One of the most significant yet under-recognized chapters in the Civil Rights movement happened in Omaha between 1952 and 1954. Starting three years before the more famous Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, the Omaha movement was a sophisticated campaign of economic withdrawal and direct action that fundamentally altered the labor landscape of Nebraska. Omaha didn’t have formal Jim Crow seating laws, so people there were battling for economic justice and the right of Black people to be employed by the public utilities their tax dollars supported. It was really a challenge to the “gentleman’s agreement” that made northern segregation happen. This is a history of the Omaha Bus Boycott of 1952-1954.
The Roots of Protest
When the DePorres Club was started at Creighton University in 1947, the interracial group of students and activists sought immediate, impactful action. Guided by the principles of social justice and the militant nonviolence of the burgeoning civil rights era, the club began identifying the Omaha and Council Bluffs Street Railway Company as a primary target for reform.
Despite a growing Black population that relied heavily on public transit to reach jobs in the stockyards and railroads, the company had a total ban against Black drivers and mechanics. Since they were the company’s most loyal customers, the city’s Black community felt the sting of this hypocrisy constantly since they were systematically excluded from its payroll.
According to the Omaha World-Herald, in 1949 the club gave the transit company petitions with 2,500 signatures calling for an end to hiring discrimination. The company said that if Black drivers were driving, white riders wouldn’t ride.
Moving Into Action
In 1952, the DePorres Club, led by activists such as Denny Holland and supported by the journalistic power of Mildred Brown and the Omaha Star, officially launched the campaign. Different from later southern boycotts that focused on total non-use of the system, the Omaha movement initially utilized a unique tactic known as the “Eighteen-Penny Protest.” At the time, the bus fare was eighteen cents. The DePorres Club urged Black riders to pay their fare using eighteen individual pennies to be a “legal harassment” tactic. When hundreds of riders flooded the buses during rush hour and slowly counted out eighteen pennies, it jammed the automatic coin-counting machines and caused massive delays across the city’s transit schedule. The goal was to make the cost of discrimination higher than the cost of integration by disrupting the efficiency of the transit system…