For more than a century, young people in Omaha have been demanding progressive change in passionate ways. In 1992, I organized a group of my peers at North High to start an environmental campaign after being denied by the school. This article highlights young people in the past who actually accomplished things and demonstrated the power of youth. This is a history of youth activism in Omaha.

Omaha’s Roots of Youth Activism

The notion of having a voice and agency has been part of the American tradition since the Revolutionary War. During those times, young people aided the Revolutionary Army in the war as spies, lookouts, and soldiers. The roles of children and youth as agitators and instigators continued into the 19th century, especially since the Civil War was referred to as “The Boys War,” and since many enslaved people who became freedom seekers were young. This activism roiled communities, cities, states, and the entire nation over the decades.

The history of youth activism in Omaha is a century-long narrative of young people who refused to be sidelined, serving as the heartbeat of the city’s struggle for justice and systemic change. School buildings, churches, and living rooms served for generations as incubators for resistance against a community, various systems, and an economy that sought to isolate them.

An early example of high-profile labor activism comes from the youngest workers in Omaha. The history of newsboy protests in Omaha represents some of the city’s earliest and most militant examples of youth-led collective action. These “newsies,” often as young as seven or eight, functioned as independent contractors who purchased papers from publishers with no right to return unsold copies, a high-risk system that left them vulnerable to economic fluctuations. The most significant wave of unrest began in July 1899, as Omaha newsboys joined a national movement sparked by strikes in New York City. On July 25, 1899, over 100 Omaha newsboys organized a “secret conference” and declared a strike against the Omaha Daily Bee and the Omaha World-Herald. Their main demand was a lower wholesale price—asking to buy bundles at 50 cents per hundred rather than 60 cents—to ensure they could earn a living wage after covering their losses. The boys utilized sophisticated labor tactics, including forming “flying squadrons” to intercept delivery wagons and using “moral suasion” (and occasionally physical intimidation) to stop others from selling papers, shaming nonparticipants as “scabs”.

Sometimes working alongside adults, youth activists in Omaha have been involved in campaigns not solely focused on youth as well. For instance, as early as 1899, a mass meeting of 200 African Americans was held to address the suspicious death of J.A. Smith while in police custody, an event that radicalized local youth and led to the formation of committees to fund legal prosecution against the officers involved.

Early 20th Century Youth Activism in Omaha

In the early twentieth century, youth action often mirrored the volatile labor environment of the city. In May 1903, a significant “School Children Strike” occurred at the Holy Family Catholic School. Eleven boys, some no older than eight, organized a secret conference to demand shorter school hours, specifically proposing a schedule from 9:30 to 11:45 and 1:15 to 3:00. They utilized sophisticated tactics, like “waylaying” classmates to keep them from returning and using “moral suasion and otherwise” to enforce the strike. The girls at the school supported the effort by designating those who returned to class as “scabs”. Although a truant officer threatened to jail the strikers, the intervention of missionary priests led the students back in “meek submission”.

In that same timeframe, similar unrest was reported at Kellom School, where students threatened a walkout to force the removal of a teacher. In 1905, this capacity for organization resurfaced when more than 800 elementary students in South Omaha staged a walkout to protest the presence of Japanese students brought in as strikebreakers.

The spirit of youth-led labor activism resurfaced in 1917 with a massive, highly organized boycott. During this era, newsboys picketed major distribution points across the city and successfully pressured the publishers of the World-Herald and The Bee to buy back unsold copies, a major structural victory for youth laborers. These strikes were not merely spontaneous; they were often supported by adult labor unions in Omaha’s stockyards, who recognized the newsboys as the youngest members of the city’s working class.

In 1925, the parents in the Walnut Hill School PTA activated their children to protest at the Omaha School Board for a new building. Participating in picketing and protesting at school board meetings, their campaign led to the construction of a new school by 40th and Hamilton.

Youth Organizing in the “Dirty 30s” & WWII

The Omaha youth activists shown here are Mable Longmeyer of the Omaha NAACP Youth Council and Dorothy Eure, who was 16 years old when she co-founded Tomorrow’s World Club.

The Great Depression marked the beginning of a period of intense growth for youth-led movements in Omaha, as young people shifted toward direct action strategies to face down and dismantle racial barriers. The Omaha NAACP Youth Council, formed in 1936, served as the initial catalyst for this movement by training young African Americans between the ages of 12 and 25 in the tactics of peaceful sit-ins, marches, and picketing. Led by Mable Longmeyer in 1938, the council energized Omaha’s youth to lead the fight against Jim Crow, providing a critical reference point for civic contribution.

By the 1940s, newsboy activism shifted from street brawls to formal organization. In 1943, newsboys in Omaha attempted to form a local chapter of the Newsboy Union to secure better insurance and consistent pay rates. However, these early campaigns were suppressed by truancy officers from Omaha Public Schools who threatened the children with jail time for “vagrancy” during strikes. The legacy of their picketing provided the template for the student walkouts and civil rights protests that followed in the coming decades though.

During the same time, the Omaha Negro Youth Council operated as a joint civic program of the Urban League, the Woodson Center, and the North Side YMCA. Established as a collaborative effort, the group focused on demonstrating the social and economic utility of Black youth. Their strategy relied on highlighting youth leadership through regular meetings, special events, and holiday programs that served as community reference points. These activities were common in local newspapers, and ultimately, the council succeeded in establishing a strong foundation for young people to contribute meaningfully to the city’s civic life.

Emerging alongside these efforts between 1940 and 1945 was the Tomorrow’s World Club, led by Dorothy Eure (16 year old) and Jack West (17 year old), Sr. (1926-1992) which acted like a “think tank” for Black youth. They promoted the notion that profound social change required rigorous preparation and a global perspective, and engaged in deep study and debate as well as social activities. Members prepared themselves to be the sophisticated political leaders needed for the escalating struggle, and in 1943 and 1945 launched sophisticated campaigns against hiring discrimination and school segregation.

The movement’s tactical edge sharpened significantly on November 3, 1947, with the founding of the DePorres Club at Creighton University. Founded by high school and college students like Denny Holland and Bertha Calloway, along with Father John Markoe, the club became the first in Omaha to utilize interracial nonviolent direct action. Throughout 1948, the club’s activities reached a fever pitch: they challenged the refusal of Sacred Heart High School to admit the daughter of a Black parishioner, successfully forced the Creighton University School of Dentistry clinic to end its policy of refusing Black patients, and staged the city’s first restaurant sit-in at the Douglas County Courthouse.

Despite being barred from meeting on the Creighton campus in October 1948, the club established the DePorres Center at 1914 North 24th Street, where they hosted weekly forums on racism and youth dances.

The National Movement Influences

By the early 1950s, the DePorres Club’s strategic use of boycotts became economically devastating to segregated businesses, reflecting a localized application of the rising tide of the national civil rights movement. Influenced by broader efforts for racial justice, the youth activists’ targeted campaign against the Edholm-Sherman Laundry for its racist hiring practices—specifically barring Black people from driving trucks or working in the main office—directly led to the company’s permanent closure in January 1951.

The club also successfully pressured the Coca-Cola Bottling Company to integrate its workforce by June 1951 and collaborated with the NAACP Youth Council for a five-month boycott of Reed’s Ice Cream in 1953. This partnership, which drew on the national NAACP’s push to energize young people against intolerance and prejudice, ultimately forced the ice cream company to change its discriminatory hiring practices. Furthermore, in May 1950, the club hosted Manuel Talley, founder of the Los Angeles chapter of the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE), bringing the national strategies of CORE’s interracial, non-violent direct action directly into the heart of Omaha’s activism.

In the 1960s, the NAACP Youth Council re-emerged under Archie J. Godfrey, Jr., successfully picketing Peony Park in 1963 to end its segregated swimming policy. In May 1969, approximately 17 youngsters, aged eight to twelve, staged a protest march in East Omaha to object to the transfer of Judith Goldston, a young Black clerk-typist, successfully pressuring authorities to return her to the center. This decade also saw the rise of the Black Association for Nationalism Through Unity (BANTU), which organized students at high schools like Central and Tech. In May 1969, BANTU issued demands to the school board, including Black history courses and the recognition of Malcolm X’s birthday. In October 1969, 54 Black students from the Black Liberators for Action on Campus (BLAC) conducted a sit-in at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) president’s office to lobby for African American history courses and a greater student voice. Concurrently, the anti-war movement flourished, with students at Creighton and UNO organizing draft card burnings and moratorium marches against the Vietnam War.

From 1966 to 1971, North Omaha was rough. Some youth in the community were both the primary people involved in and the targets of racial unrest in the community and beyond. The cycle of state-sanctioned violence through police brutality reached a boiling point in the 1960s; in March 1968, approximately 1,000 students walked out of Horace Mann Junior High School specifically to protest police brutality, while that same month, sixteen-year-old Howard Stevenson was shot and killed by police during a counter-protest.

For all kinds of reasons, this brought a shift from disciplined civil rights picketing toward radical self-determination and outbursts of frustration over disenfranchisement. Along with the Horace Mann Junior High School protest against police brutality and the killing of Howard Stevenson, a breaking point happened in June 1969 when an Omaha police officer shot and killed fourteen-year-old Vivian Strong, an event that sparked three days of looting and firebombing that decimated the North 24th Street business district.

In response to this climate of violence, organizations like BANTU emerged to mobilize African American high school students, demanding educational transformation and the removal of security guards from schools. Meanwhile, the Black Panther Party’s National Committee to Combat Fascism, led by young activists like David Rice, tried to stabilize the Black community through programs like the Free Breakfast for Children initiative before the movement was effectively suppressed following the 1970 Rice-Poindexter case.

After the Fires

The 1970s and 80s were marked by continued pushes for reform. In October 1970, a citywide organization called Students for Constructive Change was established, aiming to seek a greater student voice in school decision-making. In December 1971, Technical High students and mothers demanded a student lounge, longer library hours, more foreign languages, and a student voice in deciding punishment for students who break rules. By June 1972, Omaha North High School students proposed a revised form of student government to give legislative powers to a student assembly on school matters.

The movement for student rights was further galvanized by Bobby Lowery, an American Government teacher at Central High School. In 1971, after just one year of teaching, Lowery was suspended for taking 50 students from a study hall outside the school building, a move prohibited by school leaders. This led to his resignation and the subsequent founding of the Omaha Student Rights Center (later the Center for Student Rights and Responsibilities) in July 1972. Funded by the YWCA, the center acted as a mediator between school officials and parents, investigating expulsions and unfair punishments while ensuring minorities received equal treatment. Despite the organization’s success, Lowery faced significant opposition from the school district, which refused to allow the center to advertise in school newspapers and excluded him from disciplinary meetings. The center ultimately closed in May 1974 due to a lack of funds, despite Lowery’s lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C..

Modern Times

Youth engagement continued into the modern era. In July 1991, youth peace activists protested outside the Civic Auditorium during a speech by President Ronald Reagan regarding the Strategic Defense Initiative. That same year, students at North High initiated a climate crisis campaign.

In the 2010s and 2020s, youth activism in Omaha flourished further with widespread participation in #MeToo rallies and Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd and the killing of James Scurlock in Omaha. There’s also been growth in youth-led organizing in the city focused on the climate crisis, economic problems, and most recently, the Trump presidency and the actions of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

From the 1903 school walkouts to modern climate and peace rallies, Omaha’s history is defined by the persistent refusal of young people to accept the status quo.

My Angle

As a youth growing up in the Miller Park neighborhood in the 1980s and early 1990s, I was surrounded by radicals and pragmatists who were determined to make a better world. One of my ministers, Rev. Helen Saunders (1930-1994), came from Detroit to Omaha as a devoted advocate for Malcolm X’s late teachings, openly celebrating his legacy in the 1980s and 1990s when it wasn’t vogue to do that. Several of my community mentors, including Von Trimble (1927-2015), Idu Maduli, and Margaret Gilmore, were determined to celebrate the voices, engagement and power of children and youth to change their lives and the world we lived in. Reflecting on it later, I realized many of the adults most invested in me were working to improve the community through organizing and activism, as well as in their daily lives and careers, including nonprofit workers, teachers, preachers and others. Not everyone, for sure, but a fairly large number were committed. Even my own parents were determined volunteers who didn’t do things because they felt good or seemed right but because “it’s just what we do, bud,” which was my dad’s line to me once when I asked why.

It was from these roots that I became a youth activist in high school. It was 1990 when I was inspired by the 20th anniversary of Earth Day to write a manifesto to the teachers and leaders of North High. I proposed starting a new club of actual activists focused on saving the planet and especially North Omaha. I called it NEAT, or the North Environmental Action Team, and it was in opposition to the extant “environmental club” that was made of the near-interlopers bused into the school from west Omaha, who I saw as indifferent to the environmental blight I was raised within. Needless to say, this attempt to buck the system was rejected, and absent their consent I started doing things on my own. In 10th grade I convinced some friends to help me collect a few bags of pop cans around the building on Earth Day 1991 and we left them outside of the building with a huge paper that said “♡ NEAT.” The next year we crafted a massive cardboard Earth Day card and collected hundreds of signatures from students and teachers, delivering it to Principal Harvey with the NEAT signature on it again. When that didn’t get a response, my last year at the school I resorted to other, more radical action that also didn’t earn any response.

Without being versed in community organizing or adept at leading social change, my friends and I tried. We didn’t know we were part of a tradition extending far beyond environmental racism and the climate catastrophe, or that there were century-old roots to youth activism in Omaha.

But now you do, and youth in Omaha do, too.

Adam’s Note: After getting my first job with youth in 1991 and working in the youth development field for a decade, I started an international nonprofit organization in the early 2000s focused on engaging youth in social change. Since then, I have written more than 50 books and worked with 1,000,000 youth and adults worldwide to support progressive youth activism. Thanks for starting me out Omaha!

2026 and Beyond

The modern landscape of youth activism in Omaha right now in 2026 is a sophisticated evolution of the city’s century-long history of resistance, made obvious by transitions from spontaneous street action to highly professionalized, institutionalized organizing.

Today, youth activists have moved past the raw energy of the early newsboy strikes to use digital integration and formal legislative partnerships that push for systemic change across environmental, educational, and criminal justice sectors.

For instance, the Youth Social Justice League (YSJL) stands as a primary example of this shift, working in direct collaboration with the ACLU of Nebraska to provide “Know Your Rights” training that empowers high school students to navigate interactions with school resource officers and protect their digital privacy. Environmental advocacy has also reached a new level of formalization through Climate Action Omaha Youth (CAOY). This student-led coalition, which traces its lineage back to the 1854 origins of youth land stewardship and the 1991 North High climate protests, is currently lobbying the Omaha City Council for the “2030 Green Schools Initiative.” This campaign seeks to transition the entire Omaha Public Schools (OPS) infrastructure to 100% renewable energy, demonstrating a strategic focus on policy-driven transformation.

Parallel to these environmental efforts, the New BANTU Collective has emerged as a modern reimagining of the 1960s radical student movement. Their current focus is on “Curriculum Equity,” utilizing “digital walkouts” and coordinated social media campaigns to pressure the OPS Board of Education into expanding African American and Chicano Studies programs across all district high schools. The tactical repertoire of Omaha’s youth has expanded to include “Legislative Shadowing,” where young activists work alongside state senators at the Unicameral in Lincoln to testify on juvenile justice reform.

This high-level engagement is balanced by a commitment to community-based mutual aid, where youth-led networks manage “Community Fridges” and supply pantries in North and South Omaha. These programs frame food security as a political act, echoing the Black Panther Party’s historic breakfast programs.

The concept of student voice has been codified into the structure of Omaha Public Schools, with most high schools now hosting Student Advisory Boards that possess semi-legislative power over school budgets and climate. This represents a direct realization of the goals sought by Bobby Lowery and the Technical High students of the early 1970s.

In 2026, the youth of Omaha continue to prove that they are not just the leaders of tomorrow, but primary architects of the city’s current social, educational, and political realities.

You Might Like…

• A History of the Black Association for Nationalism Through Unity (BANTU) in Omaha
• A Timeline of the Omaha DePorres Club
• A History of the Omaha NAACP Youth Council
• A History of the City Interracial Committee
• A History of the Afro Academy of Dramatic Arts

Elsewhere Online

• Youth Social Justice League (ACLU of Nebraska) – A partnership providing “Know Your Rights” training and legislative advocacy for Omaha students.
• SaludABLEOmaha – A youth-driven public health movement in South Omaha focusing on community wellness and food access.
• Greater Omaha Community Action (GOCA) – The successor to the antipoverty agency where children famously protested for “Judy” in 1969.