Custer County, named in memory of General George Armstrong Custer, was organized July 27, 1877. Frontiersmen and pioneer ranchers had been living in the area since 1872. Earlier, soldiers from Fort McPherson and settlers from the Platte River counties had regularly made hunting expeditions here, for its river valleys were…
In the early hours of October 10, 1891, a mob of white people from Omaha and the surrounding counties gathered at 18th and Farnam Streets to lynch George “Joe Coe” Smith, a 20-year-old Black man. On October 8, local newspapers falsely reported that a white girl died after being assaulted…
On September 28, 1919, thousands of white people, aided by local law enforcement, lynched a Black man named Will Brown in Omaha, Nebraska. Allegations of crimes against Black people during this era were rarely subject to scrutiny and often sparked lethal violence even if there was no evidence tying the…