‘Black Press,’ Omaha’s Oldest Black-Owned Newspaper, Now Owned By A Black Woman

The Omaha Star, Nebraska’s oldest Black-owned newspaper, is now owned by Terri Sanders, a Black woman, and native Omahan.

According to NBC 6 News, Sanders becomes the fifth woman to take charge of The Star but the first to have sole ownership. “This is more than surreal — this has been a dream for a long time,” she said. For 85 years, the paper has focused on positive stories happening in and around the north Omaha area, a move seldom made by more mainstream publications.

The Star has had a rich legacy of Black leadership that Sanders is eager to continue.

“Phyllis Hicks was the publisher, as was Frankie Williams. And I am No. 5,” she said. “I knew Mrs. Mildred Brown as a little girl growing up in Omaha. I knew what she represented and believed in it.”

As the only Black newspaper in the state, The Star has held an important place in the community, and though there are plans to make some changes, moving the paper to any location other than north Omaha is off the table, reports to NBC 6 News. “It was important to keep it here and not move it, and not have someone outside of our community that did not understand the relevance and the importance and the history that goes along with The Omaha Star,” Sanders said.

The changes she plans to make involve turning the newsroom of the historic building into a memorial that honor’s the paper’s founder and establishing a larger digital footprint for the publication. “We want to turn part of the building where we’re standing now into a museum — a museum dedicated to Mildred Brown, the Black newspaper, and Black journalism,” she said. The Black population has declined in the past few years, amounting to only 12% of the total populace since the COVID-19 pandemic; however, north Omaha is home to over half of that total.