Civil Rights Era Surveillance of Omaha Activists

Supplemental reading By Kietryn Zychal for “Omaha Police Surveilled BLM Organizers”

The late Gloria Bartek was deeply involved in the protest movement in Omaha in the 1960s. A white mother of four young boys, she was married to artist Tom Bartek who taught classes at Creighton University. She saw a notice on the bulletin board in the art department seeking people interested in starting an underground newspaper. Freshman David Rice, who was Black, also went to the organizing meeting and he is credited with giving the newspaper its name: Buffalo Chip. 

“He [David] didn’t use four-letter words and one of his favorite expressions was ‘buffalo chip,’” Bartek explained in a video shot two months before her death from breast cancer in 2004. “We thought that would be a nice midwestern name for telling the story of a whole lot of sh#t.”

Bartek claimed the Buffalo Chip was banned on all campuses in Omaha and in all high schools, “which, of course, made it all the more enticing for people to want to read. When the president of the university— his name was Naylor— banned it, we had a headline: ‘Naylor Steps On Buffalo Chip.’” 

And yet, writing and publishing a cheeky underground newspaper brought both Bartek and Rice to the attention of the police and even the FBI. She described becoming aware of their presence. “You go to a meeting and they’re shooting [pictures of] the license number of your car. And you hear little clicks on your telephone,” she said. Bartek recalled staying up late one night to create a special edition of the Buffalo Chip after riots erupted when George Wallace spoke in Omaha in 1968. She remembered how unnerving it was that a police car was parked outside most of the night with its lights flashing while she worked.

Omaha World Herald, 1968

Bartek also sang with Rice at the guitar mass at Holy Family Catholic Church. The pastor of Holy Family, Jack McCaslin, was charged with inciting a riot for organizing protests at Wallace’s speech. Weekly music rehearsals for Holy Family services were held in Bartek’s home. “Later on, when the FBI came around interviewing people in the neighborhood about us, a neighbor who lived across the street said, yes, we had communist cell meetings every week… We were singing for Jesus, and she thought we were singing for Joe Stalin,” Bartek recalled with a laugh. The FBI had a file on Bartek’s husband, which he received through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Years later, in 1971, Rice, along with Edward Poindexter, would be charged and convicted for the suitcase bombing murder of Omaha Police officer Larry Minard. Bartek, who considered Rice to be like a son, was among the most vocal proponents of their innocence.

Rice, (who later changed his name to Wopashite Mondo Eyen we Langa, or Mondo) and Poindexter were the leaders of militant organizations in North Omaha including the disbanded Black Panther Party and the National Committee to Combat Fascism (NCCF). There has been voluminous documentation of the FBI’s surveillance of the Panthers nationwide. Less attention has been paid to the surveillance and harassment conducted by the Omaha Police against the local activists, partly because more FBI memos have been released than police intelligence unit files.

In one FBI memo, reference is made to the Omaha Police department’s practice of stopping cars driven by NCCF members at every opportunity. The late Frank Peak, who drove a yellow sports car, was one of their main targets. When asked in 1995 what he was charged with, he erupted, “NOTHING!” Peak explained that he was frequently stopped, asked to give police his driver’s license, and held for long periods of time without being charged with any crime.

A photo from the North Omaha Sun Newspaper that later appeared in the Omaha World Herald

The arrests of Poindexter and Mondo brought about the end of the NCCF in Omaha. The group disbanded and did not regroup under any other umbrella. By 1971, Bartek had given up activism and was working for the Nebraska Arts Council where she felt she could make a difference “from the inside.” She remembered bursting into tears the first time she visited Mondo at the penitentiary in Lincoln. He put his arms around her and said, “You come down here and I’ve got to comfort you.” Bartek used her position with the arts council to help Mondo bring the arts into prison by creating programs in music, writing and theater, continuing their progressive partnership even behind bars.