Black Family Enterprise and Community in Segregated North Omaha

The Pratt Street House

Dr Valandra PhD, Christopher McAuley, Dr Christopher McAuley PhD

• Publisher: Lived Places Publishing
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781915734624
• eBook ISBN: 9781915734631
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: Social Sciences

How can one story of a Black family, a community and their relationship to home develop our understanding of lived experience in segregated North Omaha?

In 1952, author and scholar Valandra's grandparents bought a two-story white house on the corner of Pratt Street and 28th Street in North Omaha, migrating from rural Arkansas. Through the sharing of the author's lived experience and intergenerational resident interviews, Black Family Enterprise explores what it was like to grow up in a segregated working-class Black community.

Part oral history, part urban history, part ethnography of a family and community, this first-person account illustrates the common and unique ways residents claim space and place in defining their lives, community, and sustaining their histories, culture, and traditions. These stories of Black urban placemaking address themes of mutual aid, safety, security, structural inequality and injustice.

A series of personal reflections on intergenerational resistance, resilience, and determination, this book is ideal reading for students of Black Studies, African American Studies, Anthropology, Cultural History, Migration Studies, Urban Studies, American Studies, and Social Work.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Learning objectives
• Introduction
• PART I History
• PART II Community pillars
• PART III Neighborhood, inheritance, and legacy
• Conclusion
• Suggested discussion topics
• References
• Further reading
• Index