In Their Own Image: Artifacts from the Great Plains Black History Museum

The history of African Americans in North Omaha is well documented in the archives of the Great Plains Black History Museum. However, in the decade since the museum’s closing, this archive has been relatively inaccessible to the general public and the perspectives it offers on local African American history have been missing from our collective understanding of the past. This book attempts to remedy that by reintroducing people to the artifacts of the Great Plains Black History Museum and highlighting the strengths of the collection. Organized into twelve thematic chapters ranging from athletics to visual arts, this book documents the history of both struggle and success for African Americans

in North Omaha and, occasionally, the wider region. By drawing on more than two hundred artifacts from the Great Plains Black History Museum, this book showcases pictures of African Americans defining themselves for themselves; that is, In Their Own Image.