Edwin R. Overall

Edwin R. Overall
Phototype from the Progress, June 21, 1890
Born	(1835-08-25)August 25, 1835 Saint Charles County, Missouri, U.S.
Died	July 31, 1901(1901-07-31) (aged 65) Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.
Occupation	abolitionist, civil rights activist, mail carrier, and politician
Political party	Republican, Populist
Spouse(s)	Mary L. Blackburn, Mary E. Washington

Edwin R. Overall aka Edwin R. Williams (August 25, 1835 – July 31, 1901) was an abolitionist, civil rights activist, civil servant, and politician in Chicago and Omaha. In the 1850s and 1860s, he was involved in abolition and underground railroad activities headed at Chicago's Quinn Chapel AME Church. During the U. S. Civil War, he recruited blacks in Chicago to join the Union Army. After the war, he moved to Omaha where he was involved in the founding of the National Afro-American League and a local branch of the same. He was the first black in Nebraska to be nominated to the state legislature in 1890. He lost the election, but in 1892, his friend Matthew O. Ricketts became the first African-American elected to the Nebraska legislature. He was also a leader in Omaha organized labor.

Edwin was born into slavery in Saint Charles County, Missouri, August 25, 1835 to a man with the last name of Overall. Edwin was probably born to a slave woman with the last name of Williams and for the first part of his life used Williams as his last name. As a boy, he worked on a farm, and he moved to Chicago about 1855 where he attended the Jones School. In 1861 he read law in Chicago, but discontinued for financial reasons. He moved to Omaha in the late 1860s.

In 1859 he married M. L. Blackburn of Cincinnati. Overall had many children: Ida, Grace Victoria, Florence Esther, Norman Murray, Maud, Guy, and Eula. Eula served as a teacher in the Omaha Public Schools from 1898-1903, making her Omaha's second black teacher following Lucy Gamble. Victoria, Florence, and Ida lived in Kansas City, Missouri where they, too, served as teachers. One of his daughters was a candidate for teacher in the Omaha Public Schools in 1880 but was denied by the board, likely due to her race. After the death of his first wife, he married Mary E. Washington about 1887.

In 1875, his father died and Overall was awarded his father's fortune. It was at this time he changed his name from Williams to Overall. With this inheritance and his own businesses he became one of Omaha's wealthiest citizens. He invested widely in real estate and was a director and later president of the Missouri and Nebraska Coal Mining Company. The company's mine was sixteen miles from Plattsmouth.