Sunday, June 6, 2010

Ryan's "Framed"

The grave of Will Brown, lynched in the 1919 Omaha Race Riot. I'm not sure that he was framed, but justice was certainly not upheld.

As a side note, framing this was a real pain.



/rl

3 comments:

Michael said...

I did not know his grave was marked or public. Is that Potters Field by Forest Lawn?

Read about this when I was young, and later the Western Heritage put together a nice piece on it.

I can't believe this story happened in Omaha.

Ryan said...

Yup, Potter's Field next to Forest Lawn. Apparently sometime last year some guy from California did a survey and found the grave, then put up the marker.

Somewhere I saw a series of photos from the riot. Besides a disturbing photo of Brown's body being burned, there are photos of the courthouse burning and of National Guard troops with belt fed machine guns set up in sandbagged nests on street corners.

Ten years before this incident, the Greek section of town got the torch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greeks_in_Omaha,_Nebraska

Ryan said...

More info on the marker:
http://www.pe.com/localnews/inland/stories/PE_News_Local_S_hebert06.3792504.html