Black Print with a White Carnation: Mildred Brown and the Omaha Star Newspaper, 1938-1989

8. The Death of an Icon

165 8 The Death of an Icon Driving past the corner of Twenty-Fourth and Lake Streets, one can almost imagine the thriving Near North Side community before it perished in the burning and destruction of the 1969 race rebellion. Today, the Near North Side remains only a shadow of its former potential . However, evidence of its upbeat past lingers on a one-block section of Twenty-Fourth and Grant Streets. The short strip of roadway bears the title “Mildred Brown Street.” The Star publisher, as well as Father Markoe and the De Porres Club, are no longer, but the results of the successful collective battles they fought still exist. The numerous newspaper youths, whom Brown encouraged through advice, respect, and employment, have grown into middle-aged adults. Brown’s voice, now barely a whisper in the Omaha Star newspaper, continues her goal of equality. The Omaha Star building earned its rightful place on the National Register of Historic Places for being a center of social history , ethnic heritage, and mass communication during the civil rights movement. Matt Holland, the son of deceased De Porres Club president Denny Holland, applauded the building’s national status. “The building means a lot of history to Omaha, not just the black community . The Star is an icon. Like the bus seat that Rosa Parks sat on. It’s that tangible.” Mildred Brown was a courageous leader and a practical dreamer. The Omaha Star newspaper was her dream. She made it happen for herself and the city’s black community.1 In the last week of January, in 1989, an older but energetic Mildred Brown sat down on her office couch for an interview with Jeff Reinhardt , the white editor of Omaha’s mainstream New Horizons magazine . It was a chilly, snowy afternoon, and their twilight meeting at 166 The Death of an Icon the Omaha Star building was the one time slot Brown had available in her busy schedule that day. Reinhardt admired Brown’s numerous displayed awards, including the Key to the City plaque given to her the night black and white Omaha honored her in 1984. His gaze dropped to the photo albums on the coffee table, and before he could stop himself, he picked up one of the volumes and started thumbing through the first pages. Images of the newspaper owner with Jackie Robinson, Richard Nixon, and Hubert Humphrey stared back at him. Looking over Reinhardt’s shoulder, Brown softly reminisced, “I guess I’ve met everybody who’s anybody.” Her successful networking extended to managing the Star’s twenty-three staffers, operating the weekly within her monthly budget of fifty thousand dollars, and maintaining its circulation of 30,865 subscribers in thirty-nine states. Her Star, she said, was the longest-operating black newspaper in Nebraska’s history because “we don’t write anything derogatory, and we portray our role models.” During her fifty-year tenure, she had been up against several stiff obstacles, but she had no fear, because the Star had broken down discrimination in Omaha. At the end of the interview, Paul Bryant , a young man whom Brown fondly called her foster son, arrived at her office and home. Bryant was driving her to the evening’s special entertainment. She was attending the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at Omaha’s downtown civic center. Reinhardt bid Brown good-bye and thanked her for the interview. As he departed through the newspaper office’s front door, he asked Brown one last question: “When will you retire?” She did not hesitate. “I’ll be at the Omaha Star until God takes me.”2 In the meantime though, Brown needed to decide who she would pick as the successor of her newspaper. She had started worrying about who would take over the Star in the 1970s. It would take an excellent staff person to operate the Star, because Mildred Brown and the Omaha Star were one and the same entity. But no one in her nuclear family was still alive or well enough to take over the newspaper. Annie “Anna” Washington, her older sister, had died almost two decades earlier on October 20, 1970, in Kansas City, Missouri, and her youngest The Death of an Icon 167 sibling, Willie “Bill” Brown, had died on June 13, 1975, at age sixtytwo . Her second-best choice was her first husband, Dr. Shirley Edward Gilbert, but he had...