A History of Black Military Service Members in North Omaha (2024)

Since its establishment in 1854, the City of Omaha has contributed a lot to the wars of the United States, including soldiers, sailors, fliers, marines, industry and leadership. African Americans in the city have been disproportionately willing and sent to fight. This article is a history of Black service members in North Omaha.

Adam’s Note: I share this as an imperfect, unfinished but respectful account of history that is not mine. If you find a mistake, see an important omission or have additional information, please share it with me in the comments or send me an email to info@northomahahistory.com. Thanks.

The Big Picture

According to the US Army, the Continental Army had many Black soldiers. Earlier in the colonies, “Black men had long served in colonial militias and probably even saw action during the French and Indian War.” Segregation pervaded the armies even then though, and there were a lot of military officers – including George Washington – who didn’t want to train and arm either freed Black men or enslaved Black men. When it happened though, the Black men served with distinction over and over. Since then, Black people have fought in every United States war, including the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War.

So it should come as no surprise that Omaha has had Black veterans throughout its history, including soldiers, sailors, fliers, and marines. What is interesting to note is that their longterm contributions to the city, including starting businesses, launching civic activism campaigns and community organizing, and building the community, are nearly unending. The accounts below include stories of service and of veterans’ actions in Omaha after they were done with active duty.

Omaha Black Civil War Veterans

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My research hasn’t shown whether there were Black men who left Omaha to fight in the Civil War. The young city’s newspapers don’t share any accounts of that happening, which doesn’t come as a surprise given Omaha’s overall attitude toward Black people then. However, while the the Freedmen’s Bureau helped former Black soldiers and sailors get the pensions they were due starting in 1865, some of those veterans lived in Omaha right after the war and others moved in over time. Most of the Black Civil War veterans in Omaha benefited from the Freedmen’s Bureau.

One of the most notable Black Civil War figures in Omaha was a young man named Edwin R. Overall (1835-1901). Leaving enslavement in Missouri, Overall was 20 when he arrived in Chicago. Immediately joining the Underground Railroad movement there in 1855, at the outbreak of the Civil War he served as recruiting officer for the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantry. Offering his services to Illinois Governor Richard Yates to raise a company to join the United States Colored Troops, he was rejected. However, when the governor ofMassachusettsgot permission to enlist Black men to fight in the war in 1863, Overall was appointed superintendent of the western divisions.

The most noted Black Civil War veterans in Omaha included S.J. “July” Miles (1849-1941), Anderson Bell (1838-1903), Richard “General” Curry (1831-1885), and Josiah “Professor” Waddle (1849-1939). These three men specifically were acknowledged in the press for their long lives afterward in addition to their accomplished careers or notable achievements. Curry was businessman who co-founded an early lodge of the Prince Hall Masons in Nebraska, and Waddle was a popular bandleader who might have started the first all-women’s band in America. Other Black Civil War veterans in Omaha included Stephen Thornton (1846-1933) who was enslaved in Missouri, served for three years and fought in Mississippi, and moved to Omaha late in life. Isaac Dicus (1842-1917) was an veteran who lived by North 20th and Paul Streets when he died. George Payne (1840-after 1934) lived in south Omaha and hadn’t received any pension by the age of 94. John Alexander (1836-1904) was noted for his long conversations about the war with Anderson Bell. Each of these men were noted as formerly enslaved people by the newspapers that carried their obituaries and other news about them.

Spectacular detective work by Omaha historian and advocate Creola Woodall led to the location of several lost graves of Black Civil War veterans in the Laurel Hill Cemetery south of downtown Omaha. According to Ms. Woodall’s exhaustive research, the graves belong to Edward Jones (1848-1905) and James O. Adams (1840-1900). Jones was an enslaved man who became freedom seeker and joined the war effort. Adams was born a Freeman, and during the war he lost his arm in a battle against the rebellious Southern military leader Robert E. Lee.

There were other Black Civil War veterans in the city who came to Omaha after the war was over, but many of their names weren’t recorded by the city’s media. I will keep adding them to this article in the future.

Buffalo Soldiers on the Plains

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After the Civil War, Black men who joined the Army were segregated into Black regiments and some were sent to Nebraska. Referred to as “Buffalo Soldiers” by Native Americans, their fierce way of fighting seemed similar to the bison of Nebraska. While some of these veterans left service from western Nebraska back to the Eastern US, some stayed in the state, either moving directly to Omaha or eventually moving to the city after their homesteading efforts or other endeavors didn’t work.

When he was leading Fort Omaha, General George Crook (1828-1890), selected a site near Valentine for the southernmost fort to fight the Indian Wars in 1879, and it was named Fort Niobrara. It became a base for Buffalo Soldiers in Nebraska, along with Fort Robinson. Fort Niobrara was near Valentine and Fort Robinson was by Crawford. One of the former Black soldiers from western Nebraska to settle in Omaha was Victor Walker (1864-c1925). A complex figure, Walker became a police officer in Omaha, as well as a lawyer, a barkeeper, and tied up with the criminal underground of the city.

In 1894, the first Black chaplain in the Army, Henry V. Plummer (1844-1905), moved to Omaha. Speaking at political gatherings and churches in North Omaha, he eventually left Nebraska to become a religious leader in Washington, D.C. and Kansas City. His son H. Vinton Plummer (1876-19??) settled in Omaha around the at time, attending the University of Nebraska and becoming a lawyer in Omaha. After working in Omaha for a decade, there was a conspiracy against him and he was driven from town.

Pinkett represented a group of African American Army soldiers at Fort Omaha accused of being involved in the nationally reputed Brownsville Affair, in which Black soldiers were blamed for rioting and murder.

Omaha Black Service Members in World War I

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The United States entered World War One in April 1917. Patriotism struck deeply in North Omaha specifically and hundreds of Black men across the community entered the Army and Navy to fight in the war. For a century before and during this era, African Americans were not allowed to serve in the Marine Corps and so did not fight in their ranks for the first world war.

More than eight-hundred African American soldiers from Omaha served in the U.S. Army 92nd Infantry Division, a segregated unit, while others served in the 93rd Infantry Division. However, the American Expeditionary Force refused to have Black men serve in combat under them, which led to Omaha’s Black soldiers and officers of the 92^nd Infantry serving under the command of the French Army during the war. The 93^rd Infantry was never fully formed except for infantry units, which fought under French command. Notable African Americans from North Omaha who served in World War One included Dr. W.W. Peebles (1888-1958), Harrison J. Pinkett (1882-1960), Dr. Aaron M. McMillan (1895-1980), Joseph Carr (1857-1924) and Dr. Craig Morris.

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In 1918, Black veterans in North Omaha started an African American branch of the War Camp Community Service. Before World War One ended in November 1918, they helped launch a new national organization and transformed the War Camp Community Service branch into the community’s American Legion post. Chartered by Congress in March 1919 as a patriotic veterans organization, the larger Omaha American Legion chapter immediately segregated Black members from white members. Harrison Pinkett led the effort to establish North Omaha’s Theodore Roosevelt Post #30. The organization stayed active until 2009, sponsoring community building events, scholarships and more for decades.

On September 29, 1919, a group of Black WWI veterans affiliated with the American Legion Post #30 formed a unit to protect the Near North Side from a rioting white mob after the lynching of Will Brown. These men were disarmed and sent home by the US Army when it arrived the next day and instituted martial law.

In the run-up to the next global conflict, South Omaha native Harry Haywood (1898-1985) became a leader of American forces in the Spanish Civil War, which happened from 1936 to 1939. Happening long after he grew up in Omaha, Haywood served in WWI in the US Army 8th Regiment, and while in Spain he served with Langston Hughes (1901-1967) and Walter Benjamin Garland (1913-1974). Haywood later served as a Merchant Marine during WWII.

World War II and Omaha Black Service Members

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World War Two affected African Americans in Nebraska in nearly countless ways. The nation entered World War Two slowly. The Nazis instituted a blockade of the Atlantic Ocean in 1939, affecting the U.S. directly. However, it took until December 1941 for the country to become an Allied nation. Earlier that year, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 that banned racial discrimination in the defense industry but did not integrate the military. Signing up for the military in large numbers, young Black men from Omaha became soldiers, sailors and for the first time since the Revolutionary War, Marines. (Mihelich 1989, 313)

When the war effort took shape in the early 1940s, Black people jumped to enlist as soldiers, nurses and support staff, and became notable officers in the military too.

Starting in 1941, more than 1,000 African American men became Army Air Corps pilots in World War Two. Five of these men, called Tuskegee Airmen, enlisted from Omaha, and after the war all these veterans came back to the state to fight for democracy here, too. Paul Adams (1920-2013), Alfonza W. Davis (1919-1944), John L. Harrison, Jr. (1921-2017), Woodrow F. “Woody” Morgan (1919-2003), Ralph Orduna (1920-2003) and Edward W. Watkins (Homan andReilly2018) were all Tuskegee Airmen who lived in Omaha after World War II. They were later honored with the Congressional Gold Medal and inducted into the Nebraska Aviation Hall of Fame as the Tuskegee Airmen of Nebraska. Robert Holts (1921-2017) was an Army Air Corps draftsman for the Tuskegee Airmen. (Jones 2023) Adams and Davis have elementary schools in Lincoln and Omaha named after them, respectively.

Other outstanding WWII veterans in Omaha included Harry Tull, Charles Lane, Charles Jackson French, Jimmy Jewell Jr. and many, many others.

Before the war, Lieutenant Colonel Charles A. Lane (1925-2013) was a member of the semi-professional Omaha Rockets baseball team and later a student at Scottsbluff Junior College before joining the Army in 1939. After serving in WWII, in 1970 Lane became the leader of Greater Omaha Community Action, or GOCA, and led the organization until 1992.

In 1943, Harry Tull (1920-2010) became a Tuskegee Airman and rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Serving as a navigator in a B-52, he was arrested and released from active duty in 1945 for entering a white-only officers club. Reinstated to active duty during the Korean War, he retired in 1970 while at Offutt Air Force Base and lived in Omaha until he died. (Grannan 2010)

Charles Jackson French (1919-1956) moved to Nebraska after leaving the Navy in the late 1930s. Rejoining when the United States joined World War Two, he was called the “hero of the Solomons” and the “Human Tugboat” after saving fellow sailors 1942. After his ship was damaged, French tied a rope to himself and swam nonstop for two hours through shark-infested water to rescue fifteen of his shipmates. (Wigo 2015) He received a hero’s welcome by Nebraska’s African American community when he returned home in 1942, and on his first return home he was greeted by a biracial welcoming committee, a parade on North 24^th Street and spoke to a football crowd at Creighton University. (“Omaha hero of Solomons…” 1942) His bravery was noted nationally recognized by the NAACP in 1943. (“The Chicago Defender… 1943) In 2022, French was posthumously awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his heroic actions and President Joseph Biden named a post office in Omaha as the Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Jackson French Post Office.

During World War Two, North Omaha impresario Jimmy Jewell, Jr. (1905–1997) left behind his wife and business to join the US Army. However, while he was gone his business, the Dreamland Ballroom on North 24^th Street, was seized by the U.S. Army to be used as a USO Club to entertain African American soldiers stationed in the Omaha area. Other USO facilities in Omaha were segregated, making the Dreamland an essential outlet. In 1945, after he left the Army and returned to North Omaha, Jewell, Jr. immediately joined the volunteer management team for the USO Club. However, after the war he was forced to sue the government to regain his ownership. When the building was returned to Jewell without compensation, he sued the government for their lack of reimbursem*nt. In a landmark case, he was granted $3,000 for damages and compensation. He returned the business to its iconic status immediately afterwards.

According to historian Dennis Mihelich in a 1979 article, WWII led to a transformation throughout Omaha’s Black community, and particularly within the Omaha Urban League. The organization was suddenly more determined to fight for freedom and justice at home, reflecting the freedoms and justice veterans fought for overseas. While that organization floundered trying to find its feet though, in the late 1940s new a Civil Rights organization called the DePorres Club led by young people took hold in Omaha. Later in the early 1960s, several WWII veterans became directly involved in that struggle through the 4CL.

African American Service Members from Omaha in the Korean War

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Starting in 1950, the United States engaged in the Korean War. During the next three years, 600,000 African American soldiers would fight with 9.3 percent of them killed in the war. This was the first American war to have integrated troops because of a presidential order. In October 1951, the U.S. Army 24th Infantry Regiment established in 1869 and referred to as the Buffalo Soldiers, was formally disbanded. The unit had served during the Spanish-American War, World War One, World War Two and the beginning of the Korean War. When it was disbanded, de jure segregation in the U.S. Army ended.

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A notable Black veteran of the Korean War in Omaha was Dick Lane (1928-2002). Lane was a member of the semi-professional Omaha Rockets baseball team and later a student at Scottsbluff Junior College before joining the Army. After serving in Korea, Lane became known as “Night Train” Lane while playing professional football for the Los Angeles Rams, Chicago Cardinals and Detroit Lions. After retiring in 1965 he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1974.

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Black Korean War veterans joined pickets led with the DePorres Club against the Reed’s Ice Cream chain in 1953. In a noted photo from the era, veterans are shown protesting outside the Reed’s Ice Cream factory at 3106 North 24th Street. The DePorres Club led a boycott and picketing there in 1953 to promote hiring Black employees and and end to segregationist hiring practices by Omaha employers. Several of their picket signs directly appealed to the veterans’ military service, including one that said, “Negro G.I.’s Drive Trucks, Tanks and Jeeps in Korea. Why Not Streetcars and Buses in Omaha?” and another that said “Negro G.I.s Drive Trucks, Tanks and Jeeps in Korea But Negroes Can’t Work at Reeds.”

After that war, while serving at Offutt Air Force Base in 1963, African Americans Airman Fred Winthrop and Captain Michael King pressed charges after being refused entry to the swimming pool at Omaha’s Peony Park. When city officials were reluctant to enforce the law, the NAACP Youth Council organized demonstrations outside the gates on Cass Street that lasted for months, significantly damaging the park’s profits. Because of actions prompted by these servicemen, Peony Park eventually opened its pool to all visitors.

Black Omahans in the Vietnam War

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When the United States formally entered the war in Vietnam in 1964, African Americans were disproportionately drafted into military service. Even though Black people comprised eleven percent of the US population in 1967, African Americans were 16.3 percent of all Vietnam draftees. That disproportion continued throughout the war, including the fact that before 1968, one-third of all American troop casualties were Black soldiers, despite being just sixteen percent of the military forces.

In 2011, high school students with the Omaha Public Schools Making Invisible Histories Visible project interviewed several Black Vietnam veterans to highlight their histories. Their article on “African Americans in Vietnam” highlighted the story of Army Private First Class Milton Alan Ross, a Central High School graduate who was KIA in 1969. The students also located the following is a list of troops from The Omaha Star:

1967: Blaine A. Wilson received the Air Force Commendation Medal
1966: George H. Williams received the Vietnam Service Medal
1966: James E. Prater received the Bronze Star
1966: Porter Pittman was awarded the Purple Heart during his 26-month tour in Vietnam.
1969: Milton A. Ross (1948-1969) was awarded a posthumous Purple Heart and Bronze Star
1969: Maurice T. Craddock received the Purple Heart, Vietnam Service Medal, Army Accommodation, and the National Defense Air Medal.

There were many other Black Vietnam veterans from Omaha who received accommodations, awards and honors as well.

Edward Poindexter (1944-2023) was a Vietnam veteran who became a delegate to the 1968 Democratic National Convention. In 1969, along with David Rice, he became a leader of the Omaha Black Panthers Party and its successor, the National Committee to Combat Fascism. In 1971, Poindexter and Rice were sentenced to life in prison for the murder of an Omaha policeman. A controversial conviction, there were numerous appeals, retrials, new evidence and much more advocacy on behalf of the men, who were labeled by Amnesty International as political prisoners. Recent independent research and academic scholarship has shown substantial evidence of a law enforcement cover-up and conspiracy to indict these leaders shows their innocence. However, despite presenting the evidence to Nebraska’s political and judicial leaders, there was no respite for Poindexter. He died in prison in December 2023.

Struggling for jobs and economic opportunities in Omaha, there were some opportunities created in North Omaha for Black veterans. Arguably though, their effects were stifled by systemic racism though.

Given the city’s historic support for white supremacy, it isn’t be surprising that the Omaha World-Herald ran a 1971 article suggesting these soldiers returning from Vietnam would “start an armed revolution.” The leader of the Opportunities Industrialization Center, or OIC, was quoted as saying, “I’m working on the system to see that doesn’t happen. There are others working against the system to that it does.” The Omaha OIC sought to “give preferential treatment to Black Vietnam veterans,” the national director told the newspaper in 1971. However, just a year later in 1972, the Omaha Star said “…the inability of the federal government to ensure jobs for returning Black Vietnam veterans has reached scandalous proportions.”

Facing a higher suicide rate and limited employment, they faced the opposite of a 1968 article that said, “The Negro in Vietnam lives on an exact level with his white counterpart for, in many cases, the first time in his young life.”

As time passed, attitudes towards the Vietnam war changed. Treated as outcasts during the war because of their race, these veterans received a cold shoulder at home in Omaha afterward, too, with the World-Herald observing in 1984 that, “many Black Vietnam veterans perceive themselves as outsiders now that public opinion appears to be shifting towards acceptance of Vietnam veterans…” A program coordinator with the Urban League was quoted as saying, “We don’t feel a part of the whole hoopla, the resurrection… the effort to reverse the 1970s view of the war… Primarily, it is because Black veterans have not felt they were included in the efforts so far to reintegrate them into society.”

In 2022, the newspaper ran an article called “Black Vietnam War veterans honored with quilts at North Omaha event” featuring a quilt presented by a North Omaha church to acknowledge Black Vietnam veterans Samuel Davis, Eric Critchlow, John Rollins and Dennis Wilson.

Black Service Members from Omaha Since

African American soldiers from Omaha continue to serve in the U.S. military in countless ways. They served in the Gulf War, which was a multi-nation response to an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and since then, Black veterans also served in the War on Terror, including the War in Afghanistan, the Iraq War and others. They continue to make sacrifices disproportionately to this day.

Omaha Landmarks for Black Veterans

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In all wars, it is those who died or were wounded who sacrificed the most. Omaha’s long history of denying Black war veterans their due dishonors the sacrifices, journeys and successes of these men and women.

The oldest grave markers to Black veterans in Omaha are at Prospect Hill Cemetery. Many African American soldiers were buried here starting in 1863, including veterans of the Civil War, Buffalo soldiers, Spanish-American War and World War I veterans.

A new marker was install in 2011 in Laurel Hill Cemetery in honor of the missing graves there, and says,

“Those Black veterans and settlers who lie here, they struggled, perserved and sought better days. We are the beneficiaries of their dreams and endurances. From the battlefields they fought with force and purpose, knowing the dangers they faced yet never wavering from their journey in the shadows. They held freedom in view.” This monument continues to stand today.

There is a special section at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park for the Grand Army of the Republic, or GAR, which was a fraternal organization. Within that section there are graves for many Black veterans. Others are buried within the huge military section of that cemetery, and more still are buried throughout cemeteries in North Omaha and beyond.

In 1988, a historical plaque was created to memorialize the service of Tuskegee Airman Captain Alfonza W. Davis in WWII. It was placed by the V.F.W. Alfonza Davis Post #1364 and Auxillary and today is located outside the Great Plains Black History Museum. In 2013, Davis Middle School opened in west Omaha and was named for Captain Davis.

Kyle Wayne LeFlore Street was renamed in honor of a fallen soldier in 2018. A street sign was placed on North 29th Street from Meredith to Fowler Avenue in 2018 to memorialize LeFlore, a sergeant in the U.S. Army when he was on leave at home and killed by gunfire. Similarly, in 2021, a street sign was placed on Caldwell Street from North 24th to North 27th Street in memory of Lillian Clamens (Cobbin), a soldier killed in Iraq.

In 2018, the Omaha Economic Development Corporation sponsored a mural by Aaryon Bird Williams called “Black Skies.” Honoring the WWII Tuskegee Airmen, it’s located at 2205 N. 24th St.

Maybe in the future, the North Omaha community and the City of Omaha will work together to honor Black war veterans from every war. As this article shows, there are so many who individually deserve their flowers, including monuments and honors, at least the city can stand up for a single, massive memorial.

Special thanks to Creola Woodall for her contributions to this article!

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NorthOmahaHistory.com Guide to Fort Omaha by Adam FletcherSasse
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Elsewhere online

“African Americans in Vietnam” by high school students with the Omaha Public Schools Making Invisible Histories Visible project in 2011.
We were there: voices of African American veterans, from World War II to the War in Iraq by Yvonne Latty in 2004.
The Alfonza W. Davis Chapter of Tuskegee Airmen Nebraska was founded in 1988 and named after one of the 16 original Tuskegee Airmen from Nebraska.
“Finally—A Final Resting Place for Veterans” by Omaha Magazine on March 31, 2024.
“Honoring veterans” from Forest Lawn Memorial Cemetery.
“Memorial and Death” by the Nebraska Department of Veterans Affairs.