Omaha World Herald. October 20, 2018
The story of DeWitty, Nebraska, helps expand knowledge of Great Plains history
Two years ago, Omaha resident Artes Johnson and his siblings helped put a spotlight on an important part of Nebraska history that connects directly to their family’s history. Through their efforts, a historical marker was erected in Cherry County to note the significance of DeWitty, Nebraska’s largest African-American community during the pioneer period.
Among DeWitty’s first residents was William Parker Walker, Johnson’s great-great-great-grandfather, who had escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad to North Buxton, Ontario, a community near Lake Erie.
It’s encouraging to see Johnson and his siblings continue to move forward with follow-up projects to help Nebraskans understand this notable part of the Great Plains experience. Visitors to the Stuhr Museum in Grand Island can see a current exhibit titled “Audacious Nebraska: The Descendants of DeWitty,” curated by Johnson and his siblings Denise Scales, Maurice Johnson and Avis Roper. The exhibit runs through Nov. 11.
In addition, Johnson and Scales have formed a nonprofit called the Descendants of DeWitty, to facilitate an ongoing endeavor to preserve the memory of DeWitty as a part of Great Plains heritage to be studied and understood.
“We are expanding the American narrative, and our ultimate goal is not just to expand it, but to save our history from demolition,” explains David Roper, Johnson’s brother-in-law. “If this story goes untold, it dies.”
DeWitty, established in the early 1900s near the mostly white town of Brownlee, was named after the town’s first postmaster. Residents lived in sod houses and confronted the many rigors of old-time farm life. The community, with a post office, general store, church and schools, eventually grew to about 200 residents.
DeWitty’s children studied using books provided by a lending program from the state library in Lincoln. Residents celebrated with at least two local baseball teams: the Sluggers and the Yellow Jackets. The community lasted until the 1930s, when the successor generations relocated to larger communities.
Historians note the significance of pioneer-era African-American communities in various parts of the Great Plains. In the 1880s, Kansas was home to 12 agricultural settlements by black residents who were part of the “Exoduster” migration to the nation’s mid-section. The most noted and successful such Kansas community was Nicodemus.
Oklahoma experienced major African-American migration during the same period. In 1908, Booker T. Washington visited Boley, the largest black town in Oklahoma, and saluted its vibrancy in a magazine article.
African-American history in Omaha extends back to territorial times. The first black church founded in Nebraska was St. John’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in Omaha in 1865, the Douglas County Historical Society notes. Historian Quintard Taylor notes that by 1910, Omaha’s black population constituted no less than “the third-largest African-American population among the major cities in the West.”
Through their ongoing efforts, the DeWitty descendants are deepening present-day generations’ understanding of the past. It’s a laudable effort, showing how Great Plains residents share connections, across lines of race, to our region’s history.
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North Platte Telegraph. October 21, 2018
A most reluctant recommendation on Initiative 427
As we have said, The Telegraph will not endorse individual candidates in the Nov. 6 election. We will offer our opinions on special “ballot questions” facing voters, starting today.
We intend no between-the-lines endorsements of candidates or parties in these pieces. We do hope you find useful information here - no matter how you vote - since the case for or against any policy decision is rarely black-and-white.
That’s particularly true of Initiative 427, the ballot question we address today.
It would use federal funds offered under “Obamacare” - the Affordable Care Act - to expand Medicaid health insurance coverage from selected groups of low-income Nebraskans to all individuals or families with household incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty line.
In 2018, 138 percent equals $16,753 a year for individuals and $34,638 for a family of four.
If voters approve, the federal government would pay 90 percent and the state 10 percent of the cost of expanded coverage. The estimated net cost to state taxpayers would be nearly $20 million in 2019-20 and $38.8 million a year by 2021-22, according to a study by two University of Nebraska at Kearney professors for the Nebraska Hospital Association.
Initiative 427 was introduced in the 2017 legislative session but never reached the floor. State leaders have spurned Obamacare’s offer for several years, due partly to Nebraska’s latest agricultural downturn but largely to distaste for Obamacare by many across the state.
Last winter, it appeared voters might face up to three unrelated proposals with costly implications: this one, a plan to divert substantial state funds to property tax relief and another proposal to rewrite income-tax laws. Only the Medicaid question reached the ballot.
We face even more big-ticket problems than these, and it’s the duty of our elected leaders in the State Capitol to balance and address them all. They have not done so.
Initiative 427 is a proposed law, not a constitutional amendment. It could be changed or repealed by a two-thirds vote in the Legislature. Even if Initiative 427 is approved, Medicaid expansion may have to give way when - not if - state tax revenues, which finally are again exceeding projections, once more fall short.
We’re not impressed with the partisan-tinged arguments from both sides. The governor’s insistence that able-bodied, low-income Nebraskans would quit their jobs to take Medicaid and stay home makes light of the very real health care challenges facing the working poor from north Omaha to North Platte and most every small town.
And too many Initiative 427 supporters simply ignore our state’s economic cycles. One must ask: Is it actually compassionate to expand Medicaid coverage when state leaders know they might well have to take it away the next time corn, soybean and beef prices fall?
We have our doubts. But the UNK study points to one factor we must judge decisive, despite our strong misgivings.
To pay for expanding Medicaid, Obamacare cut Medicare reimbursements to hospitals with comparatively more low-income patients. We know well that costs too often force such patients to bypass routine care, which too often leads them toward expensive emergency care, for which hospitals too often must eat the costs.
Rural and small-town hospitals face that problem - plus significant Medicare patient loads. These aren’t the first cuts in Medicare reimbursements they’ve had to absorb. In previous rounds, some rural hospitals didn’t survive. Ask their communities what losing their hospitals cost them.
The Affordable Care Act originally made Medicaid expansion mandatory. The U.S. Supreme Court then allowed states to “opt out,” which Nebraska and 16 other states have done. But the Medicare reimbursement cuts still stand.
Because of that, the UNK professors wrote, 45 percent of Nebraska’s critical access hospitals “are facing severe financial stress.” If Nebraska now expands Medicaid, the federal funds would provide “much needed financial support at a time of considerable pressure” on our state’s small-town hospitals, let alone regional ones like North Platte’s Great Plains Health.
Let’s be clear: Expanded Medicaid coverage likely wouldn’t survive our state’s next ag downturn. But rural Nebraska cannot survive without reliable access to health care. Without small-town hospitals, lives will be lost.
For now, the federal funds are there. We conclude that our rural hospitals, today, need the extra Medicaid coverage as much as Nebraska’s working poor do.
We reluctantly recommend a vote “FOR” Initiative 427 - followed by more responsible, sustainable solutions by our leaders to this problem and the other expensive ones facing our state.
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Lincoln Journal Star. October 20, 2018
New tourism slogan marks a significant improvement
Nebraskans pride the Good Life as a well-kept secret.
As evidenced by the fact Nebraska has ranked dead last among states people want to visit for the last four years, according to the Portrait of American Travelers survey, perhaps we’re guarding our offerings a little too well.
Unveiled this week, the state’s new tourism slogan - “Nebraska: Honestly, it’s not for everyone” - challenges the laughably incorrect but widely held prejudice that Nebraska has nothing to do in a direct but slightly self-deprecating manner. (Those two traits are nothing if not genuinely Nebraskan.)
Accordingly, this new catchphrase offers a nice - wait, no, remarkably better - replacement for the nondescript “Nebraska Nice” campaign that kept Nebraska as the bottom of Americans’ travel wish list for its entire existence. With such a low bar, anything would have been an improvement.
Context is crucial to understanding this new campaign.
The sample marketing materials revealed so far juxtapose a tired misperception of Nebraska against a photo that soundly disproves it.
One reads “Famous for our flat, boring landscape” and shows hikers hopping among rock spires at northwest Nebraska’s Toadstool Geologic Park. A second pairs “Lucky for you, there’s nothing to do here” as a small armada of livestock tanks floating down a river somewhere in the Sandhills.
Hence, the “it’s not for everyone” tagline resonates so much with the Journal Star editorial board on account of its accuracy. Anyone who’s come to Nebraska seeking mountains and ocean beaches would be quite disappointed.
But, as we known and the campaign hopes to prove, the state’s attractions far exceed those two vacation standbys.
Nebraska must be aggressive in countering the false, yet prevalent, stereotypes that there’s nothing to do here. We know it’s wrong because we live here - but tourism officials have to not only combat that assumption; they must do so while selling the state to travelers elsewhere in the country and world.
Thus far, the slogan is having the intended effect.
In the campaign’s earliest days, it’s certainly turned heads. The Washington Post and CNN, among countless others, gave the state free publicity in news reports that informed the public of the new slogan. The edgy, nontraditional take no doubt generated exposure that otherwise would passed Nebraska by.
Understandably, some Nebraskans aren’t enamored with the new campaign. When the Journal Star posted its first story after the state’s announcement, a majority of readers bashed the new catchphrase for a variety of reasons. But, hey - that’s OK.
Just like the hidden gems that make this state the special place it is, we understand the slogan’s honestly not for everyone. But we think it has potential to share more of Nebraska with the outside world.
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McCook Daily Gazette. October 19, 2018.
Teen driving vital for rural areas, but there’s a caveat
Teenage years are an exciting time for kids and their parents, and school and extracurricular activities are an important part of helping them become productive adults.
Parents, especially in rural areas like McCook, may breathe a sigh of relieve when the first kid gets a drivers license and can drive himself to events without the parent taking time off, but they know there are expenses and risks involved.
A new study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety determined just how risky teenage driving is, especially when other teenagers are passengers.
And that’s not just the teens in the car who are in danger.
The fatality rate for all people involved in a crash increased 51 percent when there were teen drivers and passengers involved.
By contrast, when passengers 35 or older were present, overall fatality rates in crashes decreased 8 percent.
Mechanisms are in place to make teen driving safer - if parents help enforce the rules when a teen applies for a School Permit, Learner’s Permit or Provisional Operator Permit.
Nebraska teens with a School Permit may only transport family members who live with them to the school attended by the holder.
A Provisional Operator Permit holder is limited to one passenger younger than 19 who is not an immediate family member, for the first six months.
We’re sure many parents are not aware of those restrictions, or ignore them for convenience if they do.
AAA reports that in 2016, teen drivers were involved in more than a million police-reported crashes, resulting in more than 3,200 deaths.
The research shows that when teens were carrying teen passengers, fatality rates jumped 56 percent for occupants of other vehicles, 45 percent for the teen driver and 17 percent for pedestrians and cyclists.
“This analysis shows that, in crashes where teen drivers are behind the wheel with a teen passenger, a larger portion of those killed are other road users, Dr. David Yang, executive director of the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.
“This study also found the fatality rate of a teen-driver-related crash increased when factors like speeding or driving at night were introduced.
While farm kids may start driving earlier than their city cousins, most teens simply lack the “windshield time” that makes them competent to operate a vehicle on Interstate 80 or even long stretches of lonely two-lane blacktop.
TeenDrivers.AAA.com has some good tips to supplement legal requirements:
- At least 100 hours of supervised practice before driving solo.
- Begin in low-risk situation and gradually more to highways, nighttime, rain and challenging roads.
- Different routes each practice session.
- Adjusting speed to visibility, traffic and conditions.
Nebraska Graduated Driver Licensing laws, for teens 14-17, require them to hold a Provisional Operator Permit license for a year before receiving an unrestricted license.
Graduated Driver Licensing laws include:
- No use of any type of interactive wireless communications device while driving.
- All riders wearing seatbelts.
- No midnight to 6 a.m. driving for holding a POP unless to or from school activities or work.
- Zero alcohol tolerance.
Violations can result in a suspended or revoked license, and drivers under 21 who accumulate six or more points in a year are required to take a driver improvement course within three months.
While it may be convenient to allow a young teenage driver to carpool with other teens, parents are wise to consider alternatives.
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