Shooting of Vivian Strong

On June 24, 1969, teenagers gathered for a party at a vacant apartment in the Logan Fontenelle Housing Projects.[1] The teenagers were playing music and dancing.[1] When two police officers arrived, having been called on suspicion of a robbery, the teenagers fled out of the back door.[1][3][4] The police officer, James Loder, shot into the fleeing crowd without warning and Vivian Strong, a 14-year old African-American girl, was struck in the back of the head and was killed.[1][5][6] Loder's partner was a Black officer, James W. Smith; he and Vivian's sister, Carol, asked Loder, "Why did you shoot her?" He did not reply.[4] Unrest and riots followed for three days in Omaha's Northeast neighborhood, resulting in 21 arrests, 88 injuries, and $750,000 in property damage.[7][8][9] Black Panthers, armed with weapons, protected Black churches and the local Black newspaper, the Omaha Star, during the riots.[10]

One of Vivian's younger sisters, Carol, was with her when she was killed; she did not receive any counseling afterward, her mother had a nervous breakdown, and Carol subsequently took over the care of her younger brothers and sisters.[1][4]

The summer of Strong's death, the Black Panther Party (BPP) started the Vivian Strong Memorial Liberation School.[8] The BPP established Liberation Schools in several US cities. The school in Omaha may have operated for only a week before it closed down.[8]

Initially, Police Chief Richard R. Anderson said James Loder, the police officer who killed Vivian Strong, would be suspended for 15 days and then fired.[11] Loder was released from jail on a $500 bond.[1] On March 17, 1970, an all-white jury of six men and six women acquitted James Loder of manslaughter.[12] Of the acquittal, Vivian's mother said, "He did wrong. They (the jury) did wrong...If it would have been a white girl shot by a black policeman, he'd be serving time right now".[12] Loder returned to the police force, where he served for two more years.[1] He was the estranged biological son of Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr, who had claimed him as her adopted son in 1941 in order to conceal his illegitimacy.[13]

Vivian was 14 years old and under the care of her nineteen year old babysitter, Linda Bradley, at the time of the shooting.[4] She attended Tech Jr. High in Omaha, Nebraska.[4] She had seven siblings.[4] In 1964 she had rheumatic fever which left her with a leaky aortic valve.[4]

Two plays have been produced about Vivian Strong. Monica Bauer's 2019 play, Vivian's Music: 1969, imagines the last days of Vivian's life and won an award at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.[14] The play was produced at several off-Broadway theaters in New York City.[15] Christopher Maly's 2018 play, The Blues of Knowing Why, was a "community account" of Vivian's short life based on interviews with friends, family, media, and members of resistance organizations.[16][17] The play was produced in Omaha's Union for Contemporary Arts.

• Vivian's Music, 1969 A theatrical play by Monica Bauer [1][2]
• The Blues of Knowing Why A theatrical play written by Christopher Maly[3][4]
• DEAR VIVIAN: SHORT FILM based on a true story.