Omaha historical marker remembers Will Brown, lynching victims
A new historical marker, this one calling out the lynching of Black men in America and Nebraska, is now on display outside the Douglas County Courthouse in Omaha.
The marker notes the race riot lynching of Will Brown, a Black civilian, outside the courthouse in 1919, 102 years ago. Brown's lynching was part of the infamous Omaha race riot, which followed 20 race riots that occurred in major industrial cities of the United States during the summer of that year.
The inscription on the plaque speaks specifically to an “ideology of white supremacy” that followed the Civil War and found 6,500 black men across the country lynched between 1865 and 1950.
The plaque goes on to say that the “spectacle lynchings” traumatized African-American communities with gruesome public torture and murder.