Vwegba Blogging World

Brown was an African American man killed by a white mob during the 1919 Omaha race riot. In a 1976 oral history interview, white Omahan Daniel Gruenig recounted some of the events of the 1919 Omaha race riot including the lynching of William Brown (sometimes referred to as Will Brown) by a white mob. Dressed in their Sunday best, heaved bricks through windows and fired guns into the air and the Douglas County courthouse that kept Will Brown inside. As night fell, they poured gasoline on piles of valuable records and set the courthouse ablaze, ripping ladders and hoses from the arriving firemen until they had their man.  The mob of thousands of white people had laid siege to the Douglas County Courthouse because they wanted to murder Brown, who had been wrongly accused — of assaulting a white woman. The rioting mob of perhaps 15,000 people set the courthouse on fire. They tried to lynch the mayor of Omaha as well! They somehow finally got their hands on Brown. They beat him. They hanged