Historic Omaha

There were some Omahans, black and
white, working for change. The De Porres
Club at Creighton University, headed by
charismatic Jesuit Father John P. Markoe, took
on the discriminatory practices. They staged
sit-ins at restaurants a dozen years before the
tactic became popular and conducted an
effective bus boycott four years before the
determined stand of Rosa Parks. De Porres
Club members targeted segregated swimming
pools and barbershops and challenged the
real estate industry. This small cadre
experienced considerable success, even
though the larger problem continued to exist.
Mildred Brown, crusading editor of the
Omaha Star, covered news of Omaha’s Black
community, championed the cause of civil
rights, and even provided meeting space for
those who shared her concerns. Some of her
saddest editorial tasks were writing about the
riots that shook Omaha in the 1960s.
That decade was violent and chaotic. It
included the assassinations of President John
F. Kennedy; non-violence advocate, the
Reverend Martin Luther King; and Omahaborn
Black leader, Malcolm X. While young
men were fighting in the jungles of Vietnam,
the war was being protested at home. Rock
was the music of choice, and Woodstock
became a metaphor for a generation.
Everything seemed in flux, from politics to
religion. Alternate, sometimes communal,
lifestyles made the scene, and even movies
like Easy Rider, Midnight Cowboy, and Bonnie
and Clyde, echoed the theme of counterculture.
Drugs and alcohol were common
topics in newspapers, and only television,
with series like Batman, Star Trek, and The
Beverly Hillbillies, seemed to offer escape.
Douglas County wasn’t immune to these
trends. War protestors were a minority, but
they showed up with their signs and black
armbands. The wilder fashions and lifestyles
arrived more slowly in Omaha. But the city
did erupt into sectarian struggles several times
during the 1960s. Sometimes the struggles
were prompted by events, like the Civic
Auditorium appearance of George Wallace,
the segregationist former governor of Alabama
in 1968, or the confrontations between Blacks
and local police toward the end of the decade.
The most significant riots occurred in 1966,
when, in three summer nights of burning and
looting, the face of Twenty-fourth Street was
forever altered.
So much of this history has been
conveniently forgotten. One almost has to
review the collection of the Great Plains Black
Museum, founded by Bertha Calloway, to gain
knowledge of the great contributions of Black
✧
Rex Allen, cowboy star and narrator for
many Walt Disney features, rides through
Omaha during a centennial parade in
September 1954.
COURTESY OF BILL KRATVILLE AND THE DOUGLAS
COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLLECTIONS.
CHAPTER IV
77