From the archives, Nov. 10, 1922: Young Methodists study race in America, hear Monitor editor

Omaha Commons looks back at a lesson shared across church lines, as Omaha's Black weekly newspaper reported it in 1922.

OMAHA — The Rev. John Albert Williams, pastor of St. Philip's Episcopal Church and editor of The Monitor, spoke one Sunday afternoon in 1922 to the young people of another congregation. The Monitor, Omaha's Black weekly newspaper, reported the talk on its Nov. 10, 1922, front page.

Williams addressed the Epworth League of McCabe Methodist Church, at Forty-first and Harney streets. The paper said the league's members had spent several weeks studying "the Negro in the United States" as a mission class.

According to The Monitor, the young people "frankly confess that they have learned many things" about what the paper called the so-called race problem in America, lessons it said had opened their eyes. It described the group as earnest and alert, and said the members were widening their outlook and their sympathy for others.

The same page shows a full week in Omaha's Black churches and lodges. The Mosaic Templars of America, in a membership drive, planned a public meeting Monday night at Pleasant Green Baptist Church, Twenty-second and Paul streets. The Men's Club of the Church of St. Philip the Deacon planned a social evening at St. Philip's rectory.

The front page led with results from that week's election.

More than a century later, the item records young churchgoers who spent weeks studying race in America and said they had learned from it.

Source: The Monitor (Omaha), Nov. 10, 1922, page 1, via the Library of Congress, Chronicling America.

How we checked this: Reported from The Monitor (Omaha) of Nov. 10, 1922, page 1, on the Library of Congress's Chronicling America, opened Nov. 10, 2026, at 5:25 a.m. CT, and checked against the record by our copy desk before publishing.