African Americans and Omaha: A Reading List

Recently I reviewed Tekla Agbala Ali Johnson's Free Radical: Ernest Chambers, Black Power, and the Politics of Race (Texas Tech University Press, 2012), for an academic journal. Although I made a few critiques, I think that Johnson's biography of Chambers is incredibly important. Because Chambers has toiled in Nebraska his entire life, serving since 1970 (with one brief hiatus) as the legislative representative for Nebraska eleventh district, he has not received as much attention on the national level as his talent, charisma, and penchant for controversy deserves. Love him or hate him, Chambers is one of the most fascinating political leaders in Nebraska history. Johnson's biography should be read by anyone interested in the history of the U.S. black freedom struggle or in Midwest, Nebraska, or Omaha history (for more on Chambers, I've written briefly on him elsewhere, focusing on his starring role in the acclaimed documentary A Time for Burning).

In national histories of the long civil rights movement, Omaha often gets mentioned for two things: it was the birthplace of Malcolm X, whose parents served as leaders of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association in the city during the 1920s, and it was the scene of the horrific riots and mob murder in 1919 of Will Brown, whose assailants posed smiling for the camera as his body burned.

But thanks to Johnson's biography of Chambers, and also to a recent influx of books documenting Omaha's rich history of African American leadership and civil rights protest, readers can now get a much better sense of the struggle and vitality of African American life in Omaha. I've listed three recently-published books that would make great companions to Free Radical below. All of these books tend towards an emphasis on the heroic. That is, while they do not ignore the segregation, mob violence, and police brutality inflicted upon Omaha's African American residents over the past century, they tend to highlight more the resilience of those fighting for justice. I can only hope that over the next few years we'll see even more work of this quality on the history of African American life in Omaha.

Summer Book List: Henry George (and George Norris) and the Crisis of Inequality

Note: this is the second book in my "Summer Book List" series. In the first installment I discussed Murry Nelson's The National Basketball League: A History.

May 2, 1930 was an active day in the U.S. Senate. With unemployment already well past three million people, the economic downturn that would become known as the Great Depression occupied the minds of many senators.

On that particular day, though, the main issue at hand was the confirmation of President Hoover's nomination for the Supreme Court, John J. Parker. A longtime resident of North Carolina, Parker's nomination was part of Hoover's plan to attract southern Democrats into the Republican fold. But the nomination of Parker, a lily-white Republican with a history of racist statements and actions, sparked opposition from the NAACP. Labor leaders were not happy with Parker, either, criticizing his use of injunctions against strikes and his support for yellow dog contracts.

What authority could be invoked in these debates and discussions over a growing economic crisis and a controversial Supreme Court justice? For Senators Gerald Nye and George Norris, that authority came in the voice of a nineteenth-century reformer named Henry George. Early in the day's proceedings, Nye inserted into the Congressional Record George's late-nineteenth-century words on inequality, condensed into more palpable form by George's son-in-law Will Atkinson:

Later in the day, during a two-hour speech explaining why he opposed Parker's nomination, Senator Norris turned to George as well, quoting "one of the most beautiful things I have ever read on the preciousness of human liberty." The lengthy quotation from George's Progress and Poverty spanned three paragraphs, ending with George's plea: "In our time, as in times before, creep on the insidious forces that, producing inequality, destroy liberty....Unless its foundations be laid in justice, the social structure cannot stand." For Norris, Judge Parker's history of judicial activism against labor meant that he would only exacerbate the problem of economic equality made conspicuous in the wake of the 1929 Crash. Ultimately, Norris's view (alongside the NAACP and others), won the day. Parker's nomination failed by one vote.

It should be no surprise that Henry George -- one of the earliest and most prominent voices pointing out the danger of inequality in Gilded Age America -- was invoked in 1930, a moment when the problem of economic inequality seemed obvious. So, too, it is only fitting that in 2015, a time when the problem of economic inequality once again holds the nation's attention, we should have a new biography of Henry George.