joined it the group in Chicago, where his family had moved in 1915. Starting in 1920, the Colored Commercial Club organized to help blacks in Omaha secure employment and to encourage business enterprises among African Americans. The National Federation of Colored Women had five chapters in Omaha. In 1927 the first Urban League chapter (now the Urban League of Nebraska) in the American West was founded in the city. Whitney Young led the chapter in 1950, tripling its membership. Eventually, he would take over the national leadership of the Urban League in 1961. The Industrial Workers of the World organized African-American workers in the South Omaha Stockyards in the 1920s. Along with the rest of the working class, they suffered setbacks during layoffs in the Great Depression. In the 1930s, however, an interracial committee succeeded in organizing the United Meatpacking Workers of America, one of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) unions. They worked to end segregation of job positions in meatpacking in the 1940s. Community leader Rowena Moore attacked gender restrictions and organized to expand opportunities in industry for black women. UMPWA helped African Americans extend their political power and gain an end to segregation in retail places in the 1950s. After all this progress, however, the loss of more than 10,000 jobs due to structural changes in the railroad and meatpacking industries in the 1960s sharply reduced opportunities for the working-class communities. In 1952, Arthur B. McCaw became the first African American to be appointed to a cabinet level position in the Nebraska governor's office, budget director of the state of Nebraska in 1952. Prior to that he had been active in Omaha civil rights and was an assessor and on the tax appraisal board of Douglas County. In 1955 he was Nebraska state chairman of the NAACP and helped form a Lincoln chapter of the organization. As a major western city, Omaha was visited by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1958 and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, who helped galvanize the civil rights movement in North Omaha. Local leaders continued to struggle against racism. North Omaha was marred by race-related violence and de facto segregation throughout the 20th century. When the Black Panthers were implicated in a police killing in North Omaha in 1970, the trial highlighted political tensions. The Rice–Poindexter case continues to highlight Omaha's contentious legacy of racism. As of 2017, a majority of Omaha's