The Omaha Race Riot of 1919, the Prequel.

I post this because I've been working on a piece on the Omaha Race Riot of 1919 which will appear here. I'm working my way through a clutch of books and I'm almost finished. Like all pieces of historiography produced here in the United States of Race, the class antagonism which always attends race riots has been removed from the narrative so as to make it appear a simple matter of racism. And the Omaha riot of 1919 was barely a racial event at all. Race plays a role here, but a minor one. What struck me about the Omaha riot/lynching was how relatively (I say again, relatively) tame it was. A White mob of thousands with literally hundreds of captive Blacks at their disposal and only one was killed, the one accused of an horrendous crime. More in a future post.

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Host: "I'm...struck by some of the factors in the backlash as described as the economic insecurity of white citizens, white supremacy...the fact that Black people were simply living their lives and that was an affront to...Whites. That ...resonates still in 2021..."

This characterization contains not an iota of truth. This woman is channeling her knowledge of the history of lynching and simply applying to this situation, which is natural and common enough, but I believe she has a responsibility to tell the exhumed truth and not assumed truth, which she did not fulfill. During WW1, there was a mass migrations of millions of Blacks to Northern cities. About a million went to Omaha. The entire city of Brewton, AL, moved to Omaha, every single person. When vets returned from the war they found that the jobs they once had were now filled by migrant Blacks working for lower wages than their White predecessors had. The lynchee, Will Brown, was a strikebreaker. Indeed, the newly declassed, lumpenized, returning vets were embittered--as they should have been--and impoverished by their joblessness. The Blacks are certainly not to blame, they were just doing what was best for themselves as everybody does, but is simply outrageously, racistly inaccurate to say that Blacks "were simply living their lives and that was an affront to Whites." As so often happens, workers of different races are played one against the other to their mutual disadvantage.


Deneen Brown: There was enormous economic envy of Black people who had prospered just years out of slavery..."


Nope. The Black population of Omaha was not particularly prosperous or powerful, as was the case elsewhere. "Just years out of slavery"????? Try 54.


Brown continues: Some of these people were formerly enslaved and they built these towns..."


Fifty-four years, not too many were former slaves, and Blacks most assuredly did not build Omaha.


Brown continues: [She talks about Tulsa where there were  wealthy Blacks due to the oil boom. The Black population of Omaha was not nearly so well off.] [Will Brown] had severe arthritis and could barely walk himself..."


Maybe so, but he was employed at the stockyards. It's not clear in what capacity.


Brown: Many of these massacres were sparked by the false accusation that a Black man had raped a White woman.


False? How does she know that? Is she racist and stupid enough to believe that Black men never rape White women? Is that a joke? Is she really a journalist? I don't know whether WB was guilty, but it is monumentally irresponsible to say that every charge of rape ever made against a Black man is unfounded. And it is disrespectful of those women who were raped however many other cases there may have been when the accusation proved to be untrue. Honor the victims of rape, and if  Brown can't bring herself to do so out of a sense of racial loyalty to the rapists she shouldn't be working for the Washington Post. Like me, D. Brown does not know whether W. Brown was guilty: when a woman claims rape she should be believed until it is certain that she lied. Then and only then should her allegation be dismissed. White women have made false accusations of rape against Black men, and Black men have raped White women. Given their importance, one would think that a "journalist" would accord the issues of gender victimization and race victimization more sobriety. Rather from her we get the tired racist trope of White woman lying about rape. Ms Brown here utterly and disgracefully abandons objectivity and journalistic integrity. Could Loeback have been raped by a Black? Yes, it is not clear why she would have lied under these circumstances as it was of no apparent benefit to her. Could she have lied? Yes, that there doesn't seem to be any motivation for such a deception doesn't mean there wasn't one. A journalists job is to evaluate such incidents in an evenhanded manner, not to cast them in accord with her own squalid prejudices.


Brown: [Will Brown] finally is pulled out of a window and strung up..."


Perhaps not an important detail but hers is the only account of the transfer of WB to the mob having occurred through a window. There is still a debate as to whether Black or White inmates handed him over as the building burned.


Brown: It was a horrible, horrible massacre..."


Does the death of one constitute a massacre?


Brown: [She describes the heroic attempt of the White mayor to save WB in which he too nearly died.} That's the kind of racial hostility and frenzy which consumes Red Summer.


What's remarkable about the Omaha riot is how restrained it was compared to others. A mob of thousands took control of hundreds of Black prisoners and harmed only one. I wonder if Omaha should be called a race riot at all. Other Blacks, about 5,  were accosted around town, but none seriously injured. There were a total of 3 fatalities: two mob were shot by police, and WB. Wow! Think about that, think about the unusual lack of racial hostility and frenzy on the mob's part. This is what has interested me about this case: Their contempt for the accused man didn't spill over into contempt for all Blacks. People need to be driven near mad to go and storm a government building. [There is a lot of background to be known to understand this event properly. Anger had been brewing for some time. WB was just the catalyst.] The mob clearly was not motivated by race, but by outrage over what had been presented to them as a horrible crime. Agnes Loebeck, the alleged victim, was walking with her boyfriend who was in a wheelchair when a Black jumped out and knocked over the chair and raped Loebeck at knifepoint. She contacted the police and told them a Black had raped her. Neither she nor her boyfriend recognized him. The police brought WB to her house and she couldn't be sure it was him, but eventually was persuaded, so it is said, by the police. WB was taken to jail in the courthouse.

That's what the public heard. There is good reason to believe it is erroneous at least to some degree. Nevertheless, the cruelty of tipping over a wheelchair and having to watch helplessly as your fiancé is raped at knifepoint resonated with a town which felt aggrieved by the rising crime rate and the inability of the city gov to slow it. This could easily have turned into a massacre as similar circumstances in other places and times had, but it didn't.

And I'm trying to figure out why.