Flashback Friday

The waning days of the 1924 presidential campaign found William Jennings Bryan back in his former home state of Nebraska. On Friday evening, October 17, 1924, the man known to newspapers as The Commoner spoke to an audience of hundreds at the high school auditorium in Fremont. It was one of many campaign stops he made across the state. In fact, he had already made two appearances in smaller towns earlier in the day.

Perhaps the most memorable thing about the Nebraska Statesman, published in Broken Bow from 1885 through the end of 1890, was Solomon D. Butcher's arresting photograph, taken in 1886 when the town was booming. The Statesman may not have been one of Nebraska's most notable newspapers, but because of this iconic photograph, it is one of the most visually recognizable.

Jazz critic and historian George Lipsitz has observed that "established histories of jazz tend to focus on a select group of individual geniuses in only a few cities." This group includes figures such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Charlie Parker; and those few cities are New Orleans, Kansas City, Chicago, and New York.

I am a little boy ten years old. I go to school when we have school, but we haven’t got any school now. It will begin soon. I helped to farm last spring; I plowed with three horses and helped cultivate corn and make hay. …I have to feed nine calves and my little brother and I carry in the fuel. —Bryan Echtemkardt, Knox County, Nebraska, 1907

From 1972 until 1975 the Kansas City-Omaha Kings, a member of the National Basketball Association (NBA), played a handful of home games in Omaha’s Civic Auditorium. That three-year span was a rare moment in Nebraska history, a brief time when the Cornhusker State could claim a big league team of its own.

Omaha World-Herald October 27,1947