The Women Who Built Omaha: A Bold and Remarkable History

"The Women Who Built Omaha" could not be more timely.It rolled off the press just as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned its Roe v. Wade decision that had given U.S. women--and probably some same-sex men--the constitutional right to control decisions affecting their own bodies.The Court's momentous reversal abruptly changed the socioeconomic and personal landscape for America's women. Author Eileen Wirth ends her book with the question this post-Roe nation is facing: "Will today's young women see as many changes in their daughters' lives as their mothers do in theirs?"This book is not just for those who live in or cruise around Omaha. It will also astonish readers who will gasp at a Northern city's double barriers of gender and race that blocked for decades the advancement of women of color.In breezy, engrossing style, Wirth unearths a black-and-white segregated Northern city that Black women inhabited in Omaha after migrating from the Jim Crow South. And she reveals the bifurcated, split-screen dilemma faced by Native American women historically and even today as they choose between their Native or the dominant white cultures, when they try to climb out of their abyss of poverty and abuse.Wirth's book is not only engrossing; it is also spicy, as described in the chapter titled, "Prostitution in Wide-Open Omaha." The chapter draws amply from the 1909 book, "The Underworld Sewer," written byone-time madam Josie Washburn. Some prostitutes seem "so young and frail as to be mere children," she writes. "They do not even realize they are in the worst form of slavery."Omaha was officially founded in 1854 after the U.S. Congress signed a treaty with the Omaha, Otoe and Missouri tribes, who relinquished their lands. Within years the tribes became divided into those who wanted to educate their children in Native ways and those who wanted to school them to live in the white man's world, even though women there had fewer rights than did Native American women in a matriarchal society.Preparing to live in the white-man's world was advocated by Omaha Chief Joseph LaFlesche, the son of a French fur trader and an Omaha tribal woman. He sent his daughter Susette "Bright Eyes" to a Presbyterian mission school on the Omaha Tribe's 302,000-acre reservation about 90 miles north of Omaha. There she wore dresses and learned to speak English, which he father demanded at home. After more schooling, she earned a medical degree, became a leader in championing Native rights and returned to the reservation in 1903, where she died.In the 1950s, Natives' moving from the reservation to the cities began when federal legislation again encouraged assimilation. Women worked mainly in unskilled jobs. The city currently has between 10,000 and 13,000 Native American residents.The ascent of Black women was harrowing. The first Blacks arrived in Omaha before the Civil War and by 1892 had about 6,000 residents. With their arrival, Omaha became a segregated Northern city as it provided jobs in meatpacking and the Union Pacific railroad for those migrating from the Jim Crow South. By the 1960s, as Wirth explains, rioting and burning forced "Omaha to confront its long history of racism and the anger of its growing African American population."For example, Black females were blocked for decades from teaching jobs--the only field then open to women. As Wirth describes, Dr. Harry Burke, superintendent of Omaha Public Schools from 1946-1962, "hired Black teachers for only two Black elementary schools and refused to hire them for high school." The Burke High School named for him became controversial in 2020 when George Floyd's murder by a white Minneapolis police officer ignited Black Lives Matter protests.Wirth also reveals the contributions to Omaha made by numerous immigrant women with their own harrowing stories. A prime example: Rose Blumkin and her husband fled Czarist Russia when World War I began. Arriving in Omaha, without speaking any English, Mrs. B. as she was called, built Nebraska Furniture Mark into a huge operation in Omaha, Kansas City and Dallas. Her motto: "sell cheap, tell the truth and don't cheat nobody."Wirth panoramas Omaha women's long, hard struggle against discrimination that is unfinished in this post-Roe nation.

This is a well researched and documented account of the women who influenced the growth and advancement of Omaha over 160 years. Their history and anecdotes proved interesting!

Wonderful book with such great history of women from Omaha near & far. I learned so much from reading it!

Written very robotically. It's more of a history of Omaha than a story about Omaha women's history. Although the book is heavily sourced, some of the "facts" are hearsay.

This might have a limited audience since it is about the women who built Omaha, but it deserves attention from everyone who thinks that only men made the difference in building our cities and country. While men got the attention because they made the money (by keeping women out of lucrative professions) it was their widows (at least in Omaha) who contributed the money to the world acclaimed Henry Doorly Zoo, Joslyn Art Museum, Creighton University and many more institutions that we take for granted were started by men. They were not. It was the women who wanted to make the difference.Professor emeritus of journalism at Creighton University, has written a well-researched history of these women that will keep you turning the page to find out more. She writes not sparing male egos or aggrandizing women's roles.

So much I never knew. I love this book so much I bought another by this author.