Brown, Will Lynching 1919
By
John C Abercrombie
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Day 4 – The Omaha Lynching of Will Brown
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A shocking statistic from 1919 is that there were over 25 race riots and massacres all over the United States of America. They ranged from Texas to Illinois, Nebraska to Georgia. In this post we are looking at the spectacle in Omaha began September 25, when a White woman, Agnes Loebeck reported an assault by a Black man.
We often expect our media to be at least fair, however we see here an example of the greed that fueled the riot. The “Bee” a local newspaper reported the event thusly. “Black Beast First Stick-up Couple.” The language set an entire community on edge that did not need such inflammatory headlines to move towards a mob mentality. The article continued “The most daring attack on a White woman ever perpetrated in Omaha occurred one block south of Bancroft Street near Scenic Avenue in Gibson last night.” This is only one example of the inflammatory language used by newspapers to boost sales. This is where we get the motto of many publications “if it bleeds, it leads”. Reporting facts is secondary to profit even when lives are put at stake by such irresponsible journalist, if it may be called journalism.
The coverage in another local newspaper, the World-Herald was only slightly less inflammatory: “Pretty little Agnes Loebeck … was assaulted … by an unidentified Negro at twelve O’clock last night while she was returning to her home in company of Millard Hoffman, a cripple.”
That evening the police took a suspect to the Loebeck home. Loebeck and her boyfriend who were later married identified a Black packinghouse worker by the name of Will Brown as the assailant. Brown was 41 at the time and suffered from acute rheumatism. While on the face, there appears to be a neutral action on the part of the police, it brings into question the tactics of the police and the prejudicial nature of the act. This is a matter that deserves additional study. Basic skills like line ups and suggestive procedures while generally are viewed as neutral by laymen are often anything but. The failure to follow up on other possibilities or subjects is unfair as well.
While we recoil with repulsion at the barbaric nature of these events, we must question whether progress has been made. Today we have cameras, but a frequent occurrence is that police “forget” to turn them on when needed most. We also see lengthy delays in making the video available giving question to justice delayed is justice denied as we often “forget” about the savagery seen in these events by the time they are made public.
In days past, these semi-festive events leave lasting but extremely damaging impressions of race in America. Today we have a moment of outrage and return to normal after doing basically nothing to seek justice or to prevent them from happing again. This should be a call to action for all. How many more of these events can the nation survive? Doing nothing and we have a redo of the 120 years it has taken us to pass a federal anti-lynching bill.
A mob gathered outside the Loebeck house before the police could leave, threatening to seize Brown, however after hours of confrontation Brown was transferred to the Douglas County Courthouse
Eventually an angry mob estimated at between 5,000 and 15,000 people gathered outside the courthouse and by 8:00 pm had begun firing on the courthouse. During the exchange of gunfire, a 16-year-old and a 34-year businessman a block away were killed.
By 8:30 the White mob had set fire to the building and prevented fire fighters from extinguishing the fire. Meanwhile Brown exclaimed to Sheriff Mike Clark, “I am innocent, I never did it, my God I am innocent.”
The mayor tried to reason with the White mob, pleading for them to forget the prisoner and allow the firemen to put out the flames. He was knocked down and an attempt to hang him was underway. He was hospitalized for several days in serous condition with severe head injuries.
Brown was seized by the crazed White mob and beaten into unconsciousness, his clothes were torn off of him by the time the mob reached the building doors with hem. He was physically dragged to a nearby lamp pole, a rope was placed around his neck, and he was hoisted into the ri, riddled with bullets. His body was then tied behind a police car and dragged through town. As if this were not enough, the body was burned with fuel from lighter fluid and fire truck lanterns. As if this were not barbaric enough, pieces of the rope were sold for 10 cents each.
Henry Fonda, a 14-year-old Nebraska youth witnessed the event from his father’s printing plant a cross from the courthouse. He described it as the most horrendous sight he had ever seen. “It was the most horrendous sight I’d had ever seen … We locked the plant, went downstairs and drove home in silence. My hands were wet and there were tears in my eyes. All I could think of was that young Black man dangling at the end of a rope.” As horrible as this is, it is necessary to remember that many of these events were advertised in advance and were festive with men, women and young children in attendance. How do you think this affected the outlook of Whites with regard to race?
During Fonda’s long career, at least two of his best movies — Young Mister Lincoln and The Ox Bow Incident — featured lynchings as major plot points.
Once again, we see the founding principles of this country trampled underfoot when it comes to Black citizens of this country. White people have a tendency to loose all morality when it comes to the simple fact of race. Imagine if Rodney King were White and the police beating him like he is a human pinata were Black. America would have lost their collective minds. We see it repeated today with the case Tyre Nichols in Memphis. This is repeated way too often, but it soon becomes forgotten as agencies cover it up, and postpone facing the issue for months if not years, hoping that it will be forgotten. America can no longer afford this outlandish luxury. It is time to develop an interest in determining what is right rather than who is right. There is a huge difference!
Omaha Race Riot 1919 Will Brown
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Race Riot of 1919 in Omaha-The Lynching of Will Brown
A video about the migration of African Americans to Omaha, Nebraska and the racial tension and politics that led to the lynching of Will Brown.
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Book
Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America
A narrative history of America’s deadliest episode of race riots and lynchings.
After World War I, black Americans fervently hoped for a new epoch of peace, prosperity, and equality. Black soldiers believed their participation in the fight to make the world safe for democracy finally earned them rights they had been promised since the close of the Civil War.
Instead, an unprecedented wave of anti-black riots and lynchings swept the country for eight months. From April to November of 1919, the racial unrest rolled across the South into the North and the Midwest, even to the nation’s capital. Millions of lives were disrupted, and hundreds of lives were lost. Blacks responded by fighting back with an intensity and determination never seen before.
Red Summer is the first narrative history about this epic encounter. Focusing on the worst riots and lynchings – including those in Chicago, Washington, DC, Charleston, Omaha, and Knoxville – Cameron McWhirter chronicles the mayhem, while also exploring the first stirrings of a civil rights movement that would transform American society 40 years later.
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Remembering the 1919 lynching of William Brown; historical marker at Douglas Co. Courthouse
Warning: This story contains images which some may find disturbing. On Friday morning the City of Omaha, Douglas County and the Omaha Community Council for Racial Justice and Reconciliation are unveiling a historical marker in memory of William Brown, an Omaha man who was lynched outside the Douglas County Courthouse in 1919.
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Book
River City Empire: Tom Dennison’s Omaha
More than any other political boss of the early twentieth century, Thomas Dennison, “the Rogue who ruled Omaha,” was a master of the devious. Unlike his contemporaries outside the Midwest, he took no political office and was never convicted of a crime during his thirty-year reign. He was a man who managed saloons but never cared for alcohol; who may have incited the Omaha Race Riot of 1919 but claimed he never harmed a soul; who stood aside while powerful men did his bidding. His power came not from coercion or nobility but from delegation and subterfuge.
Orville D. Menard chronicles Dennison’s life in River City Empire, beginning with Dennison’s experiences in Colorado mining towns. In 1892 Dennison came to Omaha, Nebraska, where he married and started a family while solidifying his position as an influential political boss. Menard explores machine politics in Omaha as well as the man behind this machine, describing how Dennison steered elections, served the legitimate and illegitimate business communities, and administered justice boss-style to control crime and corruption. The microcosm of Omaha provides an opportunity for readers to explore bossism in a smaller environment and sheds light on the early twentieth-century American political climate as a whole.
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Omaha riot: how a white mob lynched a Black man and destroyed a city – 360 video
In 1919, a white mob stormed into an Omaha courthouse looking for a Black man named Will Brown whom they believed raped a white woman two days earlier.
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Book
Race in America
A groundbreaking approach to thinking about race and racism today.
Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer, authors of The Racial Order, have written an undergraduate textbook on race relations for the twenty-first century. Every chapter of Race in America examines how racism intersects with other forms of social division―those based on gender, class, sexuality, ability, religion, and nationhood―as well as how whiteness surrounds us in unnamed ways that produce and reproduce a multitude of privileges for white people. Featuring a table of contents that is organized around race and racism in different aspects of social life, Race in America explores the connections between individual and institution, past and present, and the powerful and the powerless.
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Will Brown: A Lynching, a Lost Identity, and Urban Unrest in Omaha, 1919
Will Brown: A Lynching, a Lost Identity, and Urban Unrest in Omaha, 1919, an illustrated lecture by Barbara Hewins-Maroney. Nebraska State Historical Society Brown Bag Lecture Series, February 18, 2016.
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The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
Number One New York Times Best Seller
A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present.
Named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post NPR Marie Claire
In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of 20 to 30 enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States.
The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together 18 essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with 36 poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.
This is a book that speaks directly to our current moment, contextualizing the systems of race and caste within which we operate today. It reveals long-glossed-over truths around our nation’s founding and construction – and the way that the legacy of slavery did not end with emancipation, but continues to shape contemporary American life.
Cover image: Lorna Simpson Beclouded, 2018 Lorna Simpson. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.
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Omaha Community Remembrance Ceremony – The Lynching of Will Brown
On September 28, 2019, the city of Omaha holds a ceremony to commemorate and reflect on the lynching of Will Brown that happened on the grounds of Omaha’s Douglas County Courthouse on September 28, 1919.
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Black Roots: A Beginners Guide To Tracing The African American Family Tree
Trace, document, record, and write your family’s history with this easy-to-read, step-by-step authoritative guide.
Finally, here is the fun, easy-to-use guide that African Americans have been waiting for since Alex Haley published Roots more than twenty-five years ago. Written by the leading African American professional genealogist in the United States who teaches and lectures widely, Black Roots highlights some of the special problems, solutions, and sources unique to African Americans. Based on solid genealogical principles and designed for those who have little or no experience researching their family’s past, but valuable to any genealogist, this book explains everything you need to get started, including: where to search close to home, where to write for records, how to make the best use of libraries and the Internet, and how to organize research, analyze historical documents, and write the family history.
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For Black History Month 2020, we posted daily. These posts focus on the reality of Black life in America after the Civil War culminating in the landmark Brown v Board of Education that changed so many of the earlier practices. To see the posts, click here
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We also posted a 5 part mini-series on the 100th anniversary of one of the most horrific massacres in the history of America. Hundreds of Blacks were slaughtered and 10,000 left homeless in this largely unknown event. To see the posts, click here.
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A world class collection of Black History inspired by a 5th grade teacher who told Arturo Schomburg that there was NO African history. Nothing of value. Schomburg dedicated his life to proving that teacher wrong and Schomburg did an amazing job with his collection.
Schomburg – The man who built a library
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