Flashback Friday: Omaha’s Bus Boycott of 1952-54
Years before the famous Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott of 1955-56, a group of Omahans led a bus boycott of their own. In this case, the target was the Omaha and ...
African American History
What We Found
African Americans in Nebraska—special issue of Nebraska History Online
Due to the great demand for the Fall/Winter 2010 issue of Nebraska History, we have posted the entire issue on our website.
If you’d rather read the articles on ...
Dan Desdunes and the Birth of Omaha Jazz
A 1924 event in Wilber, Nebraska, featured “Dan Desdune’s Band and Minstrel Show of Omaha. Colored Entertainers Supreme.” RG813-445 (at left).
Dan Desdunes lived a ...
Rev. Russel Taylor and the Struggle for Civil Rights in 1920s Omaha.
There are certain names we instantly recognize as those who passionately loved and strove for equality. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Susan B. Anthony and ...
Frederick Douglass descendant visits NSHS and meets a piece of his ancestor
Kenneth B. Morris Jr., the great-great-great-grandson of Frederick Douglass and the great- great-grandson of Booker T. Washington, visited the Nebraska State Historical ...
Flashback Friday: “Uncle Sam’s Sharpshooters”: Military Marksmanship at Fort Omaha and Bellevue, 1882-1894
In this 1888 image of the Bellevue rifle range, the men are firing from prone or sitting positions. The targets appear in the distance, with the enlisted men's camp ...
Ruth Cox
This box belonged to Ruth Cox who was born a slave on December 18, 1818 in Talbot County, Maryland. After escaping from slavery around the age of 21 she attended a ...
Flashback Friday: Ann Lowe and the Intriguing Couture Tradition of Ak-Sar-Ben ∙ Margaret Powell
During the 1960s, one of the most respected couture designers on the New York fashion scene was also one of its least known. Ann Lowe was the first African American ...
“A Double Mixture”: Equality and Economy in the Integration of Nebraska Schools, 1858-1883
Most Americans associate the history of school segregation with Southern and urban communities, a physical distance that may create a sense of separation for some ...
The New Negro Movement in Lincoln, Nebraska
The New Negro Movement (NNM)—a term used here as opposed to the commonly used “Harlem Renaissance”—occurred not just in Harlem, and not just in large metropolitan areas. ...
Mildred Brown and the De Porres Club: Collective Activism in Omaha
Precisely at 10 a.m. on June 20, 1952, a stylishly dressed middle-aged black woman named Mildred Brown urged the Omaha City Council to “do all in their power to see that ...
Whitney Young Jr’s Time in Omaha
Before Whitney Young Jr was a nationally known civil rights leader, he was a local leader in the Omaha chapter of the National Urban League.
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