The Seventh City

UNL Author

09/27/2019 Added

46 Plays

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In his lecture, David Krugler will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Will Brown lynching in Omaha, which took place on September 28, 1919. The murder of Brown, an African American laborer, by a white mob was part of a wave of anti-black violence sweeping the United States after World War I. The presentation will document how Will Brown was framed for a crime he didn't commit, describe the failed efforts of authorities to bring his murderers to justice, and explain how African Americans in Omaha took measures to defend themselves against further mob violence.

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[00:00:04.310]So, on behalf of the Institute for Ethnic Studies
[00:00:07.300]and African and African American Studies Program
[00:00:09.420]here at UNL, I wanna welcome you and thank you
[00:00:12.710]all for joining us on this important commemoration
[00:00:16.270]of the 100th anniversary of the 1919 lynching
[00:00:19.010]of Will Brown in Omaha, Nebraska.
[00:00:22.100]I'm Dr. Patrick Jones.
[00:00:23.610]I'm an associate professor in the Department of History
[00:00:26.410]and at the Institute for Ethnic Studies,
[00:00:28.570]I'm the liaison in the African and African American
[00:00:32.740]Studies Program here at UNL.
[00:00:35.446]Before we get started with the talk,
[00:00:37.280]I wanna thank my colleagues in African
[00:00:40.020]and African American Studies Program
[00:00:41.780]who've helped with organizing this.
[00:00:44.681]If you're a student, you might wanna
[00:00:46.770]consider taking A class with Dr. Jeannette Jones,
[00:00:49.290]Kwakiutl Dreher, Tommy Dance,
[00:00:51.420]Alice Kang, Dawne Curry or Greg Rutledge.
[00:00:55.268]Or myself, if you wanna do that too.
[00:00:58.620]It's my privilege to call them friends
[00:01:00.760]and colleagues and they're all hardworking
[00:01:04.210]every day.
[00:01:05.400]They're world class scholars and passionate teachers
[00:01:07.690]who have the backs of their students.
[00:01:09.990]And who are also, I think, importantly
[00:01:12.640]deeply committed to our communities and very
[00:01:14.770]involved here in Lincoln and Omaha
[00:01:17.480]and across the state.
[00:01:19.204]We are a land grant institution and we take
[00:01:20.680]a commitment to the people of the state
[00:01:22.780]really seriously, particularly in ethnic studies.
[00:01:27.070]I'd also like to acknowledge our compatriots
[00:01:29.750]at the Institute for Ethnic Studies
[00:01:32.230]and the other programs so we are
[00:01:33.260]African and African American Studies
[00:01:35.280]as well as the Native American Studies Program
[00:01:37.650]and the Latino and Latin American Studies,
[00:01:39.860]soon to be LatinX Studies Program.
[00:01:45.190]My colleagues in Ethnic Studies are carrying
[00:01:48.350]an undue burden in terms of diversity
[00:01:51.260]and inclusion at the university.
[00:01:54.450]And often that's an unacknowledged burden.
[00:01:57.290]So they deserve your love here as well.
[00:02:01.800]We also wanna thank our cosponsors on this event,
[00:02:04.310]the Convocations Committee,
[00:02:06.120]the Department of History,
[00:02:08.168]the Department of Political Science,
[00:02:10.054]Department of English,
[00:02:11.652]and the Women's and Gender Studies Program.
[00:02:13.510]All friends and long time co-conspirators
[00:02:15.510]here at the university with us in Ethnic Studies.
[00:02:19.020]Interdisciplinary collaboration is central
[00:02:21.240]to what we do in Ethnic Studies.
[00:02:22.900]So we appreciate these partnerships very much.
[00:02:27.060]In addition, I wanna thank our director
[00:02:29.000]of Ethnic Studies, Dr. James Garza
[00:02:31.050]who helped me with much of the legwork
[00:02:32.830]on this event, as well as Doug McWilliams
[00:02:35.890]and Terry Piper, both who are on our
[00:02:37.920]administrative staff.
[00:02:39.650]Things don't happen at the university
[00:02:41.770]without the knowledge and competence
[00:02:43.680]and expertise of our administrative staff
[00:02:45.720]and we really value and honor their labor.
[00:02:49.130]I wanna thank Maddie McIntosh who's back there
[00:02:52.960]DJing for us tonight.
[00:02:54.110]And Mike Kamm who setup and is recording
[00:02:57.370]tonight's lecture and live-streaming it.
[00:02:59.920]And also Marvontay Donovan who's an undergraduate
[00:03:02.680]student in the Art Department.
[00:03:04.690]He designed our poster for this event.
[00:03:07.060]That was not an easy task because the subject matter
[00:03:11.545]demands walking a fine line between creating
[00:03:15.700]something that's compelling visually
[00:03:17.690]but not exploiting the body of Will Brown.
[00:03:22.040]So it took some extra care and we're really
[00:03:25.280]thrilled with what he came up with and really
[00:03:27.130]appreciate the work that Marvontay did for us
[00:03:29.700]on the poster and promotional materials.
[00:03:33.680]Finally, before I introduce Dr. Krugler,
[00:03:35.660]I wanna take a moment to ask that we
[00:03:37.830]pause in silence for a moment to honor
[00:03:40.500]the life of William Brown whose horrific death
[00:03:43.270]is at the center of this commemoration,
[00:03:45.750]but who we must also remember lived a life
[00:03:48.370]of meaning and agency beyond that tragic ending.
[00:04:00.740]Thank you.
[00:04:02.190]Beyond Will Brown, we also wanna honor
[00:04:04.900]Black Nebraskans, past and present
[00:04:07.610]who have and do enrich our state in countless,
[00:04:10.770]often unacknowledged ways.
[00:04:13.266]And whose tenacity and resilience in the face
[00:04:15.240]of a long trail of oppression, discrimination,
[00:04:17.620]and yes, brutality, is a testament to the enduring
[00:04:21.250]human spirit.
[00:04:22.420]It is here, in the black freedom movement,
[00:04:24.470]that we find perhaps the most powerful articulation
[00:04:27.580]of the yet unrealized possibility of American
[00:04:30.470]Democracy full human dignity and justice for all.
[00:04:35.250]And so now with that, on to the main event.
[00:04:37.940]It's my great pleasure and honor to welcome
[00:04:40.310]and introduce to you, Dr. David Krugler,
[00:04:42.670]a professor of history in his home state
[00:04:45.150]at the University of Wisconsin, Plattville.
[00:04:47.680]I'm not gonna say the whole new version.
[00:04:49.403]You don't have to.
[00:04:50.236]They've consolidated with some other campuses
[00:04:51.440]recently and there's a whole bunch of stuff
[00:04:53.320]after Plattville.
[00:04:54.848]We're just gonna go with University of Wisconsin,
[00:04:56.110]Plattville.
[00:04:56.990]Dr. Krugler received his undergraduate degree
[00:04:59.230]in English and History here in Nebraska
[00:05:01.240]at Creighton University in Omaha.
[00:05:03.070]And then an MA and PhD in History from
[00:05:05.130]the University of Illinois.
[00:05:06.810]A historian of modern US history, he has published
[00:05:09.360]books on several topics including cold war propaganda,
[00:05:12.435]nuclear warfare, as well as racial conflict
[00:05:15.590]in the United States.
[00:05:16.680]He has also written two spy novels, right?
[00:05:21.212]In 2014, Cambridge University Press published
[00:05:23.972]1919, The Year of Racial Violence:
[00:05:27.040]How African Americans Fought Back.
[00:05:29.320]Which is particular notable, not merely for
[00:05:31.580]cataloging the wave of anti-black racial violence
[00:05:34.374]in that pivotal year, but also for documenting
[00:05:38.130]the various ways African Americans struggled
[00:05:40.640]against that terribleness.
[00:05:42.390]This is a crucial contribution to the historical
[00:05:45.280]literature on Red summer and a reminder that
[00:05:47.950]even in the most horrific and oppressive circumstances,
[00:05:51.110]black people have agency and they use it.
[00:05:54.490]The title of Dr. Krugler's talk this evening is
[00:05:56.880]The Seventh City: Omaha During 1919 the Year
[00:05:59.782]of Racial Violence.
[00:06:01.150]Please join me in giving a warm Nebraska welcome
[00:06:03.413]to Dr. David Krugler.
[00:06:06.037](audience applauding)
[00:06:06.978]Thank you, Patrick.
[00:06:12.440]Thank you, Patrick for inviting me
[00:06:14.390]and James as well and the African
[00:06:17.440]and African American Studies Department,
[00:06:19.870]the Institute for Ethnic Studies
[00:06:21.060]and all the other hosts.
[00:06:22.340]It's a real pleasure to be here.
[00:06:24.010]And most of all, I wanna thank you
[00:06:25.780]for coming out on what may be one of the last
[00:06:28.300]beautiful Fall days of this year.
[00:06:31.060]And I appreciate your time
[00:06:33.490]that you're spending with me tonight.
[00:06:35.610]I would like to start by explaining my choice
[00:06:38.410]of title.
[00:06:39.830]I call this talk Omaha, The Seventh City
[00:06:43.500]or The Seventh City: Omaha During 1919
[00:06:45.812]because during this year, a hundred years ago
[00:06:48.400]that 10 cities or localities in the United States
[00:06:51.530]experienced episodes of anti-black collective violence,
[00:06:55.000]what's typically called race riots.
[00:06:56.840]But as I'll soon explain, I think that's
[00:06:58.470]a problematic and deficient term.
[00:07:01.364]In theses 10 cities or localities,
[00:07:04.120]white mobs formed, sometimes hundreds strong
[00:07:06.868]with thousands observing, as in the case
[00:07:09.490]of Omaha.
[00:07:11.200]And either participated in or observed
[00:07:13.060]acts of violence being perpetuated against
[00:07:15.040]African Americans.
[00:07:16.500]First Charleston, in May of 1919.
[00:07:20.820]And then Longview, Texas.
[00:07:23.334]Bisbee, Arizona, along the border with Mexico,
[00:07:25.370]the third city.
[00:07:26.970]Chicago, late July.
[00:07:29.060]Washington mid July.
[00:07:31.510]Knoxville, Tennessee, over the Labor Day
[00:07:33.780]weekend, that's six.
[00:07:35.630]And that brings us to the seventh city, Omaha,
[00:07:38.937]100 years ago, this weekend.
[00:07:41.130]Then three more cities experienced violence.
[00:07:44.640]The eighth, Phillips County, Arkansas
[00:07:47.970]resulted in the massacre of 237 African Americans.
[00:07:53.370]Why so much violence in such a short period?
[00:07:56.250]This is a key question.
[00:07:58.360]As I'm sure many of you know, violence directed
[00:08:00.520]at African Americans was not new to 1919.
[00:08:02.810]Between 1882 and 1919, between 49 to 162
[00:08:08.410]African Americans were lynched each year.
[00:08:10.960]That's annually.
[00:08:12.100]Between 1882 and 1919, and the episodes
[00:08:15.290]I just mentioned are separate from that.
[00:08:18.720]So violence against African Americans
[00:08:20.260]was not new, but what was it about 1919
[00:08:24.110]that brought all 10 of these cities
[00:08:27.550]into unprecedented violence?
[00:08:34.760]There were many reasons.
[00:08:36.630]We'll start with reasons white mobs formed.
[00:08:40.220]Chicago serves us a good example.
[00:08:43.090]Chicago's black population had increased greatly
[00:08:45.380]during World War I as southern African Americans
[00:08:48.210]came north and found jobs in Chicago's stockyards
[00:08:50.797]and the packing houses.
[00:08:52.520]And in its factories.
[00:08:54.820]Through a variety of practices, they were limited
[00:08:56.730]to where they could live, the so called black belts.
[00:08:59.270]Chicago wasn't the only northern city
[00:09:01.679]that practiced such segregation.
[00:09:04.120]Many African Americans began to move
[00:09:05.990]to the borderlands between white and black
[00:09:08.410]neighborhoods, but they weren't welcome.
[00:09:11.210]At the end of World War I and going into 1919,
[00:09:13.640]Chicago alone experienced 25 bombing directed at
[00:09:17.750]black occupied homes or against realtors who had sold
[00:09:20.991]homes to African Americans.
[00:09:23.970]So the way mobs formed in late July, In Chicago
[00:09:27.510]and began attacking African Americans,
[00:09:29.400]one of their purposes was to drive African Americans
[00:09:33.550]out of homes.
[00:09:34.383]As the photograph on the left shows.
[00:09:36.840]Take a look at the homes on either side.
[00:09:38.720]They are untouched.
[00:09:40.800]Because they were white occupieds.
[00:09:42.820]The gangs knew which homes to hit.
[00:09:45.930]And the fact that, what, 50 children,
[00:09:49.780]some that look as young as five or six,
[00:09:52.470]can pass in and out of the home and cheer
[00:09:54.530]for photographs, tells us that the restoration
[00:09:57.860]of order did not include protecting what remained
[00:10:00.700]of that property of the black family that once
[00:10:03.280]occupied it.
[00:10:05.180]The second photograph is even more frightening.
[00:10:07.550]It's documentation of the violence in the making
[00:10:11.039]as white gangs in Bridgeport, one of these
[00:10:14.577]Southside Chicago neighborhoods that was
[00:10:17.040]predominantly white, as the gangs ran
[00:10:20.600]looking for victims.
[00:10:22.100]When Chicago's violence was over,
[00:10:25.510]38 were dead, the majority of them African Americans.
[00:10:29.420]These photographs are overwhelming evidence
[00:10:32.700]of why we shouldn't call Chicago's moment,
[00:10:37.130]it's tragedy, a race riot.
[00:10:38.790]Riot implies that there was mayhem
[00:10:41.040]and that all sides participating were equally
[00:10:43.350]to blame.
[00:10:44.576]But we see purposeful violence here.
[00:10:47.636]To maintain a color line and to terrorize
[00:10:50.880]African Americans.
[00:10:53.210]And this shows a third reason for why
[00:10:55.040]there's so much violence in 1919.
[00:10:56.760]This was a year in which black advancements,
[00:11:00.310]which there was much of because of wartime opportunities,
[00:11:03.600]and hard work and prosperity, that was a crime, too.
[00:11:08.290]Even moving to a better home in Chicago could be a crime.
[00:11:13.470]Other reasons for the increase in violence
[00:11:17.250]include long standing fears of upholders of white supremacy.
[00:11:22.389]That African American men lusted after white women.
[00:11:26.677]And this was a fact during Washington DC's riot
[00:11:29.150]which was almost as violent as Chicago's.
[00:11:33.700]Alleged attacks on white women by a black suspect
[00:11:36.060]lead to roundups of hundreds of black men
[00:11:38.150]simply for walking down the streets.
[00:11:40.810]An egregious example of what we would call today,
[00:11:42.510]racial profiling.
[00:11:44.630]Despite these unconstitutional measures
[00:11:47.630]to try and find the suspects, mobs formed
[00:11:51.940]in Washington DC, many of them composed of
[00:11:54.470]recently returned white veterans and active duty
[00:11:56.500]servicemen who believed the police weren't doing
[00:11:58.590]their job and it was appropriate for them
[00:12:00.380]to use mass violence, crowd violence
[00:12:04.740]to send a message to African Americans.
[00:12:06.410]To terrorize them.
[00:12:08.060]These mobs knew they weren't going to find
[00:12:11.050]the specific suspects.
[00:12:14.730]But as long as they hurt and scared,
[00:12:17.360]they served other purposes.
[00:12:20.200]Driving blacks from good government jobs.
[00:12:22.690]Building support for their firing.
[00:12:26.540]But if we just dwell on the reasons
[00:12:29.060]for 1919's violence, we miss much
[00:12:31.700]of the story.
[00:12:32.533]And Patrick eluded to this earlier
[00:12:34.930]in his introduction.
[00:12:36.860]What did African Americans do in response?
[00:12:44.460]They fought a three front war
[00:12:47.720]against the forces arrayed against them.
[00:12:50.560]Front number one, they armed themselves
[00:12:53.597]and they carried out self defense when attacked.
[00:12:57.770]And very few instances did armed blacks
[00:13:00.190]initiate violence against whites.
[00:13:02.220]Very few instances, just a couple
[00:13:04.470]in all of those episode of violence in 1919.
[00:13:08.150]Overwhelmingly, arms used for self defense,
[00:13:11.280]front number one.
[00:13:13.000]The second front, a fight for facts about
[00:13:16.430]the sources of violence.
[00:13:18.480]When blacks took up arms to defend themselves,
[00:13:21.240]they were blamed in the newspapers and in the press
[00:13:24.460]and in government reports as the perpetrators
[00:13:27.370]of the violence.
[00:13:28.878]Blamed for what had been directed against then.
[00:13:32.590]Establishing truth and accuracy about the riots
[00:13:35.035]was an important front.
[00:13:37.160]A needed victory so that all Americans,
[00:13:39.438]those present at the city, who's lived
[00:13:42.650]in the city where the violence occurred,
[00:13:45.452]those who lived elsewhere, would know what really
[00:13:46.770]was happening.
[00:13:48.360]And the third front, a fight for justice afterward.
[00:13:52.020]Because African Americans were being blamed
[00:13:54.050]for white mob violence directed at them,
[00:13:56.490]they filled jails, in Chicago, in Washington DC.
[00:14:01.470]In Chicago, for example, one woman defending
[00:14:03.970]her home against a mob at the door,
[00:14:07.010]shots fired from the home, trying to keep a mob
[00:14:09.320]that outnumbered them a hundred to one,
[00:14:11.970]she was charged with first degree murder.
[00:14:15.440]And any other black self defenders faced
[00:14:17.800]similar charges.
[00:14:19.404]If the truth and the facts about what was going on
[00:14:22.690]weren't revealed, then those defendants,
[00:14:26.218]those wrongly charged individuals
[00:14:28.936]not only looked to spend the rest of their life
[00:14:31.410]in prison, but perhaps even to face
[00:14:33.700]a capital sentence, to have their life
[00:14:36.260]taken from them.
[00:14:37.950]This cartoon you've been looking at
[00:14:40.080]captures much of the three-front war
[00:14:42.000]African Americans waged in 1919 against
[00:14:44.290]the violence directed at them.
[00:14:46.910]We have a police figure, literally speaking
[00:14:50.410]out of both sides of his mouth.
[00:14:53.720]To the mob law figure, and note
[00:14:55.410]the uniform.
[00:14:57.360]We have mobs that were composed of figures
[00:14:59.290]of authority, active duty service men
[00:15:01.530]in Washington.
[00:15:02.363]Or recently returned veterans.
[00:15:05.550]Wait until I disarm him.
[00:15:07.370]And of course the size of the mob law figure
[00:15:09.700]tells us he's the most powerful figure
[00:15:12.780]in this dynamic.
[00:15:14.230]Out of the other side of the police officers mouth,
[00:15:16.620]to an armed African American man,
[00:15:19.090]alone, in the name of the law surrender your gun.
[00:15:22.930]It is my only protection, he replies.
[00:15:31.890]A major reason African Americans
[00:15:34.810]were ready to take up arms to defend themselves
[00:15:37.350]in 1919, and this helps us further understand
[00:15:40.150]why 1919 was such a special year.
[00:15:43.510]So much compressed within it.
[00:15:45.640]Was the role of the Great War,
[00:15:46.980]what we call World War I.
[00:15:49.070]Recall that President Woodrow Wilson,
[00:15:50.700]after helping keep the United States
[00:15:52.410]out of this war for almost three years said,
[00:15:54.618]The world must be made safe for democracy.
[00:15:59.170]We're going to go to France.
[00:16:00.840]We're going to achieve an allied victory,
[00:16:03.620]for the democracies to spread democracy.
[00:16:06.770]How does that sound in the ears
[00:16:09.030]of nine million or so African Americans
[00:16:11.185]who do not yet enjoy the rights and opportunities
[00:16:14.990]of democracy in their home country?
[00:16:18.063]The right to vote taken away from black men
[00:16:20.111]despite the 15th Amendment.
[00:16:21.873]Jim Crow segregation.
[00:16:23.560]Sharecropping in the south is another form
[00:16:26.530]of slavery persisting into the 20th century.
[00:16:29.740]And yet, 370,000 African American men
[00:16:33.190]go into the service, almost all of them in the Army,
[00:16:36.114]and they serve in France.
[00:16:38.220]They distinguish themselves in combat.
[00:16:40.440]But they serve in segregated units
[00:16:42.000]often under contemptuous white officers.
[00:16:45.780]The war department tells the French
[00:16:47.460]to beware of the vices of the negro.
[00:16:50.060]That's not a paraphrase, that's a quote.
[00:16:52.570]And they ask the French not to accept
[00:16:54.840]African Americans as equals.
[00:16:57.010]This was an encoded language saying
[00:16:58.620]please accept the customs of the United States.
[00:17:01.890]Which meant receive them, treat them
[00:17:04.030]as in equals.
[00:17:05.875]These veterans returned home resolving
[00:17:09.470]not to go back to a subservient place.
[00:17:12.867]And W.E.B. Du Bois said it so well
[00:17:15.530]in the spring of 1919, the month, the year
[00:17:18.280]of racial violence began in Charleston.
[00:17:21.926]In the start of his essay, he recounts
[00:17:23.800]all of the challenges, the obstacles,
[00:17:25.820]the injustices African Americans face.
[00:17:28.320]Their vote taken away, robbery through sharecropping,
[00:17:31.530]lynching, time for that to end
[00:17:33.800]the democratic promise, the guarantee
[00:17:36.030]to be fulfilled.
[00:17:37.100]We return from fighting, we return fighting.
[00:17:40.550]Make way for democracy.
[00:17:41.840]We saved it in France, and by the great Jehovah,
[00:17:44.180]we will save it in the United States of America
[00:17:46.869]or know the reason why.
[00:17:50.920]So, throughout the year of racial violence,
[00:17:55.520]African Americans did exactly that, on three fronts.
[00:17:59.580]And as we get into Omaha's story, I'd like you
[00:18:02.500]to keep this general pattern in mind.
[00:18:05.570]I'll make reference to where Omaha fits into
[00:18:07.880]this pattern.
[00:18:08.713]Where we see African Americans taking up arms
[00:18:11.130]to defend themselves.
[00:18:13.181]We will see examples of African Americans
[00:18:15.560]in Omaha fighting for the truth.
[00:18:18.450]One thing that's really notable about Omaha's
[00:18:20.745]experience is that African American residents,
[00:18:24.540]a woman especially by the name of Jessie Hale-Moss
[00:18:27.500]was lobbying the press to correct slanted biased,
[00:18:33.330]insightful press coverage in advance of the courthouse
[00:18:38.990]storming and the murder of Will Brown.
[00:18:41.120]She saw this coming and said, stop it.
[00:18:44.890]But she wasn't listened to.
[00:18:46.200]But she was almost singlehandedly waging
[00:18:48.360]a second front in Omaha, even before
[00:18:51.570]September 28th, 1919.
[00:18:54.320]And we will also see in Omaha, the third front,
[00:18:56.930]the fight for justice.
[00:18:59.090]And learn whether or not that was achieved.
[00:19:04.890]Omaha in 1919 was truly an industrial city.
[00:19:09.467]It slaughtered and dressed and shipped meat
[00:19:12.510]by the tons.
[00:19:13.680]It had breweries, it milled flour.
[00:19:16.040]It's rail lines linked to Chicago and to the East
[00:19:20.750]and of course, all the way West as well.
[00:19:29.490]In terms of Omaha's African American community,
[00:19:33.470]we see a small but thriving community in the 1910's.
[00:19:38.410]Unlike Chicago, Omaha did not take in
[00:19:40.760]a lot of Southern migrants during the years
[00:19:43.745]of the so called Great Migration.
[00:19:44.950]During the years of World War I.
[00:19:47.020]But the census does record that its black population
[00:19:49.300]went from about 5100 in 1910
[00:19:52.082]to just over 10,000 by 1920.
[00:19:55.230]So about a 50% increase.
[00:19:58.860]Within this population, more than a hundred owned,
[00:20:02.250]black-owned businesses, 20 fraternal organizations
[00:20:06.220]and 40 church congregations.
[00:20:09.050]The NAACP, the National Association
[00:20:11.260]for the Advancement of colored people
[00:20:13.266]had chartered a branch in Omaha in the Fall of 1918
[00:20:16.040]and it was thriving.
[00:20:17.700]Building in numbers.
[00:20:19.730]So there was opportunity and growth.
[00:20:24.210]And things to be proud of in Omaha's black community,
[00:20:26.820]but there were challenges, there were menaces,
[00:20:28.990]there were threats as well.
[00:20:31.910]Unemployed white veterans returning to their home city
[00:20:35.150]resented the employment of African Americans.
[00:20:38.990]Omaha's an industrial city, like so many cities
[00:20:41.326]in the United States in 1919 was experiencing
[00:20:44.280]a lot of labor capital strike.
[00:20:46.220]There were strikes.
[00:20:47.790]And in some cases, employers brought in
[00:20:51.090]African American laborers from elsewhere
[00:20:53.923]as strikebreakers.
[00:20:54.910]This certainly was the belief of lots of white laborers.
[00:20:58.660]A pamphlet distributed by the teamsters local
[00:21:01.470]in July said this.
[00:21:03.477]"We are reliably informed that a carload of negroes
[00:21:06.977]"is again being imported from East St. Louis
[00:21:09.547]"in order to break our strike."
[00:21:12.700]And then the Omaha Bee, one of Omaha's
[00:21:14.706]three daily papers recorded that "500 African Americans
[00:21:18.587]"had just arrived to take the jobs of striking
[00:21:21.237]"packing house workers."
[00:21:23.730]I believe, upon my research, that these numbers
[00:21:26.300]are exaggerated, but the perception carried the day.
[00:21:30.740]So a lot of antagonism toward black workers
[00:21:33.720]on the part of African Americans.
[00:21:36.570]That's one of the contexts to Omaha's troubles.
[00:21:45.960]Let's introduce two key players now,
[00:21:48.400]in what happened.
[00:21:50.300]Will Brown and a man named Tom Dennison.
[00:21:56.970]We don't know a lot, even now, 100 years on,
[00:22:00.320]about the life of Will Brown.
[00:22:01.490]He was probably born in the late 1870s
[00:22:04.130]or early 1880s, place unknown.
[00:22:06.880]In 1914, he was living in Cairo, Illinois.
[00:22:10.950]And then a few years later made his way to Omaha.
[00:22:15.140]And found work in the cities stockyards.
[00:22:17.950]It may be that he found work as a strikebreaker.
[00:22:21.520]But we don't know.
[00:22:23.320]By the Fall of 1919, he was living in
[00:22:24.930]South Omaha, close to the stockyards
[00:22:27.135]in a rented house with a black man named
[00:22:29.740]Henry Johnson and Virginia Jones, a white woman.
[00:22:34.286]We know a lot more about the man on the left,
[00:22:37.210]Tom Dennison AKA The Gray Wolf.
[00:22:40.530]He came to Omaha in 1892, in his mid-30s.
[00:22:45.025]He was already a man of some renowned wealth.
[00:22:48.400]Though much of what we know about him,
[00:22:50.370]may be fictitious.
[00:22:51.960]The stuff of legends.
[00:22:54.590]Stories from the Old West.
[00:22:58.380]It is said that Dennison once shot a man
[00:23:00.270]in a mining camp.
[00:23:02.241]And said that he once orchestrated the train robbery
[00:23:04.190]of $15,000 worth of diamonds.
[00:23:06.610]But beat those charges at trial.
[00:23:08.650]Now you may have noticed my use of the passive voice,
[00:23:10.500]it was said.
[00:23:11.800]The stories were told but the attribution
[00:23:14.160]never quite pinned down.
[00:23:16.310]But what is known, what is verifiable
[00:23:18.880]is that Dennison made a lot of money,
[00:23:21.825]owning and running casinos in Colorado,
[00:23:25.040]before he came to Omaha.
[00:23:27.570]And he did even better in Omaha.
[00:23:29.240]He setup a lucrative numbers game,
[00:23:31.150]a form of a lottery, that was privately run.
[00:23:34.180]He did so in Omaha's third ward which was a
[00:23:37.170]rough and tumble red light district, teeming with
[00:23:41.300]saloons, brothels and bought cops.
[00:23:44.848]Dennison setup a political operation.
[00:23:47.950]He was an important figure in the city's
[00:23:50.320]republican political machine.
[00:23:52.959]And he also had some other connections,
[00:23:56.428]as we'll soon learn.
[00:23:58.561]But even someone as wily and as unscrupulous
[00:24:02.593]as Dennison couldn't avoid the winds of progressivism,
[00:24:07.510]which swept out the Mayor Dennison was aligned with.
[00:24:11.730]And brought in a reformer, a man named Edward P. Smith,
[00:24:15.530]who promised to clean up Omaha, to clean up
[00:24:19.380]the third ward.
[00:24:20.860]And Smith appointed a man named J.D. Ringer,
[00:24:24.060]J.D. Ringer as his police commissioner.
[00:24:27.720]And Ringer promised to do what the Mayor want.
[00:24:32.060]So Dennison plotted a comeback.
[00:24:36.950]He came up with a plan.
[00:24:39.670]A plan to discredit the reformers.
[00:24:43.310]And so ruin their reputation.
[00:24:46.570]So show them to be incompetent that they
[00:24:49.590]wouldn't be able to stay in office.
[00:24:52.060]But his plan needed a patsy, a setup.
[00:24:56.020]Someone new to town.
[00:24:59.180]Someone with few friends and fewer resources.
[00:25:03.330]And someone with dark skin.
[00:25:07.740]And that patsy became Will Brown.
[00:25:14.390]In the spring and summer of 1919, Omaha's papers
[00:25:18.720]were filled with more and more stories about
[00:25:21.880]sexual assaults.
[00:25:23.270]One of the first appearing on March 15, 1919,
[00:25:26.850]the Omaha Bee reporting that a black man
[00:25:29.370]had sexually assaulted a white woman.
[00:25:31.420]According to the newspaper, the 5th such attack
[00:25:34.270]in a month.
[00:25:35.880]In the summer, the stories increased.
[00:25:38.857]Getting longer, complete with lurid details.
[00:25:42.663]And all of the victims were young, white and female.
[00:25:46.810]Consider these examples.
[00:25:49.289]Bessie Kroupa, age 19, reported to be lashed
[00:25:51.380]to a tree, tied to a tree in a vacant lot
[00:25:53.740]and raped by a black man.
[00:25:55.890]Anna Glassman, age 12, tied up in her home
[00:25:58.310]and sexually assaulted by a tall black man
[00:26:01.020]missing a hand.
[00:26:02.892]According to the Bee's headline,
[00:26:05.597]"one-armed negro forces way into home".
[00:26:11.680]By late September the Omaha Bee had run stories
[00:26:14.780]about the assaults of 21 women, all white,
[00:26:17.660]except for one.
[00:26:19.120]16 of the alleged assailants were identified as black.
[00:26:23.160]Omaha's other major newspapers, the World Herald,
[00:26:25.710]then with two separate editions, two separate papers,
[00:26:28.910]so the Morning World Herald and the Evening World Herald,
[00:26:32.260]they also recorded the attack but none matched the Bee,
[00:26:36.430]in the amount of copy, the front page placement
[00:26:38.960]and all of these lurid details.
[00:26:44.460]Tom Dennison had seen his opportunity
[00:26:48.630]and he had taken it.
[00:26:52.070]The Omaha Bee was published by Victor Rosewater
[00:26:55.650]whose father, deceased by 1919 had been
[00:26:59.720]a friend and an ally of Tom Dennison's.
[00:27:03.890]And Victor Rosewater continued that relationship.
[00:27:08.043]A Young reporter who got a job with the Bee
[00:27:10.760]after he came back from military service
[00:27:12.890]in World War I, discovered the extent of this
[00:27:15.790]relationship when he spoke to his editor
[00:27:20.750]who told him to publish a statement from a local
[00:27:24.280]republican leader and prominent Omaha businessman,
[00:27:27.560]publish his statement as an article.
[00:27:30.500]Though it wasn't published as a statement,
[00:27:31.930]it was published as an article under
[00:27:33.470]this reporters byline.
[00:27:35.360]Because Dennison wanted it.
[00:27:39.680]Mr. Dennison is interested in this story,
[00:27:41.880]instructed the editor and it is the policy
[00:27:43.930]of this paper to print whatever Mr. Dennison
[00:27:46.683]and Mr. Johnson, his fellow republican,
[00:27:50.709]and the prominent businessman want.
[00:27:54.280]And what Dennison wanted in the summer of 1919
[00:27:57.140]was a narrative depicting a city where crime
[00:28:01.670]was unchecked.
[00:28:02.503]Where marauding black men were slipping through
[00:28:04.380]windows to assault defenseless white women
[00:28:06.850]and girls, where the police couldn't stop it,
[00:28:11.290]where they were helpless and where the so called
[00:28:14.090]reformers, Mayor Smith and Commissioner Ringer
[00:28:17.570]were foundering, fumbling and failed.
[00:28:24.530]Did these attacks occur though?
[00:28:30.610]They did not.
[00:28:32.820]The rank falsity is evident from several sources.
[00:28:38.370]I know this because of the investigation
[00:28:40.410]the local NAACP branch in Omaha did.
[00:28:44.330]That's how we know these attacks didn't take place.
[00:28:48.980]The NAACP found attorneys for the accused men,
[00:28:52.350]they investigated the attacks, they attended
[00:28:54.440]court hearings and they soon detected a very
[00:28:57.990]troubling pattern.
[00:29:00.990]Here's a quote from one of the NAACP branch reports
[00:29:04.230]which I found in Washington DC in the archives.
[00:29:07.037]"The victims do not, in many cases, know who their
[00:29:09.327]"assailants are."
[00:29:10.600]But the police were quickly arresting whoever
[00:29:13.900]the girls or women identified.
[00:29:21.330]Jessie Hale-Moss, the woman I mentioned earlier
[00:29:23.860]disproved beyond a doubt the allegations
[00:29:27.310]against one of the suspects which relates to the
[00:29:31.700]alleged attack on the young girl, Anna Glassman.
[00:29:35.130]Remember, the Bee had reported that a tall black man
[00:29:37.950]missing a hand had assaulted her.
[00:29:41.510]Apparently she dropped the claim about him
[00:29:43.870]missing a hand for the police were arresting
[00:29:46.810]and presenting numerous suspects to 'em
[00:29:49.170]and one has to wonder how many tall black men,
[00:29:52.620]missing a hand even in a time of many workplace
[00:29:56.060]accidents, Omaha had.
[00:29:59.040]But that wasn't the real problem.
[00:30:01.630]When she did claim later, Anna Glassman
[00:30:04.310]to see her attacker on the street, then he was
[00:30:06.510]arrested, the suspect, railroad worker had been
[00:30:10.780]repairing track 100 miles from Omaha
[00:30:13.940]at the time of the alleged attack.
[00:30:16.320]And Jesse Hale-Moss and the NAACP helped him
[00:30:19.330]prove it in court.
[00:30:20.930]She arranged for his coworkers and his foreman
[00:30:23.260]to send telegrams verifying his whereabouts
[00:30:25.890]and yet, even with that proof, the judge refused
[00:30:28.520]to accept the telegrams.
[00:30:30.130]Only after the foreman appeared in court
[00:30:32.410]with stamped time sheets did the court release the man.
[00:30:42.640]So who's committing the attacks?
[00:30:48.070]Tom Dennison's men.
[00:30:51.070]Years later, Tom Crawford, one of Dennison's
[00:30:54.190]operatives admitted that "most cases of attacks
[00:30:57.037]"were blackened faces by Dennison hoodlums
[00:30:59.677]"to cause a panic among the women for political purposes."
[00:31:03.900]Those are Crawford's words.
[00:31:05.870]That letter by the way is actually held
[00:31:07.827]right here on this campus in the state archives.
[00:31:11.550]And I would like to point out that
[00:31:13.690]the late scholar, Orville Menard who taught
[00:31:16.270]many, many years in the Political Science
[00:31:18.410]Department at the University of Nebraska-Omaha,
[00:31:21.648]he was the first to uncover all of this
[00:31:22.950]and my scholarship owes a debt to Orville Menard.
[00:31:25.779]That's how we know this.
[00:31:27.470]He found this letter buried in a collection
[00:31:30.450]where no one would think to look.
[00:31:32.800]Now, Hale-Moss, I'll just go back.
[00:31:36.077]I'm not ready for that.
[00:31:38.230]Jessie Hale-Moss and the NAACP Chapter
[00:31:40.930]in Omaha suspected this.
[00:31:43.700]And this is where we see his second front, right?
[00:31:45.970]We need the truth out here.
[00:31:47.680]She's recognizing how inflammatory
[00:31:49.660]these stories are and what they might lead to.
[00:31:51.680]As early as April she organized a NAACP delegation
[00:31:55.720]which met with Chief of Police Marshall Eberstein,
[00:31:59.250]this is the Omaha Chief of Police, and asked,
[00:32:02.247]"is it not improbably that these crimes
[00:32:04.297]"might have been committed by the members
[00:32:06.527]"of either race, with black or blackened faces?"
[00:32:09.761]Eberstein said he didn't think so.
[00:32:12.250]And yet that summer his police arrested
[00:32:14.860]a young white men who had blackened his face
[00:32:17.220]to describe, uh excuse me, to commit a crime.
[00:32:24.030]This is all a part of Dennison's plan.
[00:32:25.540]If people believe the police are not stopping
[00:32:29.600]the mass rape of women by black men,
[00:32:32.272]that could lead to an incident that would really
[00:32:35.300]discredit the reformers.
[00:32:38.080]And yet, by late September, despite report
[00:32:41.676]after report, false report after false report
[00:32:44.510]of sexual assaults, the plan wasn't working.
[00:32:48.905]Reform petitions had been circulated to try
[00:32:52.518]and recall Ed Smith, the Mayor and they were
[00:32:55.600]going nowhere.
[00:32:57.320]People were grumbling about the police,
[00:32:59.520]but they weren't doing anything about it.
[00:33:01.990]So Dennison organized his most daring frame-up.
[00:33:09.190]The one that would cost Will Brown his life.
[00:33:13.570]On Thursday, September 25th, 1919, late at night,
[00:33:18.960]a young woman named Agnes Loebeck
[00:33:20.920]was walking in South Omaha on Bancroft Street
[00:33:24.070]with a man whose name was given in the press
[00:33:27.300]as Millard Hoffman.
[00:33:34.880]They reported that, while walking home
[00:33:37.010]from the movies, a black man accosted them,
[00:33:40.690]he was brandishing a revolver.
[00:33:42.270]He robbed them and then with the pistol trained
[00:33:44.750]on Hoffman, dragged Loebeck to a ravine nearby
[00:33:47.925]and raped her.
[00:33:49.530]Then brought her back to Hoffman, ordered the terrified
[00:33:52.690]two young people to stay where they were
[00:33:54.910]for a short time and then he ran away.
[00:34:02.830]This event got a lot of press coverage.
[00:34:09.830]You see on the left, Omaha World Herald
[00:34:12.040]and then, sorry, the titles cut off at the top
[00:34:14.700]but that's the Evening World Herald,
[00:34:16.730]on the next day.
[00:34:18.600]Escort held at bay as girl assaulted.
[00:34:20.750]Negro with revolver meets young couple on way home.
[00:34:24.710]Robs young man and force him to sit near.
[00:34:28.590]Victim of attack while escort is helpless at gunpoint.
[00:34:33.130]That's the Morning World Herald
[00:34:35.670]and Evening World Herald.
[00:34:37.960]Here's the Omaha Bee on page one.
[00:34:40.950]Negro assaults young girl while male escort
[00:34:42.960]stands by powerless to aid her.
[00:34:45.460]Black beast first sticks up couple
[00:34:48.750]and takes their money and ring, then compels both
[00:34:50.630]to walk into pasture where ravishment consummated.
[00:34:53.473]Male companion being covered by gun
[00:34:56.540]in hands of girl's assailant during the attack.
[00:35:08.040]Will Brown was arrested shortly after
[00:35:10.880]the reported attack.
[00:35:14.100]And both Loebeck and Hoffman
[00:35:20.010]would say he was the man.
[00:35:23.910]But at this point, we should ask this question.
[00:35:27.600]Who was Millard Hoffman?
[00:35:30.780]It turns out, Dennison and Hoffman
[00:35:34.800]knew each other.
[00:35:36.210]They knew each other well.
[00:35:38.340]Tony Hoffman, Millard Hoffman's cousin,
[00:35:42.810]was a ward healer for Tom Dennison.
[00:35:45.660]And after Millard Hoffman graduated
[00:35:49.030]from business school, so a few years before 1919,
[00:35:52.290]his cousin Tony arranged an introduction
[00:35:54.883]to Dennison who hired Hoffman as his secretary.
[00:35:58.300]And he served in this position for a year or so.
[00:36:01.460]He pitched in during political campaigns
[00:36:04.830]and there's evidence that he voted illegally
[00:36:07.080]for Dennison's candidates.
[00:36:09.010]He was not then of age.
[00:36:11.270]And his ties to Dennison remain tight
[00:36:13.360]even after he went to work as a clerk
[00:36:16.890]for the Otis Elevator Company.
[00:36:20.010]Dennison, I believe, asked Hoffman to make
[00:36:22.940]a false accusation against Will Brown.
[00:36:26.570]And to convince Agnes Loebeck, his girlfriend
[00:36:28.910]to participate in the false charge.
[00:36:32.915]Because Will Brown did not attack those two
[00:36:35.380]on Bancroft Street.
[00:36:36.370]It didn't occur.
[00:36:38.170]He asked Hoffman, because Hoffman had a physical
[00:36:42.190]feature that helped sell the story.
[00:36:45.410]You may have noticed that the newspapers,
[00:36:47.540]all three of them emphasized that a gun was held
[00:36:51.460]on Hoffman while Agnes was allegedly assaulted.
[00:36:57.690]But the facts also said she was taken away
[00:37:00.480]which raises the question, why didn't Millard Hoffman
[00:37:03.310]do more to stop it, if something so horrific was occurring.
[00:37:07.590]The newspapers also reported that Hoffman
[00:37:10.580]was a cripple.
[00:37:12.120]And an Army intelligence report used that word as well,
[00:37:14.870]called Hoffman, "a crippled boy."
[00:37:17.823]Years later, decades later, when Orville Menard
[00:37:22.240]found Hoffman, elderly, living alone
[00:37:25.550]in the downtown Omaha hotel in the 70s,
[00:37:28.890]asked him about this.
[00:37:29.920]Hoffman was irate.
[00:37:31.020]I wasn't a cripple.
[00:37:33.090]He told Menard that he had fallen from
[00:37:36.190]a horse when he was young, broken his leg
[00:37:38.320]and one leg had grown shorter than the other,
[00:37:40.720]so he wore a shoe with an insert to even out
[00:37:44.000]his height.
[00:37:45.120]But he said he was no cripple.
[00:37:46.510]That didn't matter to Dennison.
[00:37:49.378]And I have to wonder, I have no proof of this,
[00:37:51.111]but I have to wonder if he told Hoffman,
[00:37:52.547]don't worry about what they say about you.
[00:37:54.412]You know you're not a cripple, just go with it.
[00:37:56.990]See, that sells the story, right?
[00:37:58.740]If people believe Hoffman was a cripple
[00:38:00.840]they'd have even more sympathy for the young couple
[00:38:02.910]and they don't judge the young man
[00:38:04.570]for not stopping the assault.
[00:38:06.900]It's a way of putting into highlights
[00:38:09.500]Agnes Loebeck, this young white woman's vulnerability
[00:38:13.270]and the menacing nature of her alleged attacker.
[00:38:23.690]There's other evidence to suggest a frame-up,
[00:38:27.950]a staging.
[00:38:31.420]The responses of Hoffman and Loebeck
[00:38:33.770]sound awful rehearsed.
[00:38:36.197]"Take him away," Agnes said when Will Brown
[00:38:39.460]was shown.
[00:38:40.649]"The sight of him has been haunting me
[00:38:42.230]"since he stopped me on the street
[00:38:43.880]"and dragged me into the clump of weeds."
[00:38:46.190]And Millard.
[00:38:47.023]"There's not the least bit of doubt but what
[00:38:48.997]"he is the negro that assaulted Agnes."
[00:38:55.720]I've put his given name in quotes because
[00:38:58.910]it wasn't really his given name.
[00:39:01.800]In a very weak attempt to conceal Hoffman's
[00:39:04.310]true identity, Millard was used as a pseudonym
[00:39:07.570]for Milton.
[00:39:10.158]And that's why I believe Loebeck and Hoffman
[00:39:14.130]themselves reveal the frame-up, that they were
[00:39:17.550]participating in a lie.
[00:39:19.940]Because Agnes Loebeck herself is quoted
[00:39:22.870]in the press coverage as calling Hoffman, Millard,
[00:39:26.910]not Milton.
[00:39:28.340]How did she know to call him Millard
[00:39:30.570]when she was talking to reporters?
[00:39:34.240]Coached?
[00:39:35.708]Agreeing to take part?
[00:39:40.290]It's at this point that the event takes
[00:39:43.680]a particularly malevolent and tragic turn.
[00:39:50.290]On Saturday, September 27th, police dispersed
[00:39:54.560]a mob that was forming of young white men and boys
[00:39:56.900]in South Omaha.
[00:39:59.389]And at 1:00 pm, in a school yard,
[00:40:02.029]in South Omaha, in the neighborhood of Gibson,
[00:40:04.530]the mob again formed.
[00:40:07.840]It was about 30 to 40 individuals.
[00:40:11.280]They began making the march toward the Douglas County
[00:40:15.120]Courthouse in downtown Omaha where will Brown
[00:40:18.010]was reported to be held.
[00:40:19.260]He had been arrested and charged, but because
[00:40:21.440]it was the weekend, he had not been brought
[00:40:23.760]before a grand jury for arraignment.
[00:40:26.237]He was awaiting that.
[00:40:28.217]And so this mob was marching from South Omaha
[00:40:32.089]to the courthouse to get Will Brown.
[00:40:38.620]And who led the mob?
[00:40:42.040]Milton Hoffman was leading it.
[00:40:46.180]By 4:00 this mob had greatly expanded,
[00:40:48.960]it came to the South side of the courthouse
[00:40:52.870]at 17th and Harney.
[00:40:55.130]As you can kind of see in this photograph,
[00:40:58.160]it's a large structure.
[00:40:59.190]This is the street but we can see the stone edifice
[00:41:02.100]behind it.
[00:41:03.290]Atop a hill, this multi-story building,
[00:41:06.035]fairly new, was sheep and stone.
[00:41:10.470]And the jail in which Brown was held
[00:41:12.718]was on the 4th floor, the building's highest.
[00:41:16.070]So 30 policeman were guarding the courthouse.
[00:41:19.840]So they were vastly outnumbered and there were
[00:41:22.455]also five officers posted at the South entrance.
[00:41:25.500]At first, there's this moment where it looks like
[00:41:28.120]the crowd is angry but has not yet crossed that
[00:41:31.440]crucial point where they're going to
[00:41:34.080]embark in mass violence, coordinated violence.
[00:41:38.110]They were even bantering with the policemen,
[00:41:40.700]who were all white.
[00:41:42.665]Then an auto mechanic named Jay L. Thompson
[00:41:45.160]began berating the officers.
[00:41:49.530]Telling them that they were a part of
[00:41:51.751]a broken justice system.
[00:41:53.418]When a negro does get arrested for assaulting
[00:41:54.500]a woman, all he gets is 60 days.
[00:41:57.400]Take off your badges, you cops.
[00:42:01.621]Let us get that negro.
[00:42:04.410]This is what a lot of the crowd wants.
[00:42:07.410]And the response to Thomas' pointed challenge
[00:42:11.460]pierced what had been a fragile, racial affinity
[00:42:14.470]between the all white police force and this
[00:42:16.890]all white mob.
[00:42:17.840]Basically the police were being asked,
[00:42:20.080]will you fulfill your sworn duty or will you
[00:42:22.350]stay with your race?
[00:42:23.810]And let rough justice be carried out, a lynching.
[00:42:27.000]One of the officers said this, "you are not
[00:42:29.817]"judge and jury."
[00:42:31.690]And that was all the answer the mob needed.
[00:42:34.410]They rushed forward, they overpowered police officers.
[00:42:38.990]The police officers managed to get into the building,
[00:42:41.330]they locked the doors but bricks hurdled through
[00:42:43.700]the windows.
[00:42:49.120]They hit the higher windows.
[00:42:50.470]You can see on the 3rd floor.
[00:42:53.640]Glass rained down.
[00:42:55.770]There were so many people surging forward
[00:42:57.890]that the doors gave way.
[00:43:00.250]From an upper floor, police officers
[00:43:02.180]trained fire hoses on the mob
[00:43:03.720]which temporarily forced them to retreat,
[00:43:05.900]but on the north side of the courthouse,
[00:43:07.460]another mob used a battering ram
[00:43:10.530]built from railroad ties, which they had
[00:43:12.620]taken from a nearby location and they were
[00:43:15.060]able to breach the doors.
[00:43:17.800]At this point, the police began firing
[00:43:19.580]from balconies and they scattered much of the mob,
[00:43:21.975]but at this point, a vanguard of the mob,
[00:43:25.410]many armed, were already inside the building.
[00:43:28.905]Police officers as well as Douglas County Sheriff
[00:43:32.080]Michael Clark and several of his deputies
[00:43:35.010]prepared to defend the jail.
[00:43:36.980]Will Brown was held in the jail as well as
[00:43:39.463]125 other prisoners, male and female,
[00:43:41.490]black and white.
[00:43:43.425]When the problem began, when the crowd formed
[00:43:46.280]outside the courthouse, the Mayor came
[00:43:48.400]and so did the Police Chief and J.D. Ringer.
[00:43:52.090]They were all inside the building, too.
[00:43:55.340]A gun battle ensued and the defenders had to
[00:43:58.330]retreat up the stairs to the 3rd and 4th floors.
[00:44:02.710]So they had relinquished half of this massive building
[00:44:06.560]to the mob.
[00:44:07.713]At 8:00 pm, those inside the building
[00:44:10.749]were so confident of their ability to take control
[00:44:14.639]that some of them left and looted a nearby
[00:44:17.730]gun shop and sporting goods store to obtain weapons.
[00:44:21.990]50 vigilantes, 50 members of the mob,
[00:44:25.710]most of them between the ages of 14 and 20,
[00:44:29.050]broke down the doors of these stores
[00:44:30.670]and they got rifles, revolvers, and ammunition
[00:44:33.750]and returned to the courthouse.
[00:44:35.790]Some also got gasoline and they set fire
[00:44:40.310]to the City Treasurer's Office.
[00:44:46.570]And the fire spread.
[00:44:49.835]Let me briefly go back to this photograph
[00:44:55.360]which is a good one as well.
[00:44:57.360]So we have here, the south side of the courthouse.
[00:45:01.890]You can see the broken glass, the debris.
[00:45:04.730]The sidewalk is wet, not from the rain
[00:45:06.550]but from the fire hoses that the police
[00:45:08.880]had trained down.
[00:45:09.713]And they managed to push back a lot
[00:45:11.910]of the crowd and clear the door.
[00:45:14.981]But with so many within, 40, 50,
[00:45:20.270]that's no protection.
[00:45:22.690]And I should also point out now that
[00:45:25.000]thousands of people were crowded around.
[00:45:27.680]Thousands of people came.
[00:45:29.359]Some from Council Bluffs, crossing the river
[00:45:31.600]to come see what was going on.
[00:45:33.050]So you have this massive crowd, a mob,
[00:45:35.642]but one that is mostly observing.
[00:45:38.465]And then you have this active contingent,
[00:45:40.730]what I've been calling the vanguard, these vigilantes,
[00:45:43.447]who are carrying out the looting, the shooting,
[00:45:47.557]and attempting to carry out a seizure of Will Brown
[00:45:52.674]and his lynching.
[00:46:00.840]The fire, as it spread, compelled
[00:46:04.210]the defenders, the police chief, the commissioner,
[00:46:08.326]Sheriff Clark, his deputies, to protect themselves
[00:46:12.553]and their prisoners on the rooftop.
[00:46:15.570]At this point, Mayor Smith had left the building.
[00:46:19.310]He'd come out on the street to try
[00:46:21.650]and reason with the mob, to calm them down.
[00:46:25.120]He himself was seized and almost lynched,
[00:46:28.370]a rope put around his neck.
[00:46:30.200]He was hoisted over a street car exchange post,
[00:46:32.780]but his life was saved by two white men
[00:46:36.500]who rushed to cut him down,
[00:46:38.060]but he was unconscious, severely hurt,
[00:46:41.610]and hospitalized.
[00:46:47.458]As Marshall Eberstein would later say,
[00:46:51.509]"we never thought we would get out of there alive."
[00:46:57.486]What happened next will never be known.
[00:47:01.270]We have varying accounts.
[00:47:03.871]It can be said that just as we don't know a lot
[00:47:06.380]about Will Brown's life story,
[00:47:09.450]though as Patrick so eloquently noted,
[00:47:12.813]his life was full of meaning and agency.
[00:47:15.560]Just because it's a mystery to us
[00:47:17.870]doesn't mean it wasn't a good life.
[00:47:21.830]Just as we don't know a lot about that life,
[00:47:23.620]we don't know a lot about his death
[00:47:26.490]other than the fact that it was
[00:47:28.480]unimaginably horrific and terrible.
[00:47:34.810]Sheriff Clark would later say that
[00:47:37.780]just before he was seized, Will Brown
[00:47:39.610]was panicked, and he cried out on the rooftop,
[00:47:42.527]"I'm innocent, I never did it, my God, I never did it."
[00:47:47.340]According to another account, Brown was
[00:47:49.780]calm and quiet, and he'd even helped to rescue
[00:47:53.006]five men trapped in the jail's laundry.
[00:47:58.350]We don't know which account is true
[00:48:00.150]or if even any one of them is true.
[00:48:04.210]Nor do we know exactly how Brown was seized.
[00:48:07.530]Eberstein, the police chief would later
[00:48:10.360]say he thought he saw a cadre of the mob
[00:48:13.320]rush up the stairs to the roof.
[00:48:16.350]These are Eberstein's words, "It was pitch dark,
[00:48:18.117]"and the smoke was stifling.
[00:48:20.151]"They passed us, and then a minute or two,
[00:48:22.682]"came down with the negro."
[00:48:25.160]Sheriff Clark would claim that black prisoners
[00:48:27.730]on the rooftop actually turned Brown over to the mob,
[00:48:30.513]which then, These are Clark's words, "Dragged
[00:48:33.687]"him down the stairs to the first floor
[00:48:35.937]"and out into the street."
[00:48:39.280]And some eye-witnesses claimed that Brown
[00:48:42.450]was passed through a window to a ladder
[00:48:44.400]that part of the mob had brought to the site.
[00:48:47.610]And he was taken down that way.
[00:48:51.325]What happened next is described by a young white Omahan
[00:48:55.470]named AJ Rhodes, who was at the movies
[00:48:58.590]with his friends when they came across the riot.
[00:49:01.810]They came across it just as Will Brown was seized.
[00:49:04.943]They heard cries of, we got him.
[00:49:07.270]And as Rhodes would say later, describing
[00:49:10.180]what he saw, "Will Brown was probably dead by this time."
[00:49:17.010]His words.
[00:49:18.930]Brown was taken to a light pole
[00:49:21.050]at 18th and Harney streets where he was hoisted
[00:49:24.210]by a rope, and if he wasn't dead,
[00:49:27.220]the hanging killed him, and bullets
[00:49:30.880]were poured into his body.
[00:49:33.950]As Rhodes described it, "we saw his body
[00:49:37.997]"slowly rise through the air while the mob
[00:49:40.508]"poured bullets into his lifeless body.
[00:49:41.367]"His arms hung grotesquely at his side,
[00:49:44.587]"and his limbs dangled in a most inhuman way."
[00:49:51.180]And yet, that pour was not enough for the mob.
[00:49:59.390]I think it's safe to say that many of you,
[00:50:01.700]if not all of you, have seen the infamous photograph
[00:50:04.752]taken of the Omaha riot, the one that shows
[00:50:09.623]Will Brown after his body was desecrated,
[00:50:13.280]burned on a makeshift funeral pyre
[00:50:15.540]right there in the streets.
[00:50:18.920]I'm not gonna show that photograph.
[00:50:21.330]I think everybody should see it at least once,
[00:50:26.220]but to show it tonight, I think would
[00:50:29.480]bely our purpose, undermine our purpose
[00:50:33.048]of reminding ourselves that a life was taken
[00:50:37.123]in a most horrible way for rank,
[00:50:40.212]cynical, political purposes.
[00:50:47.300]And so, that's why I choose not to show that photograph.
[00:50:53.700]I will tell you that even after Will Brown's body
[00:50:56.430]was burned, his body was dragged behind a car,
[00:51:03.400]the rope that hanged him was cut into pieces
[00:51:06.190]and sold for a dime each.
[00:51:11.110]That photograph I'm not gonna show
[00:51:13.550]also depicts proud participants in either
[00:51:17.957]the killing of Brown or proud
[00:51:20.720]participants in observing his murder.
[00:51:25.483]You look at their faces, and you see
[00:51:27.520]defiance, pride, curiosity, and excitement.
[00:51:32.570]This was common in lynching.
[00:51:34.300]One of the reasons we know so much
[00:51:36.540]about the practice of American lynching
[00:51:38.630]is because participants were proud to be seen in it.
[00:51:42.470]And that's true of what happened in Omaha.
[00:51:45.730]That photograph shows a young boy
[00:51:47.330]peeking between two men's shoulders,
[00:51:50.280]the fingers of his right hand grazing his chin.
[00:51:54.110]The Omaha World Herald found him
[00:51:56.767]50 years later.
[00:51:59.280]He was just a boy in 1919, he was an old man in 1969.
[00:52:03.720]But he described how he came to be there,
[00:52:07.600]what he saw, and the aftermath.
[00:52:10.878]"I was nauseated by the sight," Gordon X. Richmond
[00:52:14.720]would say, "And had nightmares for years afterward."
[00:52:21.710]But the nightmare was going on
[00:52:24.380]that very night for African-Americans elsewhere in Omaha.
[00:52:30.890]The lynching of Will Brown was not
[00:52:32.600]the only violence directed at African-Americans
[00:52:35.680]in Omaha.
[00:52:37.190]During the hours leading up to the seizure
[00:52:39.070]of Will Brown, many mob members had begun assaulting
[00:52:42.100]African-Americans downtown before the lynching.
[00:52:46.218]Around 5:00 PM, a group of boys and men
[00:52:48.720]attacked a solitary black man walking
[00:52:50.500]near 17th and Farnum Street.
[00:52:53.258]A white youth jumped aboard a street car
[00:52:56.080]to attack a black passenger.
[00:52:59.150]So, it was spreading.
[00:53:01.760]And the greatest fear for black residents
[00:53:03.810]of Omaha was that following the death of Will Brown,
[00:53:08.037]the mob would turn its anger and its violence
[00:53:11.700]against the community of African-Americans.
[00:53:15.880]But as African-Americans had been doing elsewhere
[00:53:18.400]in the cities swept by anti-black
[00:53:20.340]collective violence in 1919,
[00:53:22.340]they took actions to defend themselves.
[00:53:24.630]Some traveled to Council Bluffs to shelter
[00:53:26.530]with its black residents.
[00:53:28.550]And this is how we know that whites
[00:53:30.160]from Council Bluffs were coming to Omaha,
[00:53:32.131]because they reported seeing them in transit
[00:53:33.526]going West, hundreds of them.
[00:53:37.477]Those who remained in Omaha, many of them
[00:53:39.750]armed themselves for self-defense.
[00:53:42.853]One African-American man, a husband and a father
[00:53:46.350]was especially vulnerable.
[00:53:47.620]He was a taxi driver, he was on duty that night.
[00:53:51.120]And so he brought along a gun for protection.
[00:53:54.000]He was arrested, jailed, and fined
[00:53:55.970]for carrying a concealed weapon.
[00:53:58.780]A local white leader asked Reverend John Williams
[00:54:02.880]who was president of the NAACP branch, asked him
[00:54:06.640]to call upon the city's black residents
[00:54:09.520]to stay in their homes.
[00:54:11.560]And Williams said, well, staying
[00:54:13.290]in their homes is a prudent measure,
[00:54:15.090]but I want you to know this, black residents
[00:54:18.400]of Omaha have no intention of hiding
[00:54:20.481]from the mobs, and we are ready to defend ourselves
[00:54:23.480]if they come after us.
[00:54:26.950]This message penetrated to Will Brown's lynchers.
[00:54:29.840]Apparently some planned to drag Will Brown's
[00:54:33.600]corpse to 24th and Lake Streets in the center
[00:54:36.350]of Omaha's black community, but a young
[00:54:38.310]white man deterred them.
[00:54:40.097]"Those Negroes there are all armed,
[00:54:43.426]"and your life will be endangered,"
[00:54:45.330]he shouted from atop a car roof.
[00:54:49.170]And according to the Chicago Whip,
[00:54:50.710]a black newspaper, another mob abandoned
[00:54:53.460]its aim of storming the home of Police Commissioner,
[00:54:56.610]JD Ringer, remember, he's not home,
[00:54:58.780]he's caught in the court house.
[00:55:00.950]They were gonna loot and destroy his home,
[00:55:03.440]but then the leaders realize they would need
[00:55:05.310]to march through a black neighborhood
[00:55:06.760]to reach the residence.
[00:55:09.140]So, they abandoned that plan.
[00:55:18.250]Another example of the spreading violence,
[00:55:20.900]police patrol burned at 15th and Farnum Streets.
[00:55:29.640]How was order restored in Omaha?
[00:55:33.372]A call went to nearby Fort Omaha, to Lieutenant
[00:55:37.410]Colonel Jacob West who was implored,
[00:55:41.430]send troops to Omaha, the police are overwhelmed.
[00:55:45.890]But West said he couldn't do so,
[00:55:47.090]he didn't have the authority.
[00:55:49.120]Only the President, he said, can order
[00:55:52.000]the use of federal troops to deal with
[00:55:54.430]domestic disturbances.
[00:55:56.860]Incidentally, this ban on the use
[00:55:58.800]of federal troops to deal with domestic
[00:56:01.258]disturbances dated to the period
[00:56:04.180]of reconstruction after the Civil War
[00:56:06.350]when white southerners, angry at the use
[00:56:07.980]of federal troops to protect black political activity
[00:56:11.260]managed to get a law passed through Congress
[00:56:13.160]that prohibited the use of federal troops
[00:56:16.071]in this way.
[00:56:16.940]What West didn't realize was that
[00:56:19.095]the President had allowed the Secretary of War
[00:56:22.551]to delegate authority so that if there
[00:56:25.890]was a situation, a Commander felt,
[00:56:27.710]I've got to respond, they didn't need to wait.
[00:56:31.760]But West didn't take action until 10:45,
[00:56:35.840]sending two companies of troops
[00:56:37.900]from Fort Omaha to restore order.
[00:56:41.520]So, the lynching of Will Brown
[00:56:43.190]had already occurred, the destruction
[00:56:45.220]of the court house and that spreading violence
[00:56:46.810]directed against African-Americans,
[00:56:48.630]that was already underway.
[00:56:50.380]That said, the arrival of these troops
[00:56:52.300]did help bring a restoration of order.
[00:56:56.210]But there was more authority, white authority
[00:56:59.130]to come in Omaha.
[00:57:03.085]Members of the American Legion, white members
[00:57:06.290]of the American Legion, formed just after World War I
[00:57:08.790]as an organization of veterans of the great war,
[00:57:12.820]its members volunteered to patrol streets,
[00:57:17.246]enforce a curfew, carry out law enforcement duties,
[00:57:21.040]and they were welcomed to the streets to do that.
[00:57:23.990]But when black veterans made the same offer,
[00:57:27.738]they were rebuffed.
[00:57:29.910]We don't want your help.
[00:57:32.430]So, white troops from Fort Omaha,
[00:57:34.960]white veterans from the American Legion,
[00:57:37.010]and then on top of that, General Leonard Wood,
[00:57:40.530]who is in South Dakota, raced to Omaha
[00:57:43.800]on a train, brought more troops in,
[00:57:46.710]and declared partial martial law,
[00:57:49.770]even though much of the order had been restored.
[00:57:53.662]Here's where Omaha's story takes us
[00:57:57.150]into consideration of the third front,
[00:57:59.780]the fight for justice.
[00:58:01.400]We've already learned how a fight for the facts
[00:58:05.003]was going on prior to the storming
[00:58:06.850]of the court house, we learned how
[00:58:08.770]blacks were defending themselves,
[00:58:11.100]what about the fight for justice?
[00:58:12.840]Omaha stands out in 1919, the year
[00:58:15.010]of racial violence, because there was a concerted
[00:58:17.080]effort to bring white rioters to court
[00:58:20.235]to answer for their crimes.
[00:58:23.300]No other city attempted to bring
[00:58:25.900]white rioters to court more than Omaha did.
[00:58:30.159]And General Leonard Wood played a role in this.
[00:58:32.550]Because he had declared partial martial law,
[00:58:34.560]he was able to detain suspects
[00:58:36.930]without charging them with anything.
[00:58:39.340]And the Douglas County Prosecutor,
[00:58:41.410]Abel Shotwell, welcomed this, because
[00:58:43.730]then he didn't have to file charges.
[00:58:45.540]So, soon, the jails swelled with individuals
[00:58:49.260]who had been suspected of rioting.
[00:58:52.670]Many of them were identified by the photos
[00:58:55.160]taken by the press, including that one
[00:58:57.436]of the corpse of Will Brown.
[00:59:01.170]October one, 75 suspected rioters in jail.
[00:59:05.049]By October 18th, more than 150.
[00:59:08.201]And all told, 189 were arrested.
[00:59:13.010]A typical profile tells us this,
[00:59:15.130]they were white, they were male,
[00:59:17.220]they were young, and they were working class,
[00:59:20.779]and they were local.
[00:59:22.790]Only 12 of the arrested suspects were from out of town.
[00:59:28.550]12 black men were also arrested,
[00:59:30.640]five for carrying weapons, including
[00:59:32.540]that taxi driver I mentioned.
[00:59:35.900]The goal, following the arrest, was to bring
[00:59:39.432]charges, and then prosecutions and convictions
[00:59:41.670]of those that had incited the riot,
[00:59:44.260]those who had lit the fire
[00:59:45.800]that gutted the court house, the looters,
[00:59:49.463]and also the lynchers of Will Brown,
[00:59:54.490]and Mayor Smith's assailants.
[00:59:58.010]11 white men were arrested for killing Will Brown.
[01:00:04.380]No other arrests of this level were done
[01:00:06.390]in 1919 of whites who killed blacks in those 10
[01:00:10.170]cities or in the nearly 100 lynchings that occurred.
[01:00:13.680]They were charged with murder
[01:00:14.820]or the conspiracy to commit murder.
[01:00:18.110]The evidence shows us that many were identified
[01:00:20.410]because they were proud of what they had done.
[01:00:23.070]CP Gurnant told friends he had helped kill Brown.
[01:00:26.950]LJ Barringer, a railroad brakeman,
[01:00:29.340]bragged about tightening the knot
[01:00:32.160]on Smith's neck, so he was actually charged
[01:00:35.310]with Smith's assailant, but whether it was
[01:00:38.470]someone being charged with trying
[01:00:40.110]to kill Smith or killing Will Brown,
[01:00:42.910]they were likely caught because
[01:00:44.060]they had bragged about it.
[01:00:45.880]As for the rioters, they included
[01:00:47.510]a 12 year old boy who was locked up
[01:00:49.970]with all the adult men.
[01:00:51.748]His name was Saul Francis.
[01:00:53.500]He had scaled the walls on a fireman's ladder
[01:00:57.170]and shouted for Brown's lynching,
[01:01:00.540]so he was a prominent figure.
[01:01:03.413]The Douglas County attorney, Abel Shotwell,
[01:01:06.566]convened a grand jury.
[01:01:08.250]There were 16 members, they were all male,
[01:01:10.420]and they were all white, most were
[01:01:12.360]from working class or lower middle class
[01:01:14.280]backgrounds, they sold cars, they worked
[01:01:16.010]on the railroads, but two were company presidents.
[01:01:19.430]So, prominent members of the community.
[01:01:22.070]They started meeting on October 10th,
[01:01:24.430]so just about two weeks after Will Brown
[01:01:27.200]was murdered, and by mid-November, they had
[01:01:30.060]heard 535 witnesses, and delivered 120 indictments.
[01:01:35.076]I've looked at all of the attempted
[01:01:38.200]jury proceedings and arrests and attempted
[01:01:41.110]prosecutions for white rioters in 1919,
[01:01:43.750]no city comes close to bringing these many indictments,
[01:01:47.810]these many charges.
[01:01:49.638]But that noted, we also have to be aware of this.
[01:01:54.357]Most of the indictments were for minor crimes.
[01:01:58.147]The jury found itself frustrated.
[01:02:03.160]They had interviewed 535 witnesses,
[01:02:07.230]and yet, from the jury report, "We have been unable
[01:02:11.677]"to learn of any eye-witnesses who could
[01:02:13.507]"identify the persons who killed William Brown."
[01:02:20.240]So, even though they had those 11 arrests,
[01:02:23.100]they couldn't get any witnesses who say,
[01:02:24.560]yes, you got the right guy.
[01:02:28.440]A code of silence had also fallen over
[01:02:31.883]those charged with arson and looting,
[01:02:34.370]with more and more witnesses reluctant
[01:02:36.363]to say, yes, I saw him with a torch, with a gun,
[01:02:40.796]with gasoline.
[01:02:42.505]Still, Shotwell was confident he could get
[01:02:45.820]a conviction of one Ralph Snyder,
[01:02:48.570]who was charged with lynching Will Brown.
[01:02:51.949]Snyder's defense attorney took a novel approach
[01:02:55.964]at trial.
[01:02:58.490]Snyder claimed he had warned the mob
[01:03:02.020]not to drag the corpse of Will Brown
[01:03:04.950]back to Omaha's black community, 14th and Lake Streets.
[01:03:09.940]So, Ralph Snyder's the guy I mentioned earlier
[01:03:12.207]who was warning the mob not to go.
[01:03:14.464]He and his attorney used that as evidence
[01:03:18.381]that he was trying to keep the peace,
[01:03:21.598]rather than taking part, he was trying
[01:03:24.740]to calm things down.
[01:03:27.470]He was acquitted.
[01:03:31.240]Of the other 10 suspects charged
[01:03:32.980]with Brown's murder, only one was found guilty,
[01:03:37.120]A teenager named Sam Novak, 17,
[01:03:40.576]who was committed to juvenile detention
[01:03:42.840]to the age of 21.
[01:03:47.250]Among the charges, the indictments
[01:03:49.721]against rioters, less than two dozen pled guilty
[01:03:51.110]to minor charges and paid fines
[01:03:53.180]or served no more than three months in jail.
[01:03:58.564]So, despite this effort, despite so many
[01:04:02.240]witnesses, a determined grand jury,
[01:04:04.960]a dedicated prosecutor, very little to show for it.
[01:04:11.000]Not one of the suspects was named
[01:04:12.920]either Millard or Milton Hoffman.
[01:04:16.250]In the melee in Omaha following the lynching
[01:04:19.530]and the destruction of the courthouse,
[01:04:21.410]he quietly slipped away to Denver
[01:04:23.650]at Dennison's urging, and he lived there
[01:04:25.710]for seven years, then came back
[01:04:27.980]to Omaha, undetected.
[01:04:30.990]He and Lobeck married.
[01:04:34.700]As for Dennison, he got his way.
[01:04:38.770]In the next election, Mayor Smith
[01:04:42.080]and the reformers were voted out,
[01:04:44.910]and Dennison was able to resume
[01:04:47.140]at the previously high levels,
[01:04:49.010]his vice operations in the third ward,
[01:04:51.314]and he lived to be 75.
[01:04:58.780]Turning to the significance of Omaha
[01:05:03.770]and its place in the pattern of 1919,
[01:05:07.748]in closing, let me say the following,
[01:05:11.046]and then we'll have lots of time for questions
[01:05:13.270]and comments.
[01:05:16.140]First, I would like to say that
[01:05:17.960]as a historian who spent a lot of time
[01:05:20.690]studying, and thinking about, and writing about,
[01:05:23.240]and teaching about this very difficult period
[01:05:25.430]in U.S. history, I am pleased to see Omaha
[01:05:29.950]grappling with this episode from its past,
[01:05:34.170]and there has been programming,
[01:05:36.476]there's programming to take place this weekend,
[01:05:38.520]the commemoration of Will Brown's grave,
[01:05:41.050]it's been properly marked.
[01:05:42.370]he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave,
[01:05:45.116]forgotten for decades, until a marker
[01:05:48.350]was placed there a few years ago.
[01:05:51.390]So, it's good to see Omaha among the 10 cities
[01:05:54.900]that dealt with this violence directed
[01:05:58.160]at African-American 100 years ago,
[01:06:00.580]teaching about it, trying to learn about it,
[01:06:02.990]thinking about its legacies, both good and bad.
[01:06:06.639]Other cities are doing the same,
[01:06:09.024]Chicago, for example.
[01:06:11.504]Some are not, but let's note that Omaha is.
[01:06:18.927]Another thing I would note about Omaha's episode
[01:06:23.200]and how it fits into this larger pattern,
[01:06:26.556]it wasn't always the case that people
[01:06:29.060]wanted to learn from this episode.
[01:06:31.910]In its aftermath and for decades afterward,
[01:06:35.670]this was not something taught,
[01:06:39.070]it was not something brought up.
[01:06:42.573]When it was, it was dismissed rather quickly.
[01:06:47.842]I heard about the lynching of Will Brown
[01:06:50.560]when I was an undergraduate at Creighton,
[01:06:52.719]but it was something that mentioned in passing,
[01:06:54.620]and it wasn't taught.
[01:06:56.060]That's not a knock against, the history education
[01:06:57.810]I got there was great, but it just wasn't addressed.
[01:07:03.020]And Omaha was not unique in that in the 1980s and 90's,
[01:07:07.530]in the period between 1919 and that time.
[01:07:12.017]Chicago, for example, very little said about it.
[01:07:16.460]The first book on Chicago's riot appeared
[01:07:21.470]in the 1960s.
[01:07:25.750]Decades after this event, the violence had occurred.
[01:07:31.076]The other thing I'd like to note,
[01:07:34.020]and this is where Omaha fits
[01:07:35.460]into the national pattern.
[01:07:37.250]We can say that Omaha, Chicago, Washington,
[01:07:40.140]the nation, the nation, faced a choice
[01:07:43.760]after this intense year of violence,
[01:07:47.200]and African-American resistance to it.
[01:07:50.690]Would cities that had been consumed
[01:07:53.770]by this violence, would they look
[01:07:55.230]hard and long at the causes
[01:07:57.646]and honestly ask themselves, what can we do
[01:08:00.130]to prevent this from happening again?
[01:08:02.590]And pursue ways that would finally,
[01:08:05.922]long overdue, give African-Americans
[01:08:08.560]the same rights and opportunities
[01:08:10.130]as white Americans?
[01:08:11.940]Chicago tried, Chicago tried.
[01:08:15.430]A commission was formed, the Chicago Commission
[01:08:17.350]on Race Relation, with a membership of 12,
[01:08:19.670]six black, six white.
[01:08:21.830]Sociologists gathered data,
[01:08:24.120]witnessed were interviewed, the report
[01:08:26.200]is 600 pages long, and in it, the Chicago
[01:08:30.260]Commission on Race Relation found
[01:08:32.460]that housing segregation was a cause
[01:08:35.460]of the tensions and should be ended.
[01:08:39.110]That was a choice Chicago had,
[01:08:40.890]and Chicago, as many scholars
[01:08:44.070]who are experts on the city and its histories
[01:08:46.610]are telling us this year during
[01:08:48.912]the commemoration of the Red Summer,
[01:08:50.720]Chicago made this decision,
[01:08:53.450]we will find ways short of violence
[01:08:56.460]to maintain housing segregation.
[01:08:59.780]Because we don't want a riot like that again,
[01:09:03.202]but we don't want integrated neighborhoods.
[01:09:07.284]Is it any coincidence that Chicago
[01:09:10.010]is, today, one of the most segregated
[01:09:11.840]cities in the country?
[01:09:13.890]It is not, because those decisions,
[01:09:16.990]real-estate practices begun in the 1920s,
[01:09:20.610]building off that base of exclusion
[01:09:22.380]established in the 1910s during the great migration.
[01:09:24.510]They continue, they get support from
[01:09:27.075]the federal government, through redlining,
[01:09:30.170]through discriminatory practices,
[01:09:31.970]even through the GI bill.
[01:09:34.660]And so, that segregation hardens.
[01:09:37.250]And I don't mean to single out Chicago,
[01:09:39.820]because it occurred in other cities as well,
[01:09:42.942]in Omaha.
[01:09:48.120]In Washington DC.
[01:09:51.610]Little attempt to deal with the outcome.
[01:09:56.037]Finally, I'd like to note one other similarity
[01:10:00.130]to Omaha's experience and the experience
[01:10:03.510]of the nation in 1919.
[01:10:07.070]I'd like to build off this great concept
[01:10:11.170]that the lawyer and activist, Bryan Stevenson
[01:10:14.200]has put forward.
[01:10:15.033]if you read his memoir, Just Mercy,
[01:10:17.650]you know that his basic approach
[01:10:20.280]to justice is this, that all of us
[01:10:22.806]are better and bigger than the worst
[01:10:25.350]thing we've ever done.
[01:10:27.956]And in his time as a lawyer,
[01:10:29.040]he's defended people who have done
[01:10:30.930]terrible things, he's defended people
[01:10:32.670]who were charged with terrible things
[01:10:34.060]and were innocent.
[01:10:36.110]But that notion that we are all bigger
[01:10:37.893]and better than the worst thing ever done,
[01:10:40.760]I think that's one way to look at 1919.
[01:10:44.694]That it was a very difficult, horrible time,
[01:10:48.724]and African-Americans bore the brunt
[01:10:52.200]of unchecked violence that often had
[01:10:54.620]support from authorities, as previously
[01:10:57.600]explained, and the legacy, the aftermath
[01:11:00.886]has been a difficult one, one in which
[01:11:03.530]wrong turns were taken, but it doesn't mean
[01:11:06.500]it's too late to rectify that legacy or deal with
[01:11:10.930]what 1919, even 100 years later, has left with us.
[01:11:17.630]I have to tell you that it was often difficult
[01:11:19.990]to research this topic, it was discouraging
[01:11:23.160]and demoralizing, it was hard to have faith
[01:11:25.870]in humanity sometimes, reading about
[01:11:28.840]all of these lynchings and killings and attacks,
[01:11:33.236]bodies dragged through streets.
[01:11:37.800]But it was also encouraging to me
[01:11:42.920]by focusing on black resistance and thinking,
[01:11:45.140]for all that was happening, here were
[01:11:46.880]people saying, well, we're gonna fight,
[01:11:49.090]and we're gonna end this.
[01:11:51.459]And I like to think that spirit
[01:11:52.910]of change remains with us still today.
[01:11:57.492]For the challenges and problems we face
[01:11:59.780]as a nation along with all the things
[01:12:01.810]that we should justly be proud of.
[01:12:03.666]So, thank you very much for your time
[01:12:06.640]and attention tonight.
[01:12:08.163]I'm happy to ask question, hear comments,
[01:12:13.870]turn it over to you.
[01:12:16.342](audience applauding)
[01:12:26.080]I just want to say really quickly,
[01:12:27.369]Ethnic Studies students should have signed up
[01:12:28.690]with an attendee or me.
[01:12:30.559]But make sure to do that before you leave.
[01:12:35.360]So, we're happy to take questions or comments.
[01:12:38.550]If you want to do that, I need to give you
[01:12:41.320]the microphone, because we're live-streaming it,
[01:12:43.880]and this microphone, it's not playing in here,
[01:12:45.880]but it's the way the audio gets on the tape too,
[01:12:49.400]so I'll hand you the mic, and if you can
[01:12:51.470]talk into the mic.
[01:12:53.930]Any thoughts or comments or questions?
[01:12:56.020]Dr. Drayer?
[01:12:59.200]Thank you so much for that very informative,
[01:13:02.410]for your very informative talk.
[01:13:04.030]Thank you, thank you.
[01:13:04.890]You're quite welcome.
[01:13:05.723]I just studied Ida B. Wells
[01:13:08.775]and her crusade for justice, and I had
[01:13:12.211]to look at without, I saw the exhibit
[01:13:17.850]in Cincinnati of the postcards,
[01:13:21.750]which brings me to my question.
[01:13:23.660]Is there any research done on the photographers
[01:13:28.804]who took these pictures?
[01:13:30.360]Because they were standing by
[01:13:32.100]and they would canvas the newspapers,
[01:13:35.850]because sometimes the lynching's would be
[01:13:40.950]advertised in newspapers as well as
[01:13:43.370]through word of mouth.
[01:13:44.670]So, has there been any research on that?
[01:13:49.360]That is an excellent question.
[01:13:50.193]On them, on them.
[01:13:51.390]I do not know the, sorry, go ahead.
[01:13:52.920]Because they made possible
[01:13:55.316]for the postcards to be sold
[01:13:57.763]in the five and dime stores like Woolworth,
[01:13:59.230]so they're just as complicit.
[01:14:02.010]They are, they are.
[01:14:03.440]That is a great questions, and I don't know
[01:14:05.170]if any in-depth research has been done
[01:14:07.870]on photographers who, becoming aware of a lynching,
[01:14:12.370]because as you know, a lot of times
[01:14:13.590]they were announced, that's why those
[01:14:15.540]crowds are so big.
[01:14:16.402]They go there for the express purposes
[01:14:17.300]of profiting from the imagery.
[01:14:20.344]We do know that the studios
[01:14:24.210]that developed the work, so if we have
[01:14:26.090]photographers who are working
[01:14:28.263]for specific studios, they put their names
[01:14:29.680]on those postcards, so it was advertising
[01:14:32.420]for them.
[01:14:33.290]So, there definitely is evidence
[01:14:35.100]of this conscious decision,
[01:14:36.340]and I don't know if someone has studied the provenance
[01:14:40.980]to find out the patterns.
[01:14:43.060]Because this would be really, really important
[01:14:46.320]to further understand this part of American history.
[01:14:50.437]Yes, thank you.
[01:14:54.890]I just want to thank you for your talk,
[01:14:57.240]and I just wanted to also thank you
[01:14:59.850]for pointing out and giving that broad context
[01:15:02.640]before you went into the actual event
[01:15:05.130]of the new negro, the kind of
[01:15:08.040]culmination of black agency, and no longer
[01:15:12.080]feeling deferential to white men
[01:15:14.540]just by virtue of being black.
[01:15:17.310]And I just wanted to mention that it was
[01:15:19.650]also important, what you said about Omaha
[01:15:22.650]being different from most places
[01:15:25.060]and trying to have some type of reconciliation
[01:15:27.780]efforts and some type of movement
[01:15:30.830]to remember this dark period.
[01:15:34.980]I'm from North Carolina, and there are
[01:15:37.630]three counties to the West,
[01:15:39.300]one county called Anson County,
[01:15:41.991]in 1958, two black boys were taken
[01:15:46.350]by the police, dragged out of their house
[01:15:48.630]because a white little girl had gone home
[01:15:51.430]and said, I saw such and such on the playground,
[01:15:54.540]and I gave one of them a kiss.
[01:15:56.400]The two boys' mother had been their housekeeper
[01:16:00.280]years back.
[01:16:01.440]The little white girl remembered the boys
[01:16:03.310]as playmates, she gave him a kiss.
[01:16:05.280]She did not know that when she went home
[01:16:07.340]and told her mother that, her mother
[01:16:08.780]would go into a rage.
[01:16:10.280]Her mother went into a rage,
[01:16:11.780]told the police, the boys were dragged
[01:16:14.220]out of the house, tortured for a week,
[01:16:16.713]almost sent to a reform school until the age
[01:16:20.024]of 21, they were like nine and seven at the time
[01:16:21.816]until activists in Europe, who brought attention
[01:16:26.120]to the case, did so much activism and protest,
[01:16:29.840]that the boys were released.
[01:16:31.740]But the state of North Carolina never
[01:16:34.090]said sorry for this, and the two black men,
[01:16:37.500]they're still alive, but their lives
[01:16:39.420]are completely messed up.
[01:16:41.070]They, as a result of what happened,
[01:16:43.400]they had limited opportunities,
[01:16:45.460]plus it was the 1950s, and I think it's
[01:16:48.620]important, just like you mentioned, the new negro
[01:16:51.480]and the agency and the World War I,
[01:16:53.654]Brown versus board of education,
[01:16:56.010]North Carolina, the entrenched social color line
[01:16:59.840]of North Carolina.
[01:17:01.170]So, yeah, when you talk about these events,
[01:17:03.860]these phenomena, just that larger scale,
[01:17:06.470]broader thing to look at, that's so important,
[01:17:09.510]so, thank you.
[01:17:10.343]Well, thank you, you make so many great connections
[01:17:12.920]that if I may just build off those
[01:17:14.295]great connections.
[01:17:15.360]So, Brown V board, you know, we teachers of history,
[01:17:18.860]we all teach that and we learn it in school,
[01:17:21.060]like, this is a landmark achievement
[01:17:22.400]for the country, but here we are,
[01:17:24.536]more than half, well over a half century since it,
[01:17:27.530]and our schools are as segregated
[01:17:29.380]as they were then.
[01:17:30.920]I mean, Northern schools are more segregated
[01:17:32.960]now than Southern schools a few years after Brown.
[01:17:37.380]Why is that?
[01:17:38.213]It's because of residential pattern.
[01:17:39.720]So, to connect back to 1919, if decisions
[01:17:41.889]are made, well, this is how we'll prevent
[01:17:44.260]riots from happening, but this is how
[01:17:45.560]we'll also maintain a color line.
[01:17:47.510]Well, then even having something like Brown V board
[01:17:49.890]is not going to change things.
[01:17:52.750]And there's a lot of continuity too,
[01:17:54.810]in that particular episode you mentioned.
[01:17:56.990]I mean, it reminds us that it's just not enough
[01:18:00.182]to note and to commemorate those who died.
[01:18:04.760]Their families were shattered.
[01:18:07.800]Phillips County, Arkansas is another locality
[01:18:11.410]that is reckoning with 1919.
[01:18:14.183]And that's where 237 African-Americans
[01:18:18.150]were massacred.
[01:18:19.020]Thing of the tragedy, right?
[01:18:22.130]I mean, all those families that lost members.
[01:18:24.030]The wealth lost.
[01:18:25.610]You mentioned Ida B. Wells.
[01:18:27.130]She has a pamphlet, it's available online.
[01:18:29.790]She cataloged all the wealth
[01:18:32.120]that was taken from the sharecroppers,
[01:18:34.270]because the attacks on sharecroppers
[01:18:36.320]and the massacre of African-Americans
[01:18:37.790]was about keeping that debt peonage system in place,
[01:18:40.930]the sharecropping that was slavery by another name.
[01:18:44.970]So, when a family loses its land in 1919,
[01:18:48.710]how does that limit the opportunities
[01:18:52.132]for the children and the grand-children?
[01:18:55.500]I mean, I think we can all look in our own lives
[01:18:57.140]and think about the opportunities we've had.
[01:18:59.750]However much hard work we've done to earn what we have,
[01:19:03.290]how much did our family situation make that possible?
[01:19:06.140]So, then flip that, what about those families
[01:19:09.470]that had lives taken, members lost,
[01:19:12.840]wealth robbed in 1919 or in other incidents as well?
[01:19:20.160]Yeah, I just wanted to mention,
[01:19:21.380]in the kissing case, the two young boys
[01:19:24.439]had names too, Fuzzy Simpson, and Hanover Thompson,
[01:19:28.726]they were, again, human beings with lives
[01:19:32.040]and agency, and it's important to remember them.
[01:19:34.806]I would also just direct people to the Omaha
[01:19:36.180]World Herald, to go online.
[01:19:37.740]The city council and the county commission
[01:19:40.730]passed a resolution this week
[01:19:43.110]in honor of this commemoration,
[01:19:45.030]acknowledging it, taking responsibility,
[01:19:47.193]at least rhetorically, rededicating
[01:19:49.630]itself to combating what is still today
[01:19:53.690]shameful and gross racial inequality,
[01:19:56.420]gross meaning yawning and massive racial
[01:19:59.530]inequality in the state's largest city.
[01:20:02.912]But there's a story on it just yesterday,
[01:20:06.430]and you can read that and judge for yourself
[01:20:08.700]what you think about that.
[01:20:09.660]But there's at least that rhetorical acknowledgement.
[01:20:13.440]Yeah, thank you, Patrick, for mentioning that,
[01:20:15.153]because I had wanted to point that out.
[01:20:17.660]Yeah, I actually have a couple of questions,
[01:20:19.930]but I'm trying to understand, because racial
[01:20:22.170]hoaxes are all too common, Susan Smith--
[01:20:25.838]Yes.
[01:20:26.790]You know, who put her two children
[01:20:29.000]in a truck and let it roll
[01:20:30.500]into a river and blamed it on a black person,
[01:20:32.960]that was easily believed.
[01:20:34.520]Although, my mom was saying, what black man's
[01:20:36.570]gonna drive around--
[01:20:38.227](audience member mumbling)
[01:20:39.430]In a pickup truck with two white kids,
[01:20:42.170]you know, that's what my mom would say.
[01:20:43.210]But I'm trying to get the, do you have
[01:20:47.120](mumbles) of how many people actually believe
[01:20:49.920]when this story was told about this person,
[01:20:53.640]I'm trying to imagine holding a gun on someone
[01:20:56.335]while, you know.
[01:20:59.610]So, that's questions number one, do people
[01:21:03.150]believe it, is there any sense that people
[01:21:06.200]actually believe it, and to what extent
[01:21:07.820]they didn't care, it didn't matter if it were true?
[01:21:10.170]And the second question is, oh shoot,
[01:21:13.610]I just lost my frame of thought.
[01:21:15.360]Oh, the second question is, I heard
[01:21:17.413]that Agnes, I forget her last name.
[01:21:18.722]Lobeck.
[01:21:19.555]Yeah, she actually admitted that it never happened,
[01:21:21.823]right, or is that the case?
[01:21:24.450]I don't think she ever admitted it.
[01:21:27.580]I'm not sure if she did or not.
[01:21:30.050]I'm trying to think about what Orville Menard wrote.
[01:21:33.040]He had gone and interviewed
[01:21:35.070]part of her family, and I don't
[01:21:37.480]think the interview went well.
[01:21:38.700]So, I don't know if she ever retracted her story.
[01:21:43.240]To answer your great first question,
[01:21:45.750]the other great question as well.
[01:21:47.530]I think it was widely believed.
[01:21:49.030]I think that a lot of white Omahans
[01:21:51.990]were primed to believe another attack
[01:21:54.910]even if the facts reported made it suspect
[01:21:59.840]or implausible.
[01:22:02.167]And again, just to emphasize this point,
[01:22:04.930]I think presenting Milton Hoffman as a cripple
[01:22:08.554]was essential, because then people could believe,
[01:22:10.847]oh, he really couldn't do anything on his own.
[01:22:14.240]And I think that shows intentionality
[01:22:16.590]on Dennison's part.
[01:22:17.570]He's like, you know, we're gonna really gin this up,
[01:22:22.110]it's, you know, dragged to a ravine.
[01:22:25.463]And the Bee even said, what they call the ravishment.
[01:22:28.870]So, they're using this language
[01:22:31.070]to really emphasize the vulnerability,
[01:22:33.410]and I think his intentionality as well,
[01:22:35.247]you know, this will be believable
[01:22:37.310]because of his handicap.
[01:22:40.047][Female Audience Member] Well, even with Emmett Till,
[01:22:42.479]I mean, the woman who said he whistled at her,
[01:22:45.406]that was a hoax, she came back
[01:22:47.562]and said he never did it.
[01:22:49.886][Female Audience Member] Yeah, Carolyn Bryant.
[01:22:53.603]Yeah, I mean, we have lots of retractions
[01:22:57.131]that show the hoaxes, so for every one
[01:23:00.440]where we're uncertain.
[01:23:02.302][Female Questioner] Thank you very much,
[01:23:03.883]this was fascinating.
[01:23:05.497]And I wanted to point out some thoughts
[01:23:08.060]I had while listening to your talk.
[01:23:10.378]For example, I remember when I moved to Nebraska
[01:23:14.010]moved great descent, and when I moved
[01:23:16.240]to Nebraska, I came across a study
[01:23:18.610]about the anti-Greek riots in Omaha in 1909.
[01:23:21.900]Yes.
[01:23:22.733][Female Questioner] And since that time,
[01:23:24.615]I became fascinated about the culture
[01:23:26.470]that led to these anti-immigrant
[01:23:29.360]actions and eventually, you know,
[01:23:31.250]to the broader pattern that you described.
[01:23:34.280]So, I just wondered, if those things
[01:23:37.610]are recurrent.
[01:23:38.660]I mean, it was, again, presumably annoying
[01:23:42.955]a woman, it did not lead to a lynching,
[01:23:48.170]but it led to a three day riot
[01:23:50.520]that really savaged South Omaha,
[01:23:53.200]it really uprooted the Greek community
[01:23:55.750]that was there at the time, that was part
[01:23:58.370]of the slaughterhouses, as you said.
[01:24:01.360]So, I see all these things in early Omaha history,
[01:24:05.200]and I just wonder if you could elaborate,
[01:24:07.860]if you had come across similar incidents.
[01:24:11.180]Sure.
[01:24:12.013]So, another example like that occurred
[01:24:14.123]in the 1890s in New Orleans where
[01:24:17.110]nine or so Italian immigrants were lynched.
[01:24:20.980]And throughout my talk, I spoke of whites and blacks,
[01:24:24.270]and that's highly reductionist, and your
[01:24:28.180]great question allows me to make this point,
[01:24:30.930]whiteness is not fixed.
[01:24:33.490]So, the people of Omaha, the people of Nebraska,
[01:24:37.130]and the people of America in 1909 and 1919,
[01:24:40.600]their notions of whiteness were different
[01:24:42.480]than what you see today.
[01:24:44.860]And to put it bluntly, Italians and Greeks
[01:24:47.700]were not yet white.
[01:24:49.940]They were regarded as inferior racial stocks.
[01:24:52.510]If you look at the work of Madison Grant,
[01:24:56.910]the passing of the great white race.
[01:24:58.860]So, these eugenicists and these white supremacists
[01:25:01.853]are excluding lots of European ethnics
[01:25:05.130]from the definition of whiteness.
[01:25:07.650]There was a Klan leader in the 1920s,
[01:25:09.560]Hiram Evans, he gave interviews
[01:25:12.450]to the North American Review,
[01:25:13.910]which was equivalent to Harper's
[01:25:16.450]or The Atlantic today.
[01:25:18.480]And he speaks freely of the Klan's notion
[01:25:22.170]of proper whiteness.
[01:25:23.010]And he uses code words like pioneer
[01:25:25.350]and alpine and Nordic, so Anglo-Saxon
[01:25:29.448]was a common term as well.
[01:25:31.750]So, essentially, people of Northern European
[01:25:36.768]descent or British descent were considered white.
[01:25:43.170]Now, we know the sides behind it to be junk,
[01:25:46.100]it was widely believed.
[01:25:47.660]And there's also a terrible irony in the use of the word
[01:25:49.970]pioneer to describe these individuals.
[01:25:52.150]If you look at a map of the 13 British colonies
[01:25:55.940]in North America in 1775, an ethnic map,
[01:25:59.050]guess what the single biggest ethnicity
[01:26:01.230]in those colonies is as a whole.
[01:26:04.396]It's not Native Americans, they were excluded
[01:26:08.510]from the county, but yes, they were
[01:26:11.350]fully there, so thank you for pointing that out.
[01:26:15.678]But in the count of colonists,
[01:26:18.760]I should say.
[01:26:21.770]We might think, yes, it's people of African descent.
[01:26:24.860]It's not British, it's not the so-called Anglo-Saxons.
[01:26:28.010]It's people of African descent, are the single
[01:26:30.950]biggest ethnicity in the North American
[01:26:33.820]colonies, the British North American colonies.
[01:26:35.951]So, they're pioneers too,
[01:26:37.030]but not in the eyes of the Klan.
[01:26:40.237]Does that help illuminate.
[01:26:42.310][Female Questioner] Yes.
[01:26:43.143]Okay.
[01:26:43.976][Female Questioner] Do we have other events,
[01:26:45.795]singular, riots that unfolded in '09?
[01:26:50.720]No, I don't know of any.
[01:26:58.133]Well, thank you very much,
[01:27:00.020]sir, for your talk.
[01:27:00.934]I'm curios about the larger context
[01:27:02.610]of these other nine cities that you looked
[01:27:04.240]at for your work.
[01:27:05.541]Yes.
[01:27:06.374]And I'm wondering if you see
[01:27:08.199]a similar pattern of these sort of criminal
[01:27:10.930]or political ulterior motives or motivations
[01:27:13.490]behind the fomenting of the riots.
[01:27:15.720]And I wonder if that's sort of unique
[01:27:18.630]to the case of Omaha, or if we see that
[01:27:21.595]similar sorts of behavior and sorts
[01:27:24.410]of ulterior motives behind racial riots elsewhere.
[01:27:28.210]Thank you, that's a great question.
[01:27:29.560]So, no city of the 10 in 1919 matches
[01:27:33.508]Omaha as cynical political motives
[01:27:36.580]being a primary factor, but it is present
[01:27:40.030]in other episodes of violence.
[01:27:42.170]In Chicago, for example, African-American residents
[01:27:46.130]were reliable republican voters,
[01:27:49.560]and the Mayor at the time, Ed Kelley,
[01:27:52.370]was republican, and he recognized
[01:27:55.000]the importance of black voters.
[01:27:59.160]Just after the war when he appeared at the Chicago
[01:28:02.010]Stadium to welcome back the 370th infantry,
[01:28:06.720]93rd division, which was all black and had
[01:28:08.940]all black officers.
[01:28:09.790]They were a segregated national guard unit
[01:28:11.800]that had been nationalized and sent to France,
[01:28:13.640]distinguished themselves in combat.
[01:28:16.870]So, many of the gangs attacking
[01:28:19.220]African-Americans had democratic politician sponsors.
[01:28:23.760]One of the most notorious gangs
[01:28:25.710]was known as Reagan's Cults, they were sponsored
[01:28:28.190]by Cook County commissioner, Frank Reagan.
[01:28:30.500]So, it's a secondary motive.
[01:28:32.606]The primary motive is residential color line,
[01:28:35.838]and terrorizing blacks, and driving them
[01:28:39.830]from packing house jobs and other places,
[01:28:43.370]but it also serves the purpose
[01:28:44.870]of suppressing the black vote
[01:28:46.810]and hurting republicans at the benefit of democrats.
[01:28:51.780]So, that's one example of political motive.
[01:28:56.090]We're just about out of time.
[01:28:56.923]We'll have you be the last question or comment.
[01:29:02.204][Male Audience Member] Thank you.
[01:29:03.037]So, history has its ability to repeat itself,
[01:29:08.020]and I'm wondering if you might
[01:29:09.760]reflect on this history in the 10 cities,
[01:29:12.848]and what we're seeing currently with
[01:29:16.641]teenage African-American boys and girls
[01:29:20.160]who are being murdered, and what I hear from
[01:29:22.910]the African-American community is,
[01:29:24.770]it's all the same stream.
[01:29:29.928]I think there are a lot of parallels.
[01:29:32.000]Let me draw one example out.
[01:29:34.550]One of the responses to black militancy
[01:29:37.540]in 1919, to this recognition that
[01:29:40.870]African-Americans were exercising their
[01:29:43.180]second amendment rights in obtaining arms
[01:29:45.441]to defend themselves, a response that occurs
[01:29:46.530]at the federal, state, and local level,
[01:29:49.050]and even at the privately owned level
[01:29:51.130]with enterprises, the denial of arms sales
[01:29:54.420]to African-Americans.
[01:29:55.253]I mean, the evidence is overwhelming.
[01:29:57.190]I dedicated a whole chapter in my book
[01:29:58.980]to how the federal government
[01:30:01.590]worked with all these other entities to deny
[01:30:03.360]African-Americans the right to have guns.
[01:30:06.260]Black people with guns, if I can say this bluntly,
[01:30:08.530]is very scary to a lot of power, power in this country.
[01:30:13.526]That's 1919.
[01:30:15.230]Let's go forward to 1969, I was visiting
[01:30:17.550]Patrick's class today, we were looking
[01:30:19.000]at the assassination for Fred Hampton.
[01:30:21.210]He was killed intentionally by the Chicago
[01:30:24.100]police working with the FBI, who used
[01:30:26.810]the pretense of a warrant that was ill gotten
[01:30:30.423]to do what?
[01:30:31.711]Look for illegal arms, which were not there.
[01:30:35.015]Taking guns away from the black panthers,
[01:30:37.720]99 shots fired into that home.
[01:30:42.240]Fred Hampton, age 21, was killed in his bed
[01:30:44.450]while he slept with his pregnant girlfriend
[01:30:46.200]next to him.
[01:30:47.399]She was eight a half months pregnant,
[01:30:49.180]that didn't stop the police from shooting.
[01:30:50.660]99 shots, and when I think about that figure,
[01:30:52.700]then I come forward to Chicago
[01:30:54.220]just five years ago, 16 shots into Laquan McDonald.
[01:31:00.139]16 shots, that's not progress, to go from 99 to 16
[01:31:05.412]and just have one young African-American dead
[01:31:08.800]instead of the two that were killed in 1969 in Chicago.
[01:31:13.780]And what happened in 1969?
[01:31:16.110]Massive coverup.
[01:31:18.890]Chicago Tribune, December 11th, 1969,
[01:31:22.380]one week after the attack, it reads like
[01:31:24.340]a detective novel, it's like crime fiction,
[01:31:26.400]to hear the police saying, we knocked,
[01:31:28.170]they wouldn't answer, we said, open up,
[01:31:29.730]we've got a warrant.
[01:31:31.510]Shoot it out, Edward Hanrahan said.
[01:31:33.410]That's what they were shouting, get the pigs.
[01:31:36.490]No, 99 shots, the only shot fired
[01:31:39.170]by a black panther was Mark Clark
[01:31:40.610]as he was murdered, he was lifting a shotgun,
[01:31:43.440]because he didn't know who
[01:31:44.712]was coming into the house, he fired into the ceiling.
[01:31:47.352]16 shots, killing Laquan McDonald,
[01:31:50.430]and also a massive coverup.
[01:31:52.530]Thankfully neither Hampton, I mean,
[01:31:55.880]that's even the wrong word, right?
[01:31:57.200]To say thankfully the coverups were exposed,
[01:32:00.000]it should never have happened,
[01:32:00.833]but we still have it recurring.
[01:32:05.970]Still recurring.
[01:32:08.310]Well, we're a few minutes after our time.
[01:32:09.760]I just want to thank all of you for coming out,
[01:32:11.220]for staying here for engaging in some
[01:32:14.428]conversation about this.
[01:32:16.110]If you could join me in thanking Dr. Krugler
[01:32:19.920]for sharing with us tonight.
[01:32:21.770]Thank you very much, I really appreciate it.

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The Seventh City

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