Potter's Field

For decades the field also supplied dissecting tables. Adam Fletcher Sasse's history of the site, drawn from Omaha newspapers, says that by the 1930s it was commonly understood that undertakers sold the bodies of the poor and unclaimed to scientists, and a later paper recalled an older arrangement: a plain burial here by day, medical students digging the bodies up by night and filling the holes. Authorities winked at the process, the paper said. Forest Lawn supervised burials from the first, in May 1887, until March 1939, when the county relief director took over.

What the plaque says

Potter's Field In 1887, Douglas County purchased this 5½-acre field from nearby Forest Lawn to use as a cemetery for poor and unidentified people. It was named Potter's Field, a traditional title from the New Testament. Of 3,912 individuals recorded to have been buried here, 1,663 were infants. Most of these graves did not have markers. Over time, family and friends claimed many of the bodies for burial elsewhere. Among those laid to rest was William Brown, a black man lynched in 1919 by a white mob near the Douglas County Courthouse. Though accused of rape, Brown is widely believed to have been innocent. Most historians view his murder as part of that year's anti-black "Red Summer" violence that claimed hundreds of lives across the country. The property was closed in 1957, and the County paid for these burials in ordinary cemeteries going forward. Potter's Field fell into disrepair, tended only by volunteer efforts, until a major community rehabilitation project in 1986. The City of Omaha now maintains the land. Hollis & Helen Baright Foundation Make Potter's Proper History Nebraska, 2020

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 1.3 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.
• Malcolm X Birthsite — 3.1 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 5.5 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 6.4 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.

More markers nearby

• Winter Quarters — 1.6 mi
• The Bank of Florence — 1.6 mi
• Crook House — 2.2 mi
• Fort Omaha — 2.5 mi