Monday, December 2, 1:55pm – 2:10pm, via Zoom
Cameron Mackie
History 452
In 1909, relations between recently arrived Greek immigrants and so-called ‘native’ Americans in Omaha, Nebraska had deteriorated significantly. In February of that year, the death of a South Omaha Police Officer at the hands of a Greek immigrant began two days of rampant defamation and nativist rhetoric against the Greeks by Omaha Newspapers. Finally, on the third day, thoroughly incensed by what they had read, a mob approaching three thousand individuals descended on South Omaha’s ‘Greektown’, a predominantly Greek neighborhood at the time, and ransacked it. After all the dust settled and the crowd had been dispersed, over three dozen buildings were destroyed, and the Greek population of three thousand people fled the area. Unfortunately, this was not an isolated case, but an endemic trend of racial mob violence in the United States during this period. Similar methods had been used against Italian immigrants living in New Orleans ending in the lynching of eleven people, and indeed also against black Americans all throughout the country. While different in their targets, the physical methods and the propaganda followed certain similar parameters, in one way or another the targeted groups were perceived as a threat to “American” culture and values which were dominated by white Anglo-Saxon supremacist beliefs.