Omaha Race Riot of 1919
| Date | September 28–29, 1919 |
|---|---|
| Location | Omaha, Nebraska, United States |
| Deaths | 3 |
The Omaha race riot occurred in Omaha, Nebraska, September 28–29, 1919. The race riot resulted in the brutal lynching of Will Brown, a black worker; the death of two white men; the attempted hanging of Mayor Edward Parsons Smith; and a public rampage by thousands of whites who set fire to the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha. It followed more than 20 race riots that occurred in major industrial cities of the United States during the Red Summer of 1919.
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 ." 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 over 10,000, second only to Los Angeles with nearly 16,000. It was ahead of San Francisco, Oakland, Topeka, and Denver.
The major meatpacking plants hired blacks as strikebreakers in 1917. South Omaha's working-class whites, mostly Catholic immigrants of southern and eastern Europe or descendants of those immigrants, showed great hostility toward black strikebreakers. By this time, the ethnic Irish—the largest and earliest group of immigrants—had established their power base in the city. Several years earlier, following the death of an Irish policeman, ethnic Irish had led a mob in an attack on Greektown, driving the Greek community from Omaha.
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