Celebrating Black Pathmakers

Nebraska Stories

Air Date: 02/11/2021

“Forgotten World”    John Johnson may have a common name, but the photographs he took of black families in Lincoln during the early 1900s has made him one of the great African American photographers of the 20th Century. All of Johnson’s work could have easily been lost to the ages but for a teenage boy who, in 1965, spent $10 dollars for a box of 280 glass plate negatives. “Edwina Justus" When she was hired at Union Pacific in the early 1970s, Edwina Justus was one of five black women who worked in the Omaha office. Within a few short years, she would become the company’s first female African American locomotive engineer. "Bob Gibson’s Legacy" He’s an Omaha native who played 17 years with the St. Louis Cardinals and he’s been in the Hall of Fame since 1981. So it’s about time that his hometown honored pitcher Bob Gibson by commissioning a statue—which is anything but static! “Nebraska’s Tuskegee Heroes” In 1941, two Nebraskans entered a groundbreaking United States Army Air Forces program to be trained to pilot and maintain combat aircraft. World War II veterans Paul Adams and Charles Lane share their memories of being members of the heroic Tuskegee Airmen.