Economic science at the U.S. Department of Labor, produced a report on that year'south racial violence designed to serve equally the basis for an investigation by the U.South. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. It cataloged 26 separate riots on the part of whites attacking blacks in widely scattered communities.^[1]

Together with other riots in 1919, the Omaha riot prompted the United States Senate Committee on Judiciary in October 1919 to telephone call for an investigation of urban, industrial and racial bug. The committee members recognized lynchings every bit a justified crusade of bitterness in the black community, and enumerated the riots of 1919 and lynchings as amongst the factors for its investigation. They called for leaders of the white and black communities to work toward reconciliation.^{[ citation needed ]} In September 1918, President Woodrow Wilson had made a spoken communication confronting lynching and mob violence.^{[ commendation needed ]} Although a few years later Congress tried to pass a police making lynching a Federal offense, action was blocked by Southern Democrats.^{[ citation needed ]}

James Joyce, in a 1919 draft of his novel Ulysses, mentions the murder. He based his mention on an article in the London Times of September 30, 1919, which mistakenly put Omaha in Georgia.^[17]

In 1998, playwright Max Sparber had his play virtually the riot produced by the Bluish Barn Theatre in the rotunda of the Douglas County Courthouse. The play, titled Minstrel Prove; Or, The Lynching of William Brown, caused a minor controversy. State Senator Ernie Chambers condemned the play for using the device of fictional African-American blackface performers equally the story's narrators. He called for a black boycott of the play. Even so, the play performed to sold-out houses and after enjoyed productions in other cities.

In 2007 the New Jersey Repertory Company presented Sparber's Minstrel Show or the Lynching of William Brown in Long Branch. The cast included Kelcey Watson from Omaha and Spencer Scott Barros from New York City. Both actors had performed in previous productions of the play. Information technology was directed past Rob Urbinati.

In 2009, California engineer Chris Hebert learned about the Omaha anarchism and the lynching of Will Brown after viewing a TV documentary on Henry Fonda, which mentioned the actor's having been greatly affected past the riot as a young Omaha native.^[18] Describing himself equally having "tears in my eyes" later reading more on the riot and Brown'due south death, Hebert farther discovered that Brown yet lay in the unmarked grave he was buried in at Potter's Field. After consultation with staff at Omaha'southward Forest Lawn Memorial Park, who located the grave after a lengthy search on June 11,^[nineteen] Hebert donated money for the placement of a permanent memorial for Chocolate-brown, giving his name, appointment and crusade of decease and the motto 'Lest nosotros forget.' In an open letter to the people of Omaha, Hebert described his feelings behind his attempt:

It is a shame that it took these deaths and others to raise public consciousness and effect the changes that we savour today. When I discovered that William Brown was buried in a pauper'southward grave, I did non desire William Brownish to be forgotten. I wanted him to have a headstone to permit people know that it was because of people similar him that nosotros enjoy our freedoms today. The lesson learned from his death should be taught to all. That is, nosotros cannot take the protections guaranteed past the Constitution without law. There is no identify for vigilantism in our club.

Run across also [edit]

• Wilmington coup of 1898
• Crime in Omaha
• Rex assassination riots
• Mass racial violence in the United states of america
• Racial tension in Omaha, Nebraska
• Civil Rights Motility in Omaha, Nebraska
• Greek Town anarchism
• List of incidents of civil unrest in the United states of america
• Imitation accusations of rape as justification for lynchings

References [edit]

This commodity incorporates text from Pamphlet, by The Educational Publishing Company, a publication from 1919, now in the public domain in the United States.

1. ^ ^{a b} "For action on race riot peril", The New York Times, five Oct 1919, Retrieved 5/26/08
2. ^ Quintard Taylor, In Search Of The Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990, New York: Westward.Due west. Norton & Co., 1998, pp.193 and 205, accessed 14 Aug 208
3. ^ Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Blackness Community, Seattle: U of Washington Printing, 1994, p. 56,- Google Book Search, accessed 20 Aug 2008
4. ^ ^{a b} Lawson, Michael Fifty (1977). "Omaha, A Urban center in Ferment: Summertime of 1919" (PDF). Nebraska History. 58 (iii): 395–416. Retrieved xiv May 2013.
5. ^ (n.d.) "African American Migration" Archived 2017-12-xiii at the Wayback Machine, NebraskaStudies.Org
6. ^ ^{a b c d} Menard, Orville D (1987). "Tom Dennison, the Omaha Bee, and the 1919 Omaha Race Riot" (PDF). Nebraska History. 68 (iv): 152–65. Retrieved 14 May 2013.
7. ^ ^{a b} Swiercek, Nicolas (April 2008). "Stoking a White Backlash: Race, Violence, and Yellowish Journalism in Omaha, 1919". James A. Rawley Briefing in the Humanities — Imagining Communities: People, Places, Meanings . Retrieved 14 May 2013.
8. ^ Age, Arthur V. The Omaha riot of 1919. Diss. Creighton University, 1964.
9. ^ (n.d.) "African American Migration," Archived 2017-12-13 at the Wayback Machine NebraskaStudies.Org
10. ^ NebraskaStudies.Org. "A Horrible Lynching". www.nebraskastudies.org. NET Foundation for Television. Retrieved 14 February 2019.
11. ^ Garrison, C. (2006) "Potter's Field", The Metropolitan Archived 2008-02-29 at the Wayback Car, Metropolitan Customs College, Omaha, p. 17.
12. ^ ^{a b} "Racial Tensions in Omaha; A Horrible Lynching: Who Was to Arraign?". NebraskaStudies. Archived from the original on 2013-01-13. Retrieved September 2, 2021.
13. ^ Rucker, Walter C. & Upton, James North., Encyclopedia of American Race Riots. 2006. Page 488. ISBN 0313333009.
14. ^ NebraskaStudies.Org (due north.d.) Lesson Plans for Omaha Race Anarchism of 1919 Archived 2017-12-25 at the Wayback Machine
15. ^ Menard, O.D. (1989) Political bossism in mid-America: Tom Dennison's Omaha, 1900–1933. University Press of America. p 249.
16. ^ Partsch, F. (2006) p. 10.
17. ^ Weiss, Timothy. "The 'Black Animate being' Headline: The Central to an Allusion in 'Ulysses'". James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Winter, 1982), pp. 183–186.
18. ^ "'Lest we forget' our history", The Omaha World-Herald, fifteen July 2009, Retrieved eight/5/09
19. ^ Eisenberg, Jeff (5 Baronial 2009). "Grave injustice - Riverside homo buys long overdue headstone for Omaha, Pecker., victim of racist mob". The Printing-Enterprise. Archived from the original on 2010-03-28. Retrieved ii September 2021.

External links [edit]

• Nebraska studies teachers notes on the Omaha Riot
• Copy of contemporary pamphlet on 1919 Omaha Riot from the historic Omaha website, shows bias
• "Nebraska in the 1920s", Husker century
• Blackness history page on 1919–20 race riots, includes an extensive section on the Omaha anarchism
• Minstrel Show; Or, The Lynching of William Brown, The Plays of Max Sparber Web page
• "Race Riot of 1919 in Omaha", Waymaker Productions, YouTube

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omaha_race_riot_of_1919

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