Black print with a white carnation: Mildred Brown and the Omaha Star newspaper, 1938--1989

This study examines and analyzes the life and times of Mildred Dee Brown, the co-founder of the Omaha Star, the longest running black newspaper founded by a black woman in the United States. Her story dates from the nineteenth-century era of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, to the twentieth century\u27s Great Migration, World Wars I and II, the Red Scare, the civil rights and black power movements, desegregation and urban renewal. Brown\u27s strong family background, her deliberate involvement with the black community in Omaha, Nebraska, usage of the politics of respectability, knowledge through practical application and formal education, community collective activism, racial solidarity, and ability to change strategies, ensured her status and her weekly\u27s longevity in the city\u27s black enclave. During Brown\u27s fifty-one year tenure as the owner, editor, and publisher of the Omaha Star, she successfully challenged racial discrimination, unfair employment practices, restrictive housing covenants, the public segregated school system and a freeway dividing the minority neighborhood. The Near North Side\u27s matriarch, with her trademark white carnation corsage, became an iconic leader while her legacy, the Omaha Star newspaper, continues as a source of racial uplift for black Omaha residents.