Mayor Edward Smith sought to quiet the mob and was dragged to a lamppost and hanged with a makeshift noose. Pulled down by a quick acting policeman the mayor hovered near death for several days. Will Brown was not so lucky. The mob hanged Brown and then dragged his body through the downtown streets behind a car before burning it on a street corner.
Fifty years later an Omaha policeman shot a 14 year-old girl, Vivian Strong, in the back to disperse a crowd. The death of the youngster triggered a year of intense tension between Omaha police and the black community.
Chief critics of the Omaha police were Black Panthers Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice). Poindexter and Langa were the leaders of the Panther group National Committee to Combat Fascism and were at the center of attention.
But it was not just the Omaha police that were watching the two Panthers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was conducting a nationwide secret war against the Panthers code-named COINTELPRO. Poindexter and Langa were targets of the COINTELPRO agents.
It all came to a head one night in August 1970 when police were called to a vacant house to investigate an emergency call about a woman screaming. Instead, a suitcase bomb was waiting for the police. Officer Larry Minard was killed and seven others injured in the blast.
Police dragnets swept up dozens of people, multiple arrests were made but in the end a 15 year-old, Duane Peak, confessed to placing the bomb. But the COINTELPRO operation did not want a 15 year-old in custody, they wanted to silence the Black Panthers in Omaha. Freedom of Information requests have revealed that the FBI worked closely with Omaha police on the case and that critical information was later withheld from defense attorneys for Poindexter and Langa who were charged with the crime.
Peak was given a deal and sentenced as a juvenile in exchange for his testimony against Poindexter and Langa. The tape of the emergency call was withheld and later destroyed without ever being heard by a jury. Evidence implicating an uncle of Vivian Strong was not pursued by police. Conflicting testimony by police was made over dynamite allegedly found in Langa’s residence.
Poindexter and Langa both denied their involvement in the crime and continue to proclaim their innocence from their prison cells, thirty-six long years after the trial that resulted in life sentences for the pair.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
