DIRTY BRITCHES: LOCAL LAUNDRY IN OMAHA, NE

TW/CW: This episode contains explicit content regarding allegations of rape and racial violence. 

In this minisode, we learn about the 1919 murder of Will Brown after he is accused of rape by a white woman, Agnes Loeback Hoffman. What follows is known as the Omaha Race Riot of 1919—one of the most grotesque incidents of white supremacist violence in U.S. history (and that's saying a lot because that history runs DEEP). The background of this story includes political power struggles and the use of sexual violence allegations by white women to target Black men, both of which figured prominently in the murder of Black men in this era. Horrifyingly, many of these themes of racism and political power still echo in the stories of murder we see involving Black and Brown men and women today. Special shout out to Amber Ruffin and Lacey Lamar, whose new book You'll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories About Racism brings us up to speed on the current state of white supremacy in Omaha. Spoiler alert: it's still there.

For more, check out NebraskaStudies.org, BlackPast.org, North Omaha History, The Crisis magazine (1919), this thesis from 1964 by Arther Age, and Orville Menard's article "Lest We Forget: The Lynching of Will Brown, Omaha's 1919 Race Riot."