Portrait credit: Adam Fletcher Sasse (northomahahistory.com) via Nicholas Paine; Book Cover credit Adam Fletcher Sasse (northomahahistory.com)

By Leo Adam Biga

Ninety years after his death, Black activist George Wells Parker is finally getting his due thanks to the efforts of Nebraska Public Historians (NPH). The group’s successful 2020-2021 Go Fund Me campaign raised money for a gravestone that now memorializes Parker (1882-1931), whose major achievements as a scholar and thought-leader were tinged by tragedy.

The marker was installed July 1. His internment site at Forest Lawn Cemetery, in Section 12, Plot 4937, was previously unmarked. NPH members, along with Black scholars and community leaders, will speak about Parker’s Black liberation legacy at a 1 to 3 p.m. gravesite dedication ceremony on Sunday, September 26.

Omaha NAACP president Vickie Young and University of Nebraska Omaha Black Studies professor Nikitah Imani are among the scheduled speakers

As a speaker, author and journalist himself, Parker espoused civil rights and Black Lives Matter tenets decades before these movements began. Only now, in America’s racial reckoning moment, are his contributions coming out of the shadows.

Contrary to popular belief, local Black empowerment did not begin with Ernie Chambers in the 1960s. Indeed, Nikitah Imani said Parker was “a part of what might be called the First Renaissance of the Africana community in Omaha in the early 1900s.” Select newspaper publishers, editors and writers championed Black identity, racial pride, self-sufficiency and nationalist views of prominent influencers like Marcus Garvey. Some Omaha churches, including Zion Baptist, brought speakers who delivered similar Black liberation messages. Two ardent supporters of this movement were Earl Little, a minister, and his wife Louise. The couple’s activism drew the ire of the Ku Klux Klan, who enjoyed a large Nebraska membership. After being terrorized by the Klan, the Littles fled Omaha with their nearly 2-year-old son Malcolm. By the mid- 1950s Malcolm Little, then known by his Black Muslim name Malcolm X, emerged as America’s leading framer of Black consciousness. In their shared hometown of Omaha, Ernie Chambers mirrored Malcolm as an eloquent provocateur and thinker in the fight for self-determination. Other activists surfaced here to carry the cause, from Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa (David Rice) in the 1960s, to Matthew Stelly and Tariq Al-Amin in the 1990s, and most recently, Bear Alexander and Ja Keen Fox.

Reclaiming His Place

With the rediscovery of his story, Parker is reemerging as an important bridge figure in Omaha and American Black activism. Patrick Jones, an associate professor of History and Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, called Parker “a significant early Black nationalist.”

According to Imani, “Parker deserves recognition, not merely for being a significant historical son of Omaha, but more importantly for being part of that early pantheon of thinkers … who believed that the destiny of Africana people in the United States was and should be in their own hands.”

“I close with the hope of a time when earthly values will be measured with a justice now deemed divine. It is then that Africa and her sun-browned children will be saluted.”

— George Wells Parker

The gravestone memorializing Parker

credits him as author of *The Children of the Sun*, a treatise that posited Africa as the cradle of civilization. The stone is inscribed with the following passage by Parker: “*I close with the hope of a time when earthly values will be measured with a justice now deemed divine. It is then that Africa and her sun-browned children will be saluted.”*

Johnny Pain, a local educator and historian, described the book as an “underground classic.” It originally appeared in serial form in newspapers. The work informed speeches Parker made. The fact they were delivered “in front of white audiences across the nation over a century ago is remarkable,” said Pain.

“He wrote this important book that reinterprets classical history to center Black Africans. That’s revolutionary thought at the time of this assumed Black inferiority,” said UNO associate professor of history Charles Klinetobe, who is active in NPH. “Parker wanted to foreground Black people and put them in the middle of this history that is the root of western culture. It’s absolutely revolutionary in its audacity and ambition.”

The Aframerican Book Store in North Omaha carries the book in its virtual catalog of titles.

History Begets History

This weekend’s dedication will cap the Parker public history project for NPH, whose members researched his life and worked with Forest Lawn to place the stone. NPH formed from the Make Potter’s Proper effort that coordinated the state historical marker placed at Potter’s Field in 2020. Adjacent to Forest Lawn, Potter’s Field became the burial ground for the indigent, the forgotten, the unknown, the infamous from 1887 to 1957. Some 3,900 individuals, nearly half of them infants, along with prostitutes, vagrants and other unclaimed souls, are buried there, most in unmarked graves. Among the interned is Will Brown, the victim of the 1919 Red Summer mob attack outside Omaha’s courthouse, whose gravestone was purchased in 2012 by a man from California who learned of Brown’s lynching from a documentary about Henry Fonda.

On its Facebook page NPH describes itself as “a grassroots community group seeking to illuminate and preserve local history through public actions.”

Klinetobe said Parker’s Black ascendancy views anticipated those of more prominent activists who followed – “except he did it several decades earlier.”

“It’s difficult to imagine the rise of Black Power ideologies of the ‘60s without the work and impact of individuals like Parker,” said Imani, “who at an early point in history and against substantially greater odds was to say that Africana people could do for themselves and be themselves and succeed in this ‘new world.’”

Pain, formerly a board member with NPH, became so enamored with Parker’s story he convinced the group to devote its energies to commemorating a life filled with intersectionality. “George Wells Parker first came to my attention through research related to the lynching of Will Brown. He immediately stood out due to the brilliant force of his writing and the sheer ferocity with which he went into battle against white supremacy,’ said Pain. “He was a visionary historian, philosopher, poet, activist, among other things. But above all – an intellectual gladiator.”

An interesting intersection between Omaha native Black activists occurred in 1964 when Malcolm X, then at the height of his fame, returned to his birthplace to speak at the Civic Auditorium. During his visit he joined admirer and kindred spirit Ernie Chambers in lively discourse. A witness to the exchange, Dan Goodwin Sr., marveled at how their keen minds and fluid tongues met their match in each other. Tragically, Malcolm X was assassinated the following year. Chambers came to national attention a couple years later when his strong pro-Black, anti-“white supremacy” views were aired in the 1966 documentary A Time for Burning. A national speaking tour gained him more notice.

The experience of NPH member Michaela Armetta, a local “history geek,” is like that of many history buffs in that one discovery leads to another. The much published photo of Will Brown’s ravaged, burned body first brought that atrocity to her attention, which sparked new inquiries.

“When I ran across that and read that it happened in my city, I couldn’t believe it, but it did,” Armetta said. “It made me want to go see where he was buried and that’s how I found out about Potter’s Field, which I had never known about. It was self-education at that point and then continuing to learn things over the years about Will Brown’s story. I joined the Make Potter’s Proper project because I wanted to feel part of something that would present information and education to people who aren’t aware. A lot of people are not aware of that history. It was never taught in school.”

Not Knowing What You Don’t Know

When sharing Omaha’s past, history nerds like Armetta and her colleagues often encounter reactions along the lines of “I never knew that.”

“When I do a Red Summer Omaha lynching lecture in my class, it honestly looks like I went around the room and punched everyone in the stomach,” Klinetobe said. “Everybody looks absolutely shocked.”

Pain said dealing with uncomfortable history is necessary. “We must confront and process the most difficult aspects of our world in order to build our minds up. It's not always going to feel good in the moment, but that's just part of the process of growing bigger, stronger and better.”

“That’s what brought us to George Wells Parker, a major intellectual in the African American community and a very complicated man, who’s largely forgotten. I have a Ph.D in history, having studied African American history for the most part, and I knew the name, but honestly I didn’t know much about him until we started digging into this.”

— Charles Klinetobe

Klinetobe agrees. He finds it regrettable that relatively few Omaha social justice history moments own any tangible representation. It took a century for a marker to be placed at the site of the violence that killed Will Brown. Klinetobe applauds the efforts of the Omaha Community Council for Racial Justice and Reconciliation to mark that history. But, as he sees it, major historical events here too often remain invisible. “I think Omaha’s kind of relentlessly pragmatic, and in some ways that’s a wonderful thing,” he said, “but it takes dedicated effort then to point out some of this unfortunate past and that we do live in a deeply layered space. Right in urban Omaha we have the site of a major court decision on civil rights (the trial that declared Standing Bear a man), yet there’s nothing at the site to signify that. There’s a lake out in the middle of western Omaha with a marker, but it’s not connected to where it happened and what happened. South Omaha had a ballpark (Western League Park) where Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and anybody who’s anybody in baseball in the ‘20s and ‘30s played. Satchel Paige pitched the last game played there before the bleachers burned down. Yet there’s nothing to mark that spot.

“That’s what brought us to George Wells Parker, a major intellectual in the African American community and a very complicated man, who’s largely forgotten. I have a Ph.D in history, having studied African American history for the most part, and I knew the name, but honestly I didn’t know much about him until we started digging into this.”

Klientobe wasn’t alone. UNO Black Studies chair Cynthia Robinson expressed regret for only recently becoming aware of Parker, She’s astounded to learn all that he did and the paradoxical life he lived.

Preserving History Takes Purpose

If Omaha is to pay tribute to figures, buildings and events that merit it, said NPH member Stu Burns, who’s taught history, it must be purposeful. “If you want to preserve and mark the landscape it’s got to be a value, it can’t be a default.” Burns hopes NPH encourages others to rally around subjects like Parker who stood against the current or just plain stood out. “You can get a lot done that way when you finally decide rather than wait for someone else to do this, you organize and do this yourself.”

Meanwhile, the group’s weighing its next public history project in bringing to light lost history and seeking to expand and diversify its membership. It’s also working on becoming a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

The work of uncovering obscure history takes time. Pain did a deep dive on Parker. His research revealed the man endured wild swings of fortune precipitated by serious bouts of mental illness. These episodes, including violence and confinement, may have ultimately relegated his contributions to the margins of the academic, literary and journalistic spheres he operated in.

Born in the South, Parker moved with his family to Omaha as a child. The prodigy excelled at Omaha Central High School, where his gifts for writing and speaking got him noticed as “a leader among his classmates.” He won an essay contest at the 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition (A historical marker in Kountze Park marks a small portion of the exposition grounds.. Parker left Omaha to attend Howard University in Washington, D.C., and returned to study medicine at Creighton University.

Beginning in 1916, at the height of the Great Migration, he helped Blacks from the South settle into this unfamiliar and often hostile place.

“I think that really speaks to his good intention,” Klinetobe said. “He saw these people who needed help and he helped establish them within the community. He had a very Black-centered, Black consciousness in a time when Black pride just wasn’t the case for a lot of people.”

Parker’s Legacy

In 1917 Parker cofounded the Hamitic League of the World to promote Black pride and economic progress. As vice-president of the Omaha Philosophical Society, he found a forum for speeches he made about the richness of African culture and history.

Pain said Parker taught himself Greek in order to immerse himself in primary classical sources, which led to Parker making the case that at the very least Greek civilization owed much to Egypt. As a writer and editor, Parker shared his views in Omaha’s Black newspapers The Monitor and The New Era.. He also wrote a column for The Birmingham (Ala.) Reporter. Parker’s poem “When Africa Awakes” appeared in The Negro World, a publication of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). His self-published seminal work The Children of the Sun (1918) was republished by Black Classic Press in the 1970s. The book n was adapted into a stage production during Parker’s lifetime. Ads and reviews refer to its elaborate African sets and costumes,

“Birth of a Nation was a radicalizing and very important moment.”

— Charles Klinetobe

Not without risk to himself, Parker took on the KKK through a short-lived newspaper he launched, The Omaha Whip. He contributed to an expose of that hate group first published in The New York World and then distributed to newspapers across the country. Parker joined other Black public figures and organizations in denouncing the virulently anti-Black narrative of the sensationalist silent film hit The Birth of a Nation.

The D.W. Griffith movie was adapted from the book-play The Clansman by white supremacist minister Thomas Dixon, whose hateful rhetoric may have triggered one of Parker’s psychotic episodes, said Pain. In between Parker’s academic pursuits and prolific writings, he suffered mental breakdowns. In a 1911 fit, Parker killed the proprietress of the Minnesota boarding house where he was residing.. Committed to a home for the criminally insane there in 1912, he was released two years later when the asylum’s superintendent certified him "fully recovered” and not a danger to others. An indication of the respect Parker owned, said Klinetobe, is that despite the infamy of murder and madness in his past he was not entirely shunned.

“I think it’s really telling how quickly he was welcomed back into the Omaha community and into this work after his release.”

Klinetobe regards Parker as “the prototypical tortured genius – an absolute genius whose sanity was always a little tenuous.” The stigma of a troubled past, Klinetobe surmises, hurt Parker’s chances of being even more embraced by his peers. “When you go through documents of those early Black liberation groups you see his name popping up, but it’s always a little bit isolated, which I think might have something to do with the fact he was a troubled man. I get the sense he may have been personally alienating sometimes. But his ideas and his person were very much in the conversation within those circles then.”

It heartens Klinetobe that fresh flowers get regularly left at the gravesite of Will Brown and at the Potter’s Field marker. He hopes the same care is shown to Parker.

If UNO’s Nikitah Imani has his way, Parker will not be forgotten. “The acknowledgment of him and his contribution to his people is overdue,” he said.