history – David L. Bristow

Red Summers: Omaha’s 1919 lynching

I provided narration for Bayeté Ross Smith’s 360 video about the 1919 lynching of Will Brown in Omaha. Smith combines historic photos with present-day 360-degree video from the same exact locations. The effect is powerful. Watch the video and read Jimmie Briggs’ accompanying essay at The Guardian. It’s one part of Smith’s “Red Summers” project.

Omahans commemorate 1891 lynching of George Smith

A group of Omahans gathered at the Douglas County Courthouse on a chilly day in October 2020 to commemorate the 1891 lynching of George Smith, a Black man falsely accused of raping a White child. The lynching took place at the same location where another Black man, Will Brown, was lynched under similar circumstances in 1919.

The event was organized by Dr. Franklin Thompson of the University of Nebraska Omaha and the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery, Alabama. EJI has been gathering jars of soil from lynching sites around the US and erecting historical markers. During the ceremony a series of readers read aloud my chapter on Smith from my book, A Dirty, Wicked Town: Tales of 19th Century Omaha. Both WOWT-TV and the Omaha World-Herald covered the event.

I spoke for about five minutes near the end of the ceremony. Here are my remarks:

New book: “Nebraska History Moments”

I don’t normally post here about my employer, History Nebraska, but in this case I wrote a book as part of my job. It’s available through University of Nebraska Press and online sellers such as Amazon. It’s meant to be an easy read for people with little time or short attention spans. It’s a bit like my first book, A Dirty, Wicked Town: Tales of 19th Century Omaha, in that I wrote it not only for people who like history, but especially for people who don’t yet know that they like history.

Here’s the description from the back cover:

“Even a moment is enough for wonder and curiosity. Each page of this book uses a photo or artifact to tell a true story about the past, drawing from the extensive collections of History Nebraska. You can read it straight through, but it’s written to be browsed. Here are the turning points, disasters, amusements, causes and controversies, changing technologies, and scenes of daily life of the people who lived in a Nebraska that sometimes seems familiar to us, and sometimes seems a world away.”

You can find extra online content related to the book, and sign up for a free, weekly Nebraska History Moment email at this page on History Nebraska’s website.