Introduction to Roots of Justice: A History of Race and Racism in Nebraska

Nebraska has made racism a way of life through most of its history. It is still the way of life for many. In 2020, a Nebraska columnist wrote the following about Nebraska: “[T]he issues stemming from racism can seem like foreign concepts, confined to the larger cities (or the American South) and relics of a distant past.”2 The column goes on to show that these issues were not confined to large cities or to the South; they rested on our back door in Nebraska. Yet, one often heard back as far as one could remember that Nebraska is not and was never a racist state. The chapters in this study do not allow this perception to stand. Nebraska’s land was stolen from the Native American nations that preceded the United States. In 1879, a federal court had to tell Nebraska that a Nebraska Native American, Standing Bear, was a person in the “full meaning of the law.”3 Less than seventy years ago a person of color and a white person did not have the right to marry one another under Nebraska law.4 Until the 1960s, federal housing rules applied in Nebraska with respect to lending practices did not allow financial institutions to lend to people of color who were mostly Blacks who wished to buy a house in most neighborhoods in Nebraska.5 The state accepted the situation; hence perpetuating segregated housing in many of its cities and towns. Three Blacks and two Hispanics during the late 1800s and early 1900s were among the fifty-seven total lynchings accounted for in Nebraska.6 Hispanic people worked “to the bone” in the fields of Nebraska without serious governmental labor protections until the mid-twentieth century.