Omaha Race Riot of 1919 - Background

Background

Three weeks before the riot, federal investigators had noted that "a clash was imminent owing to ill-feeling between white and black workers in the stockyards." The number of blacks in Omaha doubled during the decade 1910–1920, as they were recruited to work in the meatpacking industry, and competing workers noticed. In 1910 Omaha had the third largest black population among the new western cities that had become destinations following Reconstruction. By 1920 the black population more than doubled to more than 10,000, second only to Los Angeles with nearly 16,000. It was ahead of San Francisco and Oakland, Topeka and Denver.

The major meatpacking plants hired blacks as strikebreakers in 1917. Hostility against them was high among working class whites in the city, who were mostly Catholic immigrants of southern and eastern Europe, or descendants of immigrants, and who lived chiefly in South Omaha. Ethnic Irish were among the largest and earliest group of immigrants and they established their own power base in the city by this time. Several years earlier following the death of an Irish policeman, ethnic Irish led a mob in an attack on Greektown, which drove the Greek community from Omaha.

With the moralistic administration of first-term reform mayor Edward Parsons Smith, the city's criminal establishment led by Tom Dennison created a formidable challenge in cahoots with the Omaha Business Men's Association. Smith trudged through his reform agenda with little support from the Omaha City Council or the city's labor unions. Along with several strikes throughout the previous year, on September 11 two detectives with the Omaha Police Department's "morals squad" shot and killed an African American bellhop.

The violence associated with the lynching of Will Brown was triggered by reports in local media that sensationalized the alleged rape of 19-year-old Agnes Loebeck on September 25, 1919. The following day the police arrested 40-year-old Will Brown as a suspect. Loebeck identified Brown as her rapist, although later reports by the Omaha Police Department and the United States Army stated that she had not made a positive identification. There was an unsuccessful attempt to lynch Brown on the day of his arrest.

The Omaha Bee publicized the incident as one of a series of alleged attacks on white women by black men. The newspaper had carried a series of sensational articles alleging many incidents of black outrages. The Bee was controlled by a political machine opposed to the newly elected reform administration of Mayor Edward Smith. It highlighted alleged incidents of "black criminality" to embarrass the new administration.