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.

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. 

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.