A History of the Omaha Bus Boycott

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

DePorres Center, N. 24th and Grant Streets, North Omaha, Nebraska — This is a 1954 pic of the storefront of the Omaha DePorres Center at N. 24th and Grant Streets in North Omaha, Nebraska.

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

This is an original leaflet for the Omaha Bus Boycott by the DePorres Club.

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.

As the protest escalated, Mildred Brown used the Omaha Star to galvanize the community, publishing “Victory Lists” of integrated businesses and editorials that framed the bus company as a relic of an unfair past. The rhetoric was clear: if the company would not hire Black workers, Black citizens should not give the company their money.

The movement eventually transitioned into a more traditional boycott, with the DePorres Club organizing carpools and jitney services to transport workers from North Omaha to the downtown and South Omaha business districts. This logistical feat required immense community coordination, utilizing Black-owned gas stations and church parking lots as staging areas. It was a visible demonstration of the community’s “city within a city” infrastructure being repurposed for political warfare.

The Omaha and Council Bluffs Street Railway Company initially responded with defiance, supported by a city government that was hesitant to challenge the private utility’s hiring prerogatives. But the economic pressure began to take a toll. Delays caused by the penny protests and the loss of revenue from the North Omaha corridor began to affect the company’s bottom line.

The boycott also started attracting national press and interracial labor unions, and put Omaha in an uncomfortable spotlight during an era when the city was trying to market itself as a modern, progressive hub of the Midwest. The interracial nature of the DePorres Club was especially effective because it prevented the white establishment from framing the issue as a purely “outside” or “radical” racial agitation.

Breaking the Business

By 1953, the pressure reached a breaking point. The transit company finally agreed to sit down for negotiations with the DePorres Club and representatives from the Omaha NAACP. The turning point came when the company realized that the Black community was prepared to sustain the boycott indefinitely.

In a landmark victory for the civil rights movement in Omaha, the Omaha and Council Bluffs Street Railway Company announced in late 1953 that it would begin accepting applications from all qualified individuals regardless of race. This was followed by the hiring of the first Black bus drivers in Omaha’s history. These men became symbols of a new era of Black political and economic power, proving that the racial hierarchies of the North could be dismantled through disciplined, community-wide action.

The success of the Omaha Bus Boycott had ripple effects far beyond the transit company. The DePorres Club was bolder from then on, and took on other segregated businesses in the city, leading to successful protests against the discriminatory practices of the Reed’s Ice Cream parlors, Coca-Cola bottling, and the eventually successful effort to integrate the Peony Park swimming pool.

It also solidified the role of the Omaha Star as the most powerful political instrument in North Omaha, demonstrating that media-driven activism could achieve results where traditional lobbying had failed. The victory provided a psychological boost to a community that was increasingly being hemmed in by redlining and urban renewal projects, offering a reminder that collective action could still force the hand of the white power structure.

This 1954 image shows the first African Americans hired to drive Omaha public transit after 75 years. Included here are Bobby L. Jones, Lee A. Williams and Charles "Sonny" Abram Sr. (1915-2001), with one other unidentified driver. — This 1954 image shows the first African Americans hired to drive Omaha public transit after 75 years. Included here are Bobby L. Jones, Lee A. Williams and Charles “Sonny” Abram Sr. (1915-2001), and Frank “Lucky” Longstreet.

Today, some civil rights historians look back on the Omaha boycott as a template for the larger movement that would follow in the South. It demonstrated the effectiveness of “the power of the purse” and the necessity of a dedicated, youth-led vanguard working in tandem with established community institutions like the Black press and the church.

While it did not end all forms of employment discrimination in Omaha—many retail and corporate offices would remain closed to Black workers for another decade—it shattered one of the most visible employment barrier in the city. The image of a Black man at the helm of a city bus was a daily, moving testament to the fact that the status quo of 1950 could be changed.

By 1954, as the boycott officially concluded with the integration of the workforce, the Black political machine in Omaha had matured. The movement had trained a new generation of leaders who would go on to lead the fair housing and school integration battles of the 1960s. The Omaha Bus Boycott proved that the North was not a passive landscape of de facto segregation that would simply fade away, but a battlefield where justice had to be won through strategic, persistent, and organized defiance.

In 2025, the Omaha Bus Boycott of 1952-1954 remains a foundational moment in the history of the Midwest, marking the point where Black Omaha moved from asking for inclusion to demanding it through the undeniable power of their collective economic presence.

You Might Like…

Elsewhere Online

“Flashback Friday: Omaha’s Bus Boycott of 1952-54” Nebraska State Historical Society

BONUS

Leveraging their military service, one of their picket signs said, "Negro G.I.'s Drive Trucks, Tanks and Jeeps in Korea — Why Not Streetcars and Buses in Omaha?" — Leveraging their military service, one of their picket signs said, “Negro G.I.’s Drive Trucks, Tanks and Jeeps in Korea — Why Not Streetcars and Buses in Omaha?”