This book is the first of its kind, a "racial history" of the Omaha Public Schools, the largest school district in the state of Nebraska. It is also a sociological treatise aimed at exposing and analyzing the systemic racism and attendant discriminatory actions that have long been a part of that history. In a state and a city where embellishment, camouflage, educational distortion and outright lies have long been a tradition, and where the major newspaper aids and abets the system in its manipulated manifestations of reality, this book should be viewed with the same intensity as was demonstrated when the system had the hypocritical temerity to order 8,000 "cultural proficiency manuals" that, to date, have not taught the staff, faculty or administration a damn thing about cultural competency or the reality of race relations. This book is therefore tailored for the Omaha Public Schools. This is not one of those generic, abstract write-a-document-so-we-can-get-paid-type approaches that the OPS has grown accustomed to. As a long-time defender of black people in North Omaha and as a master educator I believe that, "Where much is known, much is required." I also believe what Malcolm X taught long ago when he said, "Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research." The old folks further teach that, "the truth shall set you free." The Omaha Public Schools has been so steeped in the lies of its administration, its Board of Education and its teachers that condemnation of those lies and correction of them is therefore mandatory. Even though the entire state of Nebraska, from the near genocidal relocation of the First Nation people to its on-going abuse and residential segregation of Blacks and Latinos, there remains a fear by white decision makers to sanely address issues of race. Instead, fake programs, tenuous "projects" and grant-generating claims to "helping the poor" are what the city's tradition is filled with. From the pre-schools to the community college and the universities (Creighton and the University of Nebraska Omaha), the most intelligent people in the city remain abysmally ignorant and have a history of commiting one stupid act after another while thinking they are "progressive." The decision makers anoint and appoint buffoons to represent the communities of color who serve as rubber stamps for one failed program after another. To study a system and its institutions with a laser focus is more productive than those working in that system than all the "cultural proficiency manuals" ever produced. The latter written by outsiders and consisting of euphemism and quotes from scholars that OPS leadership never heard of. The former, a viable contribution to a racist system's own understanding of its past, present and future.
About the Author: Matthew C. Stelly is a doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee working on a degree in Urban Education and Community Policy. He holds three Master's degrees: Urban Studies (1982), Urban Education (1983) and Political Science (2000). He is the former editor of the Milwaukee Courier newspaper, former director of the Great Plains Black Museum and the Plano (TX) African American Museum, and lead archivist for The Black Academy of Arts and Letters (TBAAL) in Dallas, Texas. Stelly has more than 2,500 articles in print and has won two national essay competitions. He is the founding director of the largest African-American neighborhood group in Nebraska, the Triple One Neighborhood Association and Parents Union. He is the father of five children - Mandla, Malik, Clariece, Charisse and Shannon -- and remains actively involved in community organizing and neighborhood development in several cities, including Milwaukee and Omaha.