"THE WORST SPATE OF RACE RIOTS AND LYNCHINGS IN AMERICAN HISTORY": RARE FIRST EDITION OF OMAHA'S RIOT IN STORY AND PICTURE 1919, AN EXCEPTIONAL PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD DOCUMENTING THE MOB FURY OF THOUSANDS OF WHITE MEN AND WOMEN IN THE LYNCHING AND MUTILATION OF A BLACK MAN NAMED WILL BROWN

(BROWN, Will) Anonymous. Omaha's Riot in Story & Picture 1919. Omaha, Nebraska: Educational Publishing Company, (circa 1919). Small oblong quarto, original blue-gray paper wrappers, staple-bound as issued; pp. (32). Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition of an extraordinary photographic account issued anonymously circa 1919, one of the first separate accounts known, documenting the September 1919 "reign of terror" in Omaha, Nebraska, where thousands in an enraged white mob attacked Black citizens, lynched a Black man, burned his corpse, and set blocks of the city on fire, with 15 full-page photographic illustrations and photographic title page, exceedingly rare in fragile original wrappers.

In 1919, the Allied victory did not bring peace to the U.S. It was a year Black soldiers returned from the war to be met by raging white violence. The months from April to November contained "the worst spate of race riots and lynchings in American history." James Weldon Johnson, then NAACP field secretary, proclaimed it "Red Summer" due to the blood, and NAACP files indicated there were at least 25 major riots and the lynchings of over 50 Black people; by 1920 the number was above 80. That September 25th, in Omaha, Nebraska, a white woman and man were robbed and the woman raped. After the Omaha Bee proclaimed a "black beast" responsible, a 41-year-old Black worker suffering from acute rheumatism, named Will Brown, was arrested and identified by the couple. Within a day a crowd of over 4,000 surrounded the courthouse, calling for his death. By Sunday evening, as mob estimates reached 15,000, small girls walked among the crowd handing out rocks, rioters broke into gun stores, and a 16-year-old boy rode through the crowd on a white horse with a rope on his saddle. The mob broke into the courthouse and set it on fire, then cut the hoses of firefighters. When the white mayor refused to hand over Brown, the crowd seized him, put a rope around his neck and hoisted him up, releasing him just before his death.

When the rioters returned to the courthouse, the police and prisoners were trapped and Brown was handed over. Beaten unconscious and stripped, a rope was put around his neck and he was raised up on a light pole. As this rare document notes: "Hundreds of revolvers and shotguns spat at the corpse as it dangled in mid-air. Then the rope was cut. Brown's body… was dragged through the streets," doused with fuel from street lanterns and set on fire. A young Henry Fonda saw Brown's lynching from the second floor of a print shop run by his father, who felt it was "important for his son to witness the savagery." As Brown's corpse burned and "a photographer recorded the gruesome event… rioters stood around the dead man and mugged for the cameras" (McWhirter, Red Summer, 198-99). In the following months, a grand jury issued over 120 indictments, including two men who were charged for Brown's murder. After a brief jury trial, both were found not guilty. "For almost 100 years Will Brown's bullet-ridden and charred remains lay in an unmarked grave," until a headstone was finally set in place, engraved: "Lest We Forget" (Menard, Lynching of Will Brown, 153).

In that year of 1919, "hundreds of people—most of them Black—were killed and thousands more were injured… antiblack riots were nothing new, but the postwar African-American response was" (Chicago Tribune). "African Americans fought back in large numbers… they also organized and transformed political organizations… [and] made 1919 a turning point in American race relations" (McWhirter, 14). The New York Times would report that during the riot, "practically every one of the 10,000 Negroes in Omaha was armed and… ready to fight for his life and home." Six years later, Malcolm X was born in Omaha. First edition, anonymously authored, published in Omaha soon after the riot, circa 1919: with photographic title page and 15 full-page black-and-white photographic illustrations by unnamed photographers.

Text and images generally fresh with mild marginal dampstaining, expert archival reinforcement to spine fold.