African Americans in Omaha, Nebraska, are central to the development and growth of the 41st most populous city in the United States. While population statistics show almost constantly increasing percentages of Black people living in the city since it was founded in 1854,"A History of the African American Population in Omaha" by Adam Fletcher Sasse for NorthOmahaHistory.com. Retrieved June 4, 2024. Black people in Omaha have not been represented equitably in the city's political, social, cultural, economic or educational circumstances since.Fletcher Sasse, Adam. (2021) #OmahaBlackHistory: African American People, Places and Events from the History of Omaha, Nebraska. Olympia, WA: CommonAction Publishing. In the 2020s, the city's African American population is transforming the city's landscape through community investment, leadership and other initiatives.
Early history
First recorded in the Omaha area in 1804, Black people have been present throughout the community for more than 220 years."A History of Black People in the Omaha Area Before 1850", Adam Fletcher Sasse for NorthOmahaHistory.com. Retrieved June 4, 2024. Black people are first recorded arriving in the area that became the city when York came through in 1804 with the Lewis and Clark expedition and the residence of Jean Baptiste Point du Sable who lived at Fort Lisa for an extended period in 1810.Fletcher Sasse, A. (2021) #OmahaBlackHistory: African American People, Places and Events from the History of Omaha, Nebraska. Olympia, WA: CommonAction Publishing. There were also enslaved Black people at the Winter Quarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1846. The first free Black settler in the city arrived in 1854, the year the city was incorporated.Pipher, M. (2002) "Chapter One ," The Middle of Everywhere: Helping Refugees Enter the American Community. Harcourt.
In 1894 black residents of Omaha organized the first fair in the United States for African-American exhibitors and attendees.Nebraska Writers' Project (n.d. est 1938) Negros in Nebraska Workers Progress Administration. Retrieved October 29, 2007. The 2000 US Census recorded 51,910 African Americans as living in Omaha (over 13% of the city's population). In the 19th century, the growing city of Omaha attracted ambitious people making new lives, such as Dr. Matthew Ricketts and Silas Robbins. Dr. Ricketts was the first African American to graduate from a Nebraska college or university. Silas Robbins was the first African American to be admitted to the bar in Nebraska. In 1892 Dr. Ricketts was also the first African American to be elected to the Nebraska State Legislature.Peattie, E. W. (2005), "Omaha's Black Population: The Negroes of this City: Who are they and where do they live?", Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, a Journalist in the Gilded Age, University of Nebraska Press, p. 58. Ernie Chambers, an African-American barber from North Omaha's 11th District, became the longest serving state senator in Nebraska history in 2005 after serving in the unicameral for more than 35 years.
Because of its industrial jobs with the railroads and meatpacking industries, Omaha was the city on the Plains that attracted the most African-American migrants from the South in the Great Migration of the early 20th century. By 1910, it had the third largest black population among western cities after Los Angeles and Denver, and from 1910 to 1920, the African-American population in Omaha doubled to more than 10,000 as new migrants were attracted by jobs in the expanding meatpacking industry. More than 70 percent were from the South.Quintard Taylor, In Search Of The Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998, p. 204. Of western cities, in 1920, only Los Angeles had a greater population of blacks than Omaha, with nearly 16,000.Note: Denver then had only 6,075. This definition excludes cities in Texas with blacks, as the state population was 25 percent black, mostly enslaved, before the Civil War. Quintard Taylor, The Forging of a Black Community, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994, p. 223; accessed August 20, 2008. Reflecting the concentration of people and vital community, in 1915, the Lincoln Motion Picture Company was founded in Omaha. It was the first film company owned by African Americans. Like several other major industrial cities during the "Red Summer of 1919", Omaha suffered a race riot. It was marked by the lynching of Will Brown, a black worker, and the deaths of two white men. The violence erupted out of job competition and postwar social tensions among working-class groups, aggravated by sensational journalism in the city. In the aftermath of the riot, the city's residential patterns became more segregated. By the 1920s, a vibrant African-American musical and entertainment culture had developed in the city.
While African Americans were already concentrated in North Omaha, in the 1930s redlining and race restrictive covenants reinforced their staying there without options for years to move to newer housing. In the 1930s and 1940s African Americans were part of successful interracial organizing teams in the meatpacking industry. They succeeded in creating the integrated United Meatpacking Workers of America union and gained an end to segregated jobs in the industry. The union helped support integration of public facilities in the 1950s and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. During this period, activists worked both for local and national changes; they contributed to improving conditions for African Americans in Omaha. Mid-century massive restructuring in railroads and the meatpacking industry cost the city more than 10,000 jobs. African Americans were particularly affected by the loss of industrial jobs. Those who could migrated for work in other areas and problems increased among the remaining population in North Omaha.
Omaha has the fifth-highest African-American poverty rate among the nation's 100 largest cities, with more than one in three black residents in Omaha living below the poverty line.Kotock, C. D. (2007), , Omaha World-Herald, October 3, 2007. Retrieved 10/4/07. The city ranks number one in the United States by the number of black children that live in poverty, with nearly six of 10 black kids living below the poverty line. Only one other metropolitan area in the U.S., Minneapolis, has a wider economic disparity between blacks and whites.Cordes, H.J., Gonzalez, C. and Grace, E. "Omaha in Black and White: Poverty amid prosperity", Omaha World-Herald. April 15, 2007. Retrieved August 19, 2008.
Population history
The first recorded instance of a black person in the Omaha area occurred in 1804. "York" was a slave belonging to William Clark of the Lewis and Clark Expedition.Multiethnic Guide. Greater Omaha Economic Partnership. Retrieved October 28, 2007. The presence of several black people, probably slaves, was recorded in the area comprising North Omaha today when Major Stephen H. Long's expedition arrived at Fort Lisa in September 1819. They reportedly lived at the post and in neighboring farmsteads.Federal Writers' Project. (1939) "The Negro comes to Nebraska" , Negroes in Nebraska. Retrieved May 13, 2008.
19th century
After a short history of slavery in Nebraska, the first free black person to live in Omaha was Sally Bayne, who moved to Omaha in 1854. A clause in the original proposed Nebraska State Constitution from 1854 limited voting rights in the state to "free white males", which kept Nebraska from entering the Union for almost a year. In the 1860s, the U.S. Census showed 81 "Negroes" in Nebraska, ten of whom were accounted for as slaves.(1938) Authur Goodlett. American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936–1940. Retrieved October 29, 2007. At that time, the majority of the population lived in Omaha and Nebraska City.
Some of the earliest African-American residents of the city may have arrived by the Underground Railroad via a small log cabin outside of Nebraska City built by Allen Mayhew in 1855. It is honored today as the Mayhew Cabin Museum. One report says, "Henry Daniel Smith, born in Maryland in 1835, still living in Omaha in 1913 and working at his trade of broom-maker, was one escaped slave who entered Nebraska via the Underground Railroad."(2003) "The Negroes of Nebraska: Immigration" . Retrieved October 29, 2007.
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.(2003) "The Negroes of Nebraska: The Negro goes to church". Memorial Library. Retrieved October 29, 2007. The first recorded birth of an African American in Omaha occurred in 1872, when William Leper was born.(1895) "Negroes in Omaha," Omaha Progress February 21, 1895. Retrieved from the Great Plains Black History Museum on May 6, 1998.
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.Quintard Taylor, In Search Of The Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990, New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1998, pp. 193 and 205.
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."African American Firsts in Omaha," by Adam Fletcher Sasse for NorthOmahaHistory.com. Retrieved Nov 11, 2022
20th century At the turn of the 20th century, two African-American physicians, doctors Riddle and Madison, opened a hospital for African Americans. Citizens could not afford the facility and it failed financially.Works Progress Administration. (1939) "Negroes in the professions", Negroes in Nebraska. Retrieved September 20, 2007. Reared in Omaha, Clarence W. Wigington was the first black architect to design a home in Nebraska as a student of Thomas Rogers Kimball. He also designed churches in Omaha. Wigington gained a national reputation after moving to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1914, where he soon became the senior architectural designer for the city. His legacy includes 60 surviving buildings, among which four are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
John Grant Pegg was the Leading Colored Republican of the Western States Meet in Conference. In 1906, he was appointed as the City Weights and Measures Inspector by J. C. Dalhman, Mayor of Omaha 1910. Pegg held the post for 10 years until his death in 1916. He encouraged and sponsored many of the black settlers who went by wagon out to Cherry County, Nebraska, to homestead benefiting from The Kincaid Homestead Act of 1904, where a black colony was established and where his brother, Charles T. Pegg, lived.Mr. John Grant Pegg Realizes Fond Dream, Lincoln Journal Star (Lincoln, Nebraska) 8 Aug 1912, page 9, accessed January 20, 2018 at https://www.newspapers.com/clip/16707088/