The Omaha DePorres Club
Ahead of Their Time
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Questions

1/27/2016

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I have had the opportunity to share the story of the Omaha DePorres Club nearly fifty times over the last several years. Many of those presentations have been for elementary and middle school students. These younger students almost always have some version of the same question at the end of my presentation; “Why do people think they are better than or treat some people as less than them because of skin color?” At this point my time is usually up, so I gently respond, “That is a good question. It’s called racism,” and leave it at that.
 
As we sat down to dinner last night my daughter was humming a tune in her lovely eleven-year-old voice. She paused and asked, “Did you know there is a black national anthem?” She explained that her chorus group was going to sing it at her middle school for an assembly. This led to a conversation about racism, which she closed emphatically with her opinion of racism; “Whoever thought of that or started that is just stupid.”
 
I recently came across an Omaha World-Herald article from December of 1996 about a group of McMillan Middle School students and a project they were involved in documenting the history of North 24th Street. As the students had encountered abandoned building after abandoned building and vacant lot after vacant lot, they asked why these homes of former businesses hadn’t stayed open. They also asked why they hadn’t been replaced.
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Thanks, Tessie

6/22/2015

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In the process of researching and writing my book about the Omaha DePorres Club, I had the distinct pleasure and honor of getting to know several surviving members of the club. One of those members was Tessie Edwards. 

In the fall of 2011, Tessie graciously welcomed me into her home and over the course of several evenings she shared her memories of being a member of the Omaha DePorres Club as a young black woman in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Her memory was sharp and her stories were blunt and honest, as well as funny and poignant. I loved listening to her.

That winter I sent Tessie some early drafts of my book to get her feedback. Some time went by and then one Saturday morning the phone rang. It was Tessie. She was calling to let me know that she was watching an author interview on CSPAN's Book TV program and she wanted let me know that someday I would be on the program as a featured author. Not knowing what to say, I thanked her and we visited for several minutes before hanging up.  Tessie died that May.

 

This May I received an email from Tiffany Rocque of CSPAN.  A CSPAN team was going to be in Omaha for their Cities Tour program and she wanted to interview me about my book. My interview will air on CSPAN Book TV segments over the weekend of July 4th and 5th.  Tessie gets full credit. 

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Finished

7/3/2014

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Picture
Fourteen years ago I sat down to interview my dad about his involvement in the Omaha DePorres Club. That interview led to an article in the Creighton University alumni magazine, then to more interviews with other DePorres Club members, followed by hours and hours of poring through the boxes of archived DePorres Club materials that my dad had stored in his attic for over fifty years. At some point around 2005 (it's hard to pinpoint exactly when, but I do remember thinking, "What have I done?) I realized that I was going to have to write a book. So for the next eight years I researched, organized, interviewed, wrote and rewrote, read and reread until I had a finished manuscript. I sent it to publishers with no luck, so I decided to self-publish - a decision I am glad I made. I own every aspect of the book; cover to cover. No one to blame but me.

I can't wait for people to read it and learn the story of the Omaha DePorres Club. It's bitter and sad, raw and edgy, funny and joyous; full of courage, innocence, determination, tenacity, and faith. It has characters that are fully human; flawed, doubting and brave, with senses of humor. 

                                                                                                            It is a story I am honored to have been able to tell.


Thanks to Dave Crawford of the Creighton University Archives for his blog post (at left) about the book yesterday. He is one of the wonderful people I met during the process of writing this book.


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Sharing

11/27/2013

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Over the past several years, I have shared the story of the Omaha DePorres Club with hundreds of students, teachers and community members.  There are three responses that I invariably get after a presentation.

The first is "How come I've never heard of this?"  I usually open my response by blaming my dad for keeping all the DePorres Club materials stored away in his attic.  But the real answer has to do with the time in which the DePorres Club existed and the unwillingness of the mainstream media to acknowledge the club.  It only makes sense that the sole reason for an organization like the DePorres Club to exist was the correlating existence of racism that needed to be addressed.  By ignoring the existence of the Omaha DePorres Club, Omaha could ignore its racist nature.  And since the story of the DePorres Club wasn't a part of the mainstream narrative of Omaha while the club existed, it isn't part of the mainstream history that is presented and remembered by the collective community. 

The second response usually comes from a student who doesn't see what this nearly seventy year-old story full of black and white pictures has to do with his or her world; "Why do I need to know this?"  A great question.  A few years ago, a series of articles in Omaha's largest newspaper, the World-Herald, revealed the deep poverty that exists in Omaha's African-American community.  That poverty didn't just happen.  If Omaha, and cities like it, are ever going to meaningfully address the gaps that exist racially and economically within their boundaries, stories like the one of the Omaha DePorres Club have to be shared in order to create an understanding of how we got to where we are today.

The third response is by far my favorite.  As I tell the story of the DePorres Club - a story of ordinary people doing extraordinary things - and show the pictures of where events happened in Omaha, some young person will invariably raise his or her hand, and with a slight tilt of the head offer some variation of the following comment, "Hey, my grandmother/aunt/uncle lives right around the corner from there."  That student will often approach me after the presentation and ask, "How come I've never heard about this?"
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Omaha. 1947. Civil Rights?

11/24/2013

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Omaha, 1947 and Civil Rights.  A place, a time and a movement that, because of the little known story of the Omaha DePorres Club, have a surprisingly deep and meaningful connection.
 

The story of the Omaha DePorres Club resonated beyond Omaha through black newspapers in Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Kansas City.   The club was also well-known and highly regarded by leaders of the country's major Civil Rights organizations.  Lester Granger, Executive Secretary of the National Urban League, wrote about the club's efforts in 1950.  Whitney Young worked closely with the DePorres Club while he was Executive Secretary of the Omaha Urban League and cited the club's co-founder, Fr. John Markoe, S.J., as a major influence.  Roy Wilkins, of the NAACP, met with the leadership of the Omaha DePorres Club in 1951 and heard the story of the DePorres Club's campaign against the city's streetcar and bus company.

Due to the influence of Fr. Markoe, one of the unique features of the Omaha DePorres Club was the early and insistent stance that racism and segregation were moral issues, at a time when such a position was not the norm - even in America's churches.   

During its first year, the Omaha DePorres Club held a sit-in at a local restaurant that had earlier refused to serve several of the club's black members.  Nearly sixty years later, I found the story of Omaha's early sit-in mentioned in interviews with elderly white residents of Greensboro, North Carolina.  The Omaha sit-in was pointed out by the Greensboro residents in an attempt to minimize the significance of Greensboro's historic sit-ins of 1960 - they had heard that Omaha was first but never got the credit.



  


 

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    Matt Holland is the author of Ahead of Their Time: The Story of the Omaha DePorres Club.

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