The Women Who Built Omaha

The Women Who Built Omaha
Author: Eileen Wirth
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2022-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496231252

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During the 1930s the Federal Writers’ Project described Omaha as a “man’s town,” and histories of the city have all but ignored women. However, women have played major roles in education, health, culture, social services, and other fields since the city’s founding in 1854. In The Women Who Built Omaha Eileen Wirth tells the stories of groundbreaking women who built Omaha, including Susette “Bright Eyes” LaFlesche, who translated at the trial of Chief Standing Bear; Mildred Brown, an African American newspaper publisher; Sarah Joslyn, who personally paid for Joslyn Art Museum; Mrs. B of Nebraska Furniture Mart; and the Sisters of Mercy, who started Omaha’s Catholic schools. Omaha women have been champion athletes and suffragists as well as madams and bootleggers. They transformed the city’s parks, co-founded Creighton University, helped run Boys Town, and so much more, in ways that continue today.

The Women Who Built Omaha

The Women Who Built Omaha
Author: Eileen Wirth
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2022-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496231244

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2023 Nebraska Book Award During the 1930s the Federal Writers' Project described Omaha as a "man's town," and histories of the city have all but ignored women. However, women have played major roles in education, health, culture, social services, and other fields since the city's founding in 1854. In The Women Who Built Omaha Eileen Wirth tells the stories of groundbreaking women who built Omaha, including Susette "Bright Eyes" LaFlesche, who translated at the trial of Chief Standing Bear; Mildred Brown, an African American newspaper publisher; Sarah Joslyn, who personally paid for Joslyn Art Museum; Mrs. B of Nebraska Furniture Mart; and the Sisters of Mercy, who started Omaha's Catholic schools. Omaha women have been champion athletes and suffragists as well as madams and bootleggers. They transformed the city's parks, co-founded Creighton University, helped run Boys Town, and so much more, in ways that continue today.

From Society Page to Front Page

From Society Page to Front Page
Author: Eileen Wirth
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2020-03-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496210735

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Eileen M. Wirth never set out to be a groundbreaker for women in journalism, but if she wanted to report on social issues instead of society news, she had no alternative. Her years as one of the first women reporters at the Omaha World-Herald, covering gender barriers even as she broke a few herself, give Wirth an especially apt perspective on the women profiled in this book: those Nebraskans who, over a hundred years, challenged traditional feminine roles in journalism and subtly but surely changed the world. The book features remarkable women journalists who worked in every venue, from rural weeklies to TV. They fought for the vote, better working conditions for immigrants, and food safety at the turn of the century. They covered wars from the Russian Revolution to Vietnam. They were White House reporters and minority journalists who crusaded for civil rights. Though Willa Cather may be the only household name among them, all are memorable, their stories affording a firsthand look into the history of journalism and social change.

My Omaha Obsession

My Omaha Obsession
Author: Miss Cassette
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 432
Release: 2020-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 149622471X

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My Omaha Obsession takes the reader on an idiosyncratic tour through some of Omaha’s neighborhoods, buildings, architecture, and people, celebrating the city’s unusual history. Rather than covering the city’s best-known sites, Miss Cassette is irresistibly drawn to strange little buildings and glorious large homes that don’t exist anymore as well as to stories of Harkert’s Holsum Hamburgers and the Twenties Club. Piecing together the records of buildings and homes and everything interesting that came after, Miss Cassette shares her observations of the property and its significance to Omaha. She scrutinizes land deeds, insurance maps, tax records, and old newspaper articles to uncover a property’s singular story. Through conversations with fellow detectives and history enthusiasts, she guides readers along her path of hunches, personal interests, mishaps, and more. As a longtime resident of Omaha, Miss Cassette is informed by memories of her youth combined with an enduring curiosity about the city’s offbeat relics and remains. Part memoir and part research guide with a healthy dose of colorful wandering, My Omaha Obsession celebrates the historic built environment and searches for the people who shaped early Omaha.

Wicked Omaha

Wicked Omaha
Author: Ryan Roenfeld
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 96
Release: 2017
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1467137316

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In old Omaha, the scent of opium wafted through saloon doors, while prostitutes openly solicited customers. When the St. Elmo theater ran short of the usual entertainment, the residents could always fall back on robbing strangers. Tenants of the Burnt District squirmed under the extorting thumb of a furniture dealer dubbed the Man-Landlady. The games of chance and confidence and outright municipal graft all played a part in a wicked city where gambler Tom Dennison ran politics and Madam Anna Wilson drove philanthropy. Join Ryan Roenfeld for a stroll along the seamier side of Omaha's past.

Secret Omaha: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure

Secret Omaha: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure
Author: Ryan Roenfeld
Publisher: Reedy Press LLC
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2021-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1681063069

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How did Omaha get its nickname, “The Gateway to the West” and where can you gawk at the footsteps of the first human to walk in space? Just scratch the surface of a city best known for Warren Buffett, college baseball, and a great zoo and find far more than meets the eye. And Secret Omaha: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure is just the book you’ll need to uncover all the stories of Nebraska’s lone metropolis. Omaha rises up out of the low broken bluffs along the west bank of the Missouri River and sprawls west across what was once the prairie grasslands of the Great Plains. The buffalo wallows have been replaced by a more urban mix of grit and gentrification, with tree-lined avenues, boulevards, and varied communities that hold on to their heritage for generations. There’s a giant fork in Little Italy and stories told in stone around what was the world’s largest livestock market. There’s an old blues song by Big Joe Williams about an Omaha intersection that’s now on the National Register, and Irish Nationalists erected a grand monument to the Fenian who invaded Canada twice. Anyone in Omaha can take a gander at Goose Hollow or visit a haven for herons, but now author and Omaha enthusiast Ryan Roenfeld takes you on your own behind-the-scenes tour of the Big O. With his book as your guide, you’ll discover a whole new side to the city that’s inspired him for years.

Black Print with a White Carnation

Black Print with a White Carnation
Author: Amy Helene Forss
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2014-01-01
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0803249543

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Mildred Dee Brown (1905–89) was the cofounder of Nebraska’s Omaha Star, the longest running black newspaper founded by an African American woman in the United States. Known for her trademark white carnation corsage, Brown was the matriarch of Omaha’s Near North Side—a historically black part of town—and an iconic city leader. Her remarkable life, a product of the Reconstruction era and Jim Crow, reflects a larger American history that includes the Great Migration, the Red Scare of the post–World War era, civil rights and black power movements, desegregation, and urban renewal. Within the context of African American and women’s history studies, Amy Helene Forss’s Black Print with a White Carnation examines the impact of the black press through the narrative of Brown’s life and work. Forss draws on more than 150 oral histories, numerous black newspapers, and government documents to illuminate African American history during the political and social upheaval of the twentieth century. During Brown’s fifty-one-year tenure, the Omaha Star became a channel of communication between black and white residents of the city, as well as an arena for positive weekly news in the black community. Brown and her newspaper led successful challenges to racial discrimination, unfair employment practices, restrictive housing covenants, and a segregated public school system, placing the woman with the white carnation at the center of America’s changing racial landscape.

Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium

Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium
Author: Eileen Wirth, Photos edited by Carol McCabe
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 160
Release: 2017
Genre: History
ISBN: 1467136557

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Long ranked as one of the top zoos in America and even the world, Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium's history has remained untold, until now. Beginning as little more than a menagerie, the zoo transformed into a spectacular attraction that now draws two million visitors per year. Supporters responded to innovative features such as the iconic desert dome, the new African Grasslands exhibit, the indoor jungle and the all-encompassing aquarium. More than just a showcase, the zoo also supports renowned wildlife conservation and research programs that help preserve endangered species ranging from coral reefs to tigers. Author Eileen Wirth celebrates the history and promising future of the landmark that continues to elicit great local pride.

North Omaha History

North Omaha History
Author: Adam Fletcher Sasse
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2016-11-01
Genre:
ISBN: 9781539973614

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In the third book of the North Omaha History Series, Adam Fletcher Sasse reveals a lot of the hidden, denied and neglected history of one of the oldest areas of Nebraska's largest city. Highlighting the predominantly African American community and other ethnic groups, he introduces some intriguing characters and important businesses that made North Omaha great. He reveals the role of transportation in the area by examining the history of several streets, including the culture and figures in the areas around them. He details the roles of North Omaha's extensive boulevard system that weaves together neighborhoods and connects the community to the rest of the city, as well as looks at the historic Belt Line Railway that used to encircle the area. In the next section, Fletcher Sasse conducts a community-wide exploration of architecture in North Omaha. He reveals the basics about the neighborhood, and then plunges deep into the apartments, homes, neighborhoods and other institutions that make the historic preservation movement so important to the community. He details several important districts and shines a light on the oldest houses in North Omaha, too. Then, he tells the missing history of a dozen mansions and estates that once occupied the area. The final section of the book is a massive timeline of birthdates for the many of the most important people in North Omaha history, including athletes, entertainers, politicians, leaders and others. The book finishes with a bibliography and comprehensive index.