Black men have recently been elected for the first time as mayors in Omaha, Nebraska, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, two cities where historically Black men were lynched and Black neighborhoods and businesses were burned to the ground.

Both cities suffered through extreme racial strife, including instances when White mobs joined with local police and federal troops in murdering Black men for negligible reasons.

On Wednesday, voters in Omaha, Nebraska, elected Democrat John Ewing Jr. as their next mayor and the first Black man to hold the office. 

A retired police officer, Ewing defeated incumbent Republican mayor Jean Stothert, who was running for her fourth term. 

Mayor Ewing said he will focus on affordable housing and living-wage jobs.

“We recognize the critical shortage of high-density affordable housing. My administration will prioritize the addition of at least 1,500 affordable housing units to our housing stock. This initiative will not only address the immediate housing shortage but also create living-wage jobs,” Ewing said.

And on November 4, voters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, elected Monroe Nichols mayor. 

“I’m not sure that it’s sunk in yet, to be honest,” said Nichols, a Democrat, who took office on December 2.

Tulsa suffered through one of the country’s worst race massacres from May 31, 1921, through June 1, 1921.

Airplanes dropped bombs on Black neighborhoods. Whites killed 300 Black men and Black women, and 10,000 Blacks were left homeless.

Blacks moved to Tulsa during Reconstruction to own land and build wealth. They accomplished these aims and turned Greenwood Street into a prosperous area known as “Black Wall Street.” 

Tulsa even had a movie theater, a rarity for the time.

The Williams Dreamland Theatre was located in the Greenwood District of Tulsa. It opened on August 30, 1914, and showed live musical and theatrical revues as well as silent films. It seated 750 and was operated by John and Loula Williams.

That all ended when the White mob burned and destroyed more than 35 square blocks of the Black neighborhood. At the time, it was one of the wealthiest Black communities in the United States.

It all started when a White woman claimed she has been assaulted by a Dick Rowland, a Black man who shined shoes.

Rowland was accused of attacking Sarah Page, a white 21-year-old elevator operator in the nearby Drexel Building. Rowland, who was walking near Page, accidentally slipped and nearly fell. He grabbed her arm to balance himself.

The minor “transgression” set off a mob incited by a newspaper report of the incident.

Rowland was arrested, and rumors that he was to be lynched were spread throughout the city by the Tulsa Tribune newspaper. 

The Tulsa Tribune, owned, published, and edited by Richard Lloyd Jones, was one of two White-owned papers published in Tulsa.

The Tribune broke the story in that afternoon’s edition with the headline: “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in an Elevator”, describing the alleged incident. 

Black men didn’t turn the other cheek. They armed themselves to protect Rowland until they were overwhelmed. 

When I started working as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, I was part of a group being shown around the Tribune building. 

Yla Eason of the group asked if we were going to talk and write about Tulsa. 

I shared a blank expression with the others in the group because none of us had heard of what occurred in Tulsa. 

I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, and one teacher at Stadium High School told the class that slaves were treated well by their owners. No one said a word.

This is a different day for Nichols, the new mayor.

He stood beneath a shower of confetti at the Greenwood Cultural Center, which was once the pride of the Black community before the 1921 race massacre decimated it.

Racial violence, also sparked by a White woman’s accusations, occurred in Nebraska around the same time as the Tulsa massacre. 

It was the same formula used in Tulsa, with newspapers stoking racial tensions not grounded in facts and running with the story. 

In September, 1919, Will Brown, a 40-year-old African American meat-packinghouse worker, was accused of raping a 19-year-old White woman, Agnes Lobeck.

Like most Black men, Brown moved to Omaha to work in the meat-packing plants or for the railroad. Brown denied he had assaulted Lobeck, but his denial fell on deaf ears.

Prior to Brown’s arrest, the Bee, the local newspaper, published detailed accounts of the story along with pictures of Brown and Lobeck. This was a time when anything published in a newspaper was unchallenged by readers.

When police went to Brown’s home to arrest him, a mob blocked them from entering. They got in.

He was arrested and held for a few hours in the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha. 

But the newspaper ignited a firestorm. A mob of 250 men and women gathered in the working-class area of South Omaha. On Sunday, September 28, 1919, they marched north into the downtown area and surrounded the courthouse. 

Mayor Edward P. Smith arrived and tried to quell the mob, telling them to go home. He was struck on the head from behind, a rope was placed around his neck, and his unconscious body was strung up to a lamppost.

The mob then broke into the courthouse, tore off Brown’s clothing, and dragged him outside. They hanged him from a lamppost and riddled his already dead body with bullets. 

They tied Bown’s body to a police patrol car and drove it to a major downtown intersection, dragging Brown’s body behind. The mob wasn’t finished. They tied the body to railroad tracks and set his body on fire. 

Omaha residents looked amused as they stood around.

Henry Fonda, the Academy Award-winning actor, grew up in Omaha, and he witnessed Brown’s brutal murder. Fonda was 14 at the time. He only spoke of it near the end of his life. He is the father of actors Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda. 

Fragments of the rope used to lynch Will Brown were sold as souvenirs for 10 cents apiece.

Whites, however, called Black men who moved to Omaha to find work strikebreakers.

No one was arrested in Omaha or Tulsa.