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24th & Glory: The Intersection of Civil Rights and Omaha's Greatest Generation of Athletes
How did so many nationally elite athletes come from such a small segregated box in such a short span of time? This is the story of North Omaha--a lost, epic neighborhood.
- GenresHistoryNonfictionSports
184 pages, Paperback
Published July 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
December 13, 2020
You don’t have to be a sports aficionado or a civil rights historian to appreciate this collage of North Omaha’s finest athletes. How was this community pumping out elites like Bob Boozer, Johnny Rodgers, Marlin Briscoe, Maggie King, Bob Gibson, Gale & Roger Sayers, and Ron Boone? People like Josh Gibson, Neal Mosser, those in the DePorres Club, packinghouse butchers, civil rights activists, pastors, teachers, and much more poured their time and energy into coaching kids towards bettering themselves instead of giving into bitter hatred of the racial injustices against them. This is an educational crash course on the beginnings of Omaha, Nebraska and it’s failures/victories in pursuing a more free/equal world for the black community. More than that, it’s about how these athletes grew up and what they were capable of. I’m amazed at the prominence of the Livestock Exchange Building/Union Stockyards as the world’s largest livestock market/meat-packing center in 1955 and the thousands of employees (black & white-it didn’t matter there) carrying their tough work ethic into their homes. The tragedy of Will Brown’s death by racist rioters, the Monarch’s baseball team having to sleep on pool tables because hotels wouldn’t accommodate them, Sayers having a doctor lie to him about his injury, and many more highlight personal stories of what this community overcame. Marlin Briscoe crushed QB stats better than Joe Namath, Len Dawson, and Bob Griese during the same time span. All became Hall of Fame QBs, but Briscoe never QB-started in a game again. The personal stories integrated within the context of local political issues really orient the reader to a better understanding of what was actually going on at this time in North O. The 1966 riots remind me of the racially polarizing unrest in 2020. Senator Ed Danner’s spearheading of open housing and Bob Gibson’s trials of being accepted in his new neighborhood gives the reader a glimpse of oppression. There are so many characters that the author bounces between (sometimes randomly), but overall I think it’s a cohesive work well worth its salt. Especially to the sports fanatic, civil rights advocates, and native Nebraskans.
*Honorable mentions:
Coach Don Benning was a stud. He was the first black collegiate coach in a predominantly white university. He coached 8 wrestlers to national championships at Omaha University. 1957-58 was the first year they offered wrestling as a sport.
The DePorres Club - 12yrs before black students staged famous sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in NC, the DePorres Club did the same at an Omaha restaurant. 4yrs before MLK JR led famous bus boycott in Alabama, the DePorres Club did the same to Omaha street cars and buses.
At the 24-hr Snack Shop café, Nat King Cole wrote his first hit single “Straighten Up and Fly Right.”
Bob Gibson was the first black player to win World Series MVP. He’s now honored with Bob Gibson Day.
*Honorable mentions:
Coach Don Benning was a stud. He was the first black collegiate coach in a predominantly white university. He coached 8 wrestlers to national championships at Omaha University. 1957-58 was the first year they offered wrestling as a sport.
The DePorres Club - 12yrs before black students staged famous sit-in at Woolworth’s lunch counter in NC, the DePorres Club did the same at an Omaha restaurant. 4yrs before MLK JR led famous bus boycott in Alabama, the DePorres Club did the same to Omaha street cars and buses.
At the 24-hr Snack Shop café, Nat King Cole wrote his first hit single “Straighten Up and Fly Right.”
Bob Gibson was the first black player to win World Series MVP. He’s now honored with Bob Gibson Day.
December 28, 2020
I've wanted to read this story since seeing it published in the World-Herald piece by piece a few years ago. This compilation of stories weaves together to express the triumph and tragedy experienced by Omaha's African-American community, specifically in the 1960s. I recommend it to sports fans, of course, Omahans, and to anyone interested in the causes and effects of the Civil Rights movement. One of my biggest takeaways is that this IS NOT ancienct history. The main characters in this book, the men and women who witnessed and experienced the worst of racial discrimination, are still all around us! If I had a time machine, one of the new first places I would go would be North 24th Street at its prime. The neighborhoods that produced some of the greatest athletes a few decades ago deserve to have their stories told.
January 9, 2024
If you are a sports fan or from Nebraska, this is a must read. Some of the best athletes to ever come from Nebraska are from the same neighborhood around the same time. It is very interesting and informative read.
October 28, 2025
This is a difficult book for me because I'm not a big sports fan, and the athletes' names were largely unknown to me. The book kept hopping around between sports and athletes and I couldn't get a bearing on who was who. I wanted to love it for its Omaha history and civil rights history, not to mention the beautiful photographs, but I couldn't get into it.
August 17, 2019
A engaging, moving read. The story of significant American social movements told through the lens of one neighborhood in a Midwestern city and the prominent characters who lived there. A essential read for Omahans that will be enjoyed by many others.
December 26, 2019
A book about Omaha! Such good information and it reveals how much history Omaha has! Plus, who knew that Omaha had the best athletes in the nation during that time. Check it out!!!
October 25, 2020
In 24th & GLORY author Dirk Chatelain uses the proliferation of extraordinary athletes in a small Omaha neighborhood as an entry point for examining race in one American town. It is an impressive case study that reveals both some of the causes of segregation and racial injustice and the enduring nature of the problems that still exist some 50-60 years later.
I grew up in Omaha in the 1960s and 1970s so the places and names in this book, even some of the more obscure items, are near and dear to me. Yet, the problems Chatelain describes could have been set in a host of northern communities. What makes Omaha different is the incredible development of game-changing athletes in North Omaha, the small part of Omaha where most African-American lived. Professional stars and record-setting athletes can be found in the history of any city, but Omaha produced, in the space of a generation, a group of athletes on a whole other level.
The number of world-class athletes North Omaha produced in this brief time frame seems legion but Bob Gibson always comes first to mind for me, as perhaps the best righthanded pitcher baseball ever saw and because no athlete has even been so intense in the pursuit of his craft. Gibson's experiences, both during and after his career, mirror the fight all African-American men have faced in trying to succeed in America. Gale Sayers came out of North Omaha during this time as well. Sayers, at his peak, was perhaps the best running back the NFL ever saw. His all-too-brief career was cut short by injury, but he is still to this day the youngest man elected to the NFL Hall of Fame (at age 34), which is a testament to his greatness. Sayers was the only man selected to two positions on the NFL's 75th anniversary team (halfback and kick returner). Marlin Briscoe is lesser known but just as much of a pathbreaker. In 1968, Briscoe became the first Black man to start an AFL or NFL game at quarterback (for the Denver Broncos). Other names to remember are Johnny Rodgers, who won a Heisman Trophy at Nebraska, Bob Boozer, an Olympic and NBA champion, Ron Boone, an ABA champion, or even Roger Sayers, who in the early 1960s battled Bob Hayes for the title of world's fastest man. A host of other names, such as Joe Orduna and Fred Hare, are easily recognizable to Nebraska natives as great athletes from the time.
For Chatelain, 24th & GLORY was the product of years of research, work, and procrastination. I'm glad he finished. The story was first told as a series of articles in the Omaha World-Herald, where Chatelain works as a sports reporter. The book still has a journalistic feel and some of the historical context and research more resembles the depth of a newspaper story as opposed to the detail of an academic treatise. Aside from a couple of instances of jarring vernacular, that's more than okay. The sociological treatises are out there if you want to dig deeper. 24th & GLORY resonates. The social network and cultural impulses that created the North Omaha phenomenon, and then the slow, grinding disintegration of this neighborhood, is a story worth telling and if it takes a sports hook to tell that story, so be it. The indelible impact of racial prejudice on the (mostly) men featured in this book cannot be denied. It is heartwrenching that so much of the story remains familiar, especially in terms of relations with law enforcement, because all-too-often the words could just as easily describe events in 2020, not 1968.
This generation
of greats is passing too fast.
We cannot forget.
I grew up in Omaha in the 1960s and 1970s so the places and names in this book, even some of the more obscure items, are near and dear to me. Yet, the problems Chatelain describes could have been set in a host of northern communities. What makes Omaha different is the incredible development of game-changing athletes in North Omaha, the small part of Omaha where most African-American lived. Professional stars and record-setting athletes can be found in the history of any city, but Omaha produced, in the space of a generation, a group of athletes on a whole other level.
The number of world-class athletes North Omaha produced in this brief time frame seems legion but Bob Gibson always comes first to mind for me, as perhaps the best righthanded pitcher baseball ever saw and because no athlete has even been so intense in the pursuit of his craft. Gibson's experiences, both during and after his career, mirror the fight all African-American men have faced in trying to succeed in America. Gale Sayers came out of North Omaha during this time as well. Sayers, at his peak, was perhaps the best running back the NFL ever saw. His all-too-brief career was cut short by injury, but he is still to this day the youngest man elected to the NFL Hall of Fame (at age 34), which is a testament to his greatness. Sayers was the only man selected to two positions on the NFL's 75th anniversary team (halfback and kick returner). Marlin Briscoe is lesser known but just as much of a pathbreaker. In 1968, Briscoe became the first Black man to start an AFL or NFL game at quarterback (for the Denver Broncos). Other names to remember are Johnny Rodgers, who won a Heisman Trophy at Nebraska, Bob Boozer, an Olympic and NBA champion, Ron Boone, an ABA champion, or even Roger Sayers, who in the early 1960s battled Bob Hayes for the title of world's fastest man. A host of other names, such as Joe Orduna and Fred Hare, are easily recognizable to Nebraska natives as great athletes from the time.
For Chatelain, 24th & GLORY was the product of years of research, work, and procrastination. I'm glad he finished. The story was first told as a series of articles in the Omaha World-Herald, where Chatelain works as a sports reporter. The book still has a journalistic feel and some of the historical context and research more resembles the depth of a newspaper story as opposed to the detail of an academic treatise. Aside from a couple of instances of jarring vernacular, that's more than okay. The sociological treatises are out there if you want to dig deeper. 24th & GLORY resonates. The social network and cultural impulses that created the North Omaha phenomenon, and then the slow, grinding disintegration of this neighborhood, is a story worth telling and if it takes a sports hook to tell that story, so be it. The indelible impact of racial prejudice on the (mostly) men featured in this book cannot be denied. It is heartwrenching that so much of the story remains familiar, especially in terms of relations with law enforcement, because all-too-often the words could just as easily describe events in 2020, not 1968.
This generation
of greats is passing too fast.
We cannot forget.
July 28, 2020
I popped into a local store over my lunch break, for once shopping for someone other than myself. But a stack of books near the locally-made candles and pottery caught my eye. I judged a book by its cover and bought it without reading anything beyond the tagline. And I am so glad I did!
I really don't know a lot about sports, other than enjoying Hawkeye football and FIVB beach volleyball. Sports history is definitely not my thing. During trivia competitions, I groan and let my teammates pick up the slack on sports questions. But something about this book called out to me. And from the first page, I was hooked. The record-setting and history-making Black athletes from North Omaha in the 1950s-1960s who lived and trained and fought injustice together are awe-inspiring.
Bob Gibson. Gale Sayers. Marlin Briscoe. Bob Boozer. Roger Sayers. Johnny Rodgers. Ron Boone.
People wanted their autographs, but didn't want to live near them. Didn't want to walk down the street with them. Didn't want to eat, shop, or work in the same places as them. Can you imagine being the guy at the University of Iowa who said "no" to Bob Boozer? Even I recognize his name. This book was equal parts fascinating and infuriating. As I read, I kept reassuring myself that the bigots, the racists, the politicians, the "white men in dark suits," were all on the wrong side of history. But as these past few months have shown us, there are still people on the wrong side of history. They just don't know it yet.
All of the men highlighted in this book were between the ages of 19 and 26 when they made history. This is who I want fighting for the future of our country: men and women who are old enough to understand the world and young enough to have the energy and the anger to want to change it. This book was published in 2019, but it reads a little differently at this time in recent history. The pictures of the race riots in North Omaha in the 1960s looked eerily similar to pictures from the protests in 2020. I want to repeat this phrase a little louder for those who have their heads buried in the sand:
It took civil unrest to get the city's attention.
World series pitcher Bob Gibson wasn't enough. Starting quarterback Marlin Briscoe wasn't enough. Heisman award-winner Johnny Rodgers wasn't enough. Ordinary (extraordinary) North Omahans who watched these men practice in local parks and then smash records on television were enough. This book is as much about them as it is about the seven men pictured on the cover. If you want to learn, and shake your head in amazement (both good and bad), and cry, just let me know and I will send you a copy of 24th & Glory.
I really don't know a lot about sports, other than enjoying Hawkeye football and FIVB beach volleyball. Sports history is definitely not my thing. During trivia competitions, I groan and let my teammates pick up the slack on sports questions. But something about this book called out to me. And from the first page, I was hooked. The record-setting and history-making Black athletes from North Omaha in the 1950s-1960s who lived and trained and fought injustice together are awe-inspiring.
Bob Gibson. Gale Sayers. Marlin Briscoe. Bob Boozer. Roger Sayers. Johnny Rodgers. Ron Boone.
People wanted their autographs, but didn't want to live near them. Didn't want to walk down the street with them. Didn't want to eat, shop, or work in the same places as them. Can you imagine being the guy at the University of Iowa who said "no" to Bob Boozer? Even I recognize his name. This book was equal parts fascinating and infuriating. As I read, I kept reassuring myself that the bigots, the racists, the politicians, the "white men in dark suits," were all on the wrong side of history. But as these past few months have shown us, there are still people on the wrong side of history. They just don't know it yet.
All of the men highlighted in this book were between the ages of 19 and 26 when they made history. This is who I want fighting for the future of our country: men and women who are old enough to understand the world and young enough to have the energy and the anger to want to change it. This book was published in 2019, but it reads a little differently at this time in recent history. The pictures of the race riots in North Omaha in the 1960s looked eerily similar to pictures from the protests in 2020. I want to repeat this phrase a little louder for those who have their heads buried in the sand:
It took civil unrest to get the city's attention.
World series pitcher Bob Gibson wasn't enough. Starting quarterback Marlin Briscoe wasn't enough. Heisman award-winner Johnny Rodgers wasn't enough. Ordinary (extraordinary) North Omahans who watched these men practice in local parks and then smash records on television were enough. This book is as much about them as it is about the seven men pictured on the cover. If you want to learn, and shake your head in amazement (both good and bad), and cry, just let me know and I will send you a copy of 24th & Glory.
November 22, 2022
This was a 4.5 book for me. I moved to Omaha in the summer of 1968 when I was 8 years old so had very little recollection of many of the details described in the book. This made it fascinating to me. I vividly remember Johnny Rodgers from his days at the University of Nebraska but was unaware of his days in Omaha. I also knew Bob Gibson, Gale Sayers, and Marlin Briscoe were originally from Omaha but had no idea their background growing up. Most of all I had no clue they had all grown up in the same neighborhood in North Omaha which was the foundation of them all being such great athletes. Finally, I had no idea that Omaha had such an significant civil rights movement because there were so many issues that needed to be addressed. The book was really well written and brought out the emotions of the greatness of the athletes as well as the sadness associated with how they were treated as they grew up.
September 22, 2020
I am far from the target audience for this book, being completely ignorant of current sports figures, let alone sports history. I had a really hard time keeping all the athletes straight and I skimmed some of the sections heavy on sports.
That said, I appreciate and respect this approach of weaving sports history with the history of the civil rights movement. I wanted more of the civil rights history, or Omaha history in general, but I recognize that wasn't the primary goal.
I did side eye a couple sections with accuracy questions, but I'll reserve judgement until (if) I fact check.
That said, I appreciate and respect this approach of weaving sports history with the history of the civil rights movement. I wanted more of the civil rights history, or Omaha history in general, but I recognize that wasn't the primary goal.
I did side eye a couple sections with accuracy questions, but I'll reserve judgement until (if) I fact check.
October 5, 2023
Dirk Chatelain's book seemingly is a story of star athletes growing up in a period of civil rights unrest. However, by the time I finished his excellent account it appeared the book was more about the concept of integrity. We often list among the staples of life, beyond bread itself, the virtues of love, faith and hope. And rightly so. But Chatelain throws in the much-overlooked notion of integrity. These notable athletes spread integrity across North Omaha. The respect these men earned via sports skills rubbed off on everyone. That may be far greater than any athletic achievements.
August 15, 2020
This is the story of the legendary athletes that rose to national prominence out of North Omaha around the 60s: Bob Gibson, Gale Sayers, Bob Boozer, Johnny Rogers, Marlin Briscoe, Ron Boone, and Roger Sayers. It captures their remarkable athletic feats, the civil rights movement, the virulent racism, and what a vibrant community North Omaha once was. It's a bittersweet story that is well worth the read.
August 9, 2020
I can't say enough about this book, just that everyone who has grown up in Omaha needs to read this. Besides being a wonderful read about the amazing athletes who grew up in the 24th and Lake neighborhood, it is an education of the early civil rights movement in Omaha, which is still struggling. Having grown up in the 50's and 60's in Omaha, this really resonates with me.
☆☆☆☆☆ is not enough.
☆☆☆☆☆ is not enough.
September 15, 2024
Fantastic book that does a good job of integrating the history of North Omaha sports figures and the beautiful yet sad history of north Omaha. Reading it brought up so many emotions for me as it's so much of the history of where I grew up that I did not know. I recommend everyone from Omaha read this book because I'm sure they don't know about the amazing history of the near north side.
January 10, 2020
Fantastic book. Very well written. Sub title “The intersection of civil rights and Omaha’s greatest generation of athletes” is a great glimpse of the story.
Must read for sports fans, people with connections to Omaha, should read for everyone else.
Must read for sports fans, people with connections to Omaha, should read for everyone else.
December 31, 2019
Learned a lot about early Omaha history.
January 7, 2020
Well done! These are the events that were happening when I came to Omaha in 1966 to teach at Tech High. Interesting history of the times and the atheletes.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews