Mass arrests: The 'Omaha 54' and their fight to bring Black Studies to UNO
For decades, The University of Nebraska-Omaha's Black Studies Department has offered courses on Black History in America and around the world. But the idea was not always welcomed.
In 1969, a group of 54 UNO students came together to demand a Black Studies class be brought to the university. It took them getting arrested and two years to pass before the Department of Black Studies was established.
LaVell Williams was a freshman at UNO.
"It was nothing like it has developed into today. We just wanted a Black studies course in the beginning," Williams said.
Now, at age 70, he still remembers the leaders of the group's warning: "Now, more than likely if we stage a sit-in, we're going to be arrested"
Williams said, "About half of the people left, more than a half of students left."
But Williams decided to stay.
"A friend of mine, she told us, 'you know, your mother's going to whoop you,'" he said.
When the day came for the sit-in, Williams and 53 others walked into Chancellor Kirk Naylor's office.
"They let him know, 'Some of us, you know, we've been here before and we're not going to leave today until you give us an affirmative answer,'" Williams said.
When the chancellor said 'no,' that's when the students simply sat down.
"UNO's security came first and they asked us to leave and we said 'no, we will not leave,'" Williams said.
After the students sat peacefully for around half an hour, the police arrived.
"They said 'you are under arrest for trespassing,'" Williams recalled. "In the picture, in the newspaper, I'm coming out with a young lady and a young man."
Williams and the other students were handcuffed and sent to the police station.
"Once we were taken in, they read us our rights, told us that we'd been arrested for trespassing and they put us into cells," Williams said.
Williams remembers a man working as a lawyer for Legal Aid posting their bail.
"As we were leaving, it was said, 'Their bail was paid over two hours ago, why are they just now being released?' And so, when I looked at the officer and said 'why are we just now being released?' He said 'Because you got a big mouth,'" Williams said.
While in the cells, Williams said he and the other students spoke about the police brutality they experienced and saw in Omaha at the time.
Williams remembers one incident that made him stop leaving his house during the city's riots in 1969: "The policeman took a shotgun and put it to my head and said 'N, I will kill you.'"
Williams added, "When I got home, I thought about it. I could have just as easily been dead if he pulled the trigger."
While scary, experiences like that only fed his desire to help in the larger fight for racial justice.
"Black studies, it's a viable discipline, like math, like English, like history," said Dr. Cynthia Robinson, the Black Studies Department Chair.
Robinson makes it a point to teach her students about the Omaha 54.
"They put their reputations, their livelihood in jeopardy, but they thought that it was a need to sacrifice that," Robinson said.
The sacrifice paid off in 1971 when the university finally established the Department of Black Studies.
"And my thought was 'Whoa, finally. After all this time,'" Williams said.
The Omaha 54 were charged with misdemeanors. Their fines were taken care of and they did not face any more jail time other than the day they were arrested.
An exhibit about the Omaha 54 and UNO's Department of Black Studies is open to the public through August at UNO's Criss Library. You can also view material in the exhibit online.