African Americans in Omaha, Nebraska - Population History - 20th Century

20th Century

At the turn of the 20th century, two African-American physicians, doctors Riddle and Madison, opened a hospital for African Americans. Citizens could not afford the facility and it failed financially. Reared in Omaha, Clarence W. Wigington was the first black architect to design a home in Nebraska as a student of the noted Thomas Rogers Kimball. He also designed churches in Omaha. Wigington gained a national reputation after moving to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1914, where he soon became the senior architectural designer for the city. His legacy includes 60 surviving buildings, among which four are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1912 the Omaha chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was founded, the first NAACP chapter west of the Mississippi. George Wells Parker, a founder of the Afrocentric Hamitic League of the World, was instrumental in recruiting African Americans from the Deep South to Omaha during the 1910s.

Railroads and the meatpacking industry recruited African American workers from the South. From 1910 to 1920, the African-American population of Omaha doubled from 4,426 to 10,315, making up five percent of Omaha's population. Of the western cities which were new destinations for blacks of the Great Migration, in 1920 Omaha had the second largest black population, after Los Angeles. The rapid pace of growth alarmed some people in the city, which was also absorbing thousands of new eastern and southern European immigrants. People were concerned about social problems: labor unrest following strikes in 1917, and the return of veterans looking for work after World War I.

During the first week of August 1919, the Omaha Bee newspaper reported that as many as 500 "Negro" workers, mostly from Chicago and East St. Louis, arrived in Omaha to seek employment in the packinghouses. The Bee tended to sensational journalism, adding to tensions in the city as it highlighted alleged crimes committed by blacks. The migration of African Americans to Omaha and the hiring of black workers created a source of friction in the local labor market. Blacks had been hired as strikebreakers in 1917, and there was a major strike among white workers in 1919. The immigrant workers in the meatpacking industry resented the strikebreakers. Economic pressure exacerbated hostilities.

From 1910 to the 1950s, Omaha was a destination for African Americans during the Great Migration from the American South. An African-American cultural expansion flourished beginning in the 1920s, part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era. A late 20th c. documentary reported about the 1940s, "On the surface the black community appeared quite stable. Its center was a several-block district north of the downtown. There were over a hundred black-owned businesses, and there were a number of black physicians, dentists, and attorneys. Over twenty fraternal organizations and clubs flourished. Church life was diverse. Of more than forty denominations, Methodists and Baptists predominated."