I was taught about this, first day, Black History, University of Nebraska.   History Fact**** Omaha’s most famous native son is El Hajj Malik el Shabazz. He was born in 1925 as Malcolm Little to Earl and Louise Little, and lived in Omaha less than a year of his life. His story in the city is longer though, and lots of residents have struggled to memorialize the force of Malcolm X’s name. Despite that, there has never been a building, street, park, library or museum officially named for Omaha’s most powerful and famous native son.  MALCOLM X  WHATS NOT MENTIONED : .......Nebraska-born actor Henry Fonda was 14 years old when the lynching happened. His father owned a printing plant across the street from the courthouse. He watched the riot from the second floor window of his father’s shop. "It was the most horrendous sight I’d ever seen . . . We locked the plant, went downstairs, and drove home in silence. My hands were wet and there were tears in my eyes. All I could t...

Escape from Auschwitz: Prisoner who managed to flee the Nazi death camp is seen alongside fellow inmates in newly-colourised images released to mark 75th anniversary of the prison's liberation January 27 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by troops from the Soviet Red Army  Some 1.3m people - largely Polish Jews - were sent to the camp between 1942 and 1944, and 1.1m killed Guards sometimes took pictures of prisoners , including Roma gypsy Vinzent Daniel - who staged a daring escape after just a month - and four-year-old Istvan Reiner, who was gassed alongside his grandmother Before Soviet troops could liberate the camp in 1945, most prisoners were sent on death marches elsewhere  Haunting images of prisoners taken as the entered Auschwitz have laid bare the horrifying reality of the Nazi's 'final solution' on the 75th anniversary of the death camp's liberation by Soviet troops. Among those pictured are Vinzent Daniel, a Roma gypsy who was sen...

As Native American tribes were increasingly wiped out at the turn of the 20th century, a few photographers were determined to preserve their history. As the 20th century approached, Native Americans faced mounting challenges to their lives, cultures, and traditions. After the Civil War, white settlers moved in droves toward the West. The completion of railroads leading that way only accelerated this migration — which would change the frontier forever. Not only did farmers plow through the natural grasses to plant their crops, they also wiped out countless American bison that roamed the land. In the conflicts that followed, Native Americans often found themselves outnumbered by not only white settlers but also the U.S. government. By the 1880s, most Native Americans had already been confined to reservations, many of which were placed in the least desirable areas. Many feared that their traditional way of life would soon be wiped out for good. Meanwhile, some photographers like Edward Cu...

On August 1, 1966, an ex-Marine named Charles Whitman fatally stabbed his wife and mother before climbing the clock tower at the University of Texas and carrying out a 90-minute rampage that left 14 dead and 31 wounded. In August 1966, a 25-year-old ex-Marine named Charles Whitman stabbed his wife and mother to death before hauling a footlocker full of guns and ammunition to the observation deck of the University of Texas Tower. There, 230 feet above the campus below, Whitman carried out a 90-minute massacre that left 14 people dead and 31 others wounded.  At the time, Whitman’s murder spree was unprecedented. It was one of the earliest mass shootings in the history of the United States and the first to be broadcast “live” in the media. Tragically, it all could have been prevented. Months before the attack, Whitman laid out his exact plan to his psychiatrist — who completely ignored it and failed to follow up with the troubled man. This is the story of Charles Whitman, the Texas To...

John Dury New of Mobile, Alabama, a Private First Class in the U.S. Marine Corps, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions on September 25, 1944,  on Peleliu Island, Palau Islands. New enlisted in the Marine Corps on December 8, 1941, the first Mobile, AL man to enlist after Pearl Harbor. On December 12, he joined the 4th Recruit Battalion at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina, and following recruit training served at Quantico, Virginia. In September 1942, Pvt New joined the 4th Replacement Battalion, Fleet Marine Force, Training Center, in San Diego, California. He sailed for duty overseas the following month and participated in the Guadalcanal campaign as a member of the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division.  He shared in the Presidential Unit Citation awarded to the Division on Guadalcanal. He later took part in the seizure and occupation of Cape Gloucester, New Britain, and in the defense of the airfield near ...

The Katyn Massacre was a series of mass executions of Polish nationals carried out by the NKVD ("People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs", the Soviet secret police) in April and May 1940. Though the killings took place at several places, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered. The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader, Joseph Stalin.  The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000. The victims were executed in the Katyn Forest in Russia, the Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons, and elsewhere. Of the total killed, about 8,000 were officers imprisoned during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, another 6,000 were police officers, and the rest were Polish intelligentsia the Soviets deemed to be "intelligence agents, g...

These haunting images taken inside human zoos reveal the dark secret of Europe and America's not-so-distant colonial past. In the thick of late 19th and early 20th-century colonialism, across Europe and the United States, people -- along with animals -- could be found in zoos. There, white families could gawk at individuals who had been dragged from foreign countries and placed inside cages, where they acted out a performance of their "daily life" for the onlookers' entertainment. Indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, the Americas -- and almost anywhere else that non-white people could be found -- served as the exhibits' subjects. After being taken from their homes and hauled across the ocean, these individuals would be placed (sometimes behind fences or wires) in enclosures designed as artificial replicas of their "natural habitats," including a fake ecosystem and prop versions of their former homes. Visitors could then peer into their cages to see how th...

U.S. Army Captain Robert E. Roeder of Summit Station, Pennsylvania, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions on September 27-28, 1944, near Battaglia, Italy. Roeder joined the Army in 1936 from his birthplace of Summit Station, Pennsylvania and served with Company G, 350th Infantry, 88th Infantry Division.  On September 27, 1944, during the defense of Mount Battaglia, Roeder repeatedly encouraged his men and directed their defense against the enemy. The next day, he was injured by shell fragments and carried to the company command post.  He refused medical treatment, dragged himself to the post door, and fired his weapon at the attacking Germans while continuing to lead his men. He was killed moments later by an exploding shell. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions on September 27-28, 1944. Roeder is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. He was 27 years old at the time of his death. Related post The Mi...

4 years old portrait of smiling kid Istvan Reiner that was taken just weeks before , and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp  Auschwitz concentration camp, was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust.  It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps.The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish Question. After Germany sparked World War II by invading Poland in September 1939, the Schutzstaffel (SS) converted Auschwitz I, an army barracks, into a prisoner-of-war camp. The initial transport of political detainees to Auschwitz consisted nearly solely of Poles to whom the camp was initially established. The ...

The Katyn Massacre: When The USSR Purged 22,000 Polish Men — Then Blamed The Nazis The Soviet Union even went so far as to include the Katyn Massacre among the list of Nazi war crimes presented at the Nuremberg trials. In 1940, Poland was caught between the military aggression of both Germany and the Soviet Union. The conflict climaxed that spring in Russia’s Katyn Forest when the Soviets murdered 22,000 of the best and brightest Poles of their generation en masse — then tried to blame the whole thing on the Nazis. The Katyn massacre and its ensuing cover-up shaped Russo-Polish relations for the next 70 years and remains shocking to this day. Ordering A Mass Murder After Poland was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939, most native Poles not eligible for military service (like women, children, and the elderly) were shipped to the hinterlands of the Soviet Empire to die or submit to Soviet control. The other faction of Polish society faced a different fate. These victims ...