Howard Kennedy Elementary School

Though constructed in 1910, the origins of the Howard Kennedy Elementary School date back to 1885 when the school opened as Omaha View School in a ten-room brick building. The school has almost exclusively served the Black community for most of its existence. The school survives today as a reminder of the segregation and racism that affected the education of Black youths in Omaha for several decades.

Racism and segregation within Nebraska's public education system date back to the Civil War era. The Nebraska Territorial Legislature noted in an 1856 law that free education needed to be provided to "all the white youth of this territory." Attempts after the war to provide education to African Americans, as advocated by a group called the Educational Association, proved fleeting as Nebraska officials responded in 1867 that "the people of Nebraska are not yet ready to send white boys and white girls to school to sit on the same seats with negroes; they are not yet ready to endorse in this tacit manner the dogma of miscegenation, especially are they yet far from ready to degrade their offspring to a level with so inferior a race." The Territorial Secretary recommended that separate schools for Black and White children would be the best solution.

Omaha View School functioned as the school district's smallest school, supporting a little more than 140 students in 1886, while other schools in the city averaged 300 to 900 students. Nevertheless, the school remained solvent into the early twentieth century. By 1908, the city declared the building used by Omaha View School unsafe and unusable, so officials voted to rebuild the Omaha View School with a sixteen-room building; the new school opened in 1910 as Howard Kennedy Elementary School, named for Omaha's first school superintendent (he also sat on the school board for a decade). 

In September 1919, the lynching of Will Brown led to the 1919 Omaha race riots, much of it targeting North Omaha. The riots spurred Whites to flee North Omaha (among other areas), including the Omaha View neighborhood. White parents increasingly placed their children in private schools and all-white public schools (notably in western Omaha); the segregation of North Omaha's public schools grew more prevalent so that, by the 1920s, Howard Kennedy School taught primarily African American students.

Racism and segregation continued to affect Omaha's school system into the middle twentieth century. Dr. Harry A. Burke, Omaha school superintendent from 1946 to 1962, believed strongly in segregated schools. He opposed having African American educators teach White children because he deemed it wrong Black person to function in a role of authority over a White student. In 1957, ostensibly operating as an all-Black school, the Howard Kennedy School received funding from the school district to accommodate the increasing numbers of students attending with a new addition, which doubled the number of classrooms; each class had its own room for the first time in numerous years. 

In 1976, the United States government took the Omaha Public Schools to court, and the U.S. circuit court ordered the district to desegregate Omaha's public schools. But, the court ruling exasperated the "white flight" trend as hundreds of White residents fled to the city's western suburbs. Thus, White student enrollment in the district significantly declined, so officials encouraged African-American students to travel to predominantly White schools across the city. The school continues to cater mainly to African American students in the 2020s. The building underwent several renovations during the late twentieth century, and then a significant rehabilitation project commenced in 2004. In 2014, Howard Kennedy became part of the Seventy Five North wraparound community redevelopment project whose mission involves breaking "the cycle of poverty and community deterioration by partnering to create high-quality housing, thriving schools, recreational facilities and other neighborhood enrichment amenities."

Fletcher, Adam. "A History of Howard Kennedy School." North Omaha History. Accessed February 25, 2023. https://northomahahistory.com/2020/06/05/a-history-of-howard-kennedy-school/.

--- --- ---. "A History of Segregated Schools in Omaha, Nebraska." North Omaha History. Accessed February 25, 2023. https://northomahahistory.com/2018/02/06/a-history-of-segregated-schools-in-omaha-nebraska/.

"Howard Kennedy History: A Digital Archive." HowardKennedyHistory.com. Accessed February 25, 2023. https://www.howardkennedyhistory.com/.

Seventy Five North. Accessed February 25, 2023. http://www.seventyfivenorth.org/about/.

Reber, Sarah J. “Court-Ordered Desegregation: Successes and Failures Integrating American Schools since Brown versus Board of Education.” The Journal of Human Resources 40, no. 3 (2005): 559–90.