Black Fives

Cudahy Rex

Location: Ohama, Nebraska
Established: 1930
Management: Cudahy Packing Company

During the 1930s and 40s, the Omaha-based Cudahy Packing Company was among the so-called “big four” of meatpackers, including Armour, Swift, and Wilson.

Cudahy operated a large packing plant in South Omaha that produced hams, bacon, lard, beef, and lamb, eventually becoming the “biggest employer of Negro labor” in the city.

By the 1930s, Omaha had the largest population of African Americans among Western cities, second only to Los Angeles.

In 1930, the company organized an all-Black basketball team comprised of its own African American employees known as Cudahy Rex, named after the company’s popular brand of cooking lard.

“No other word except ‘flashy’ can describe their two-toned satin sweat jackets,” the Grand Island Herald wrote in 1936. But they were no flash in the pan. Its players were former star athletes from the city’s predominantly Black high schools, North High and East High.

In addition to competing for an annual plant-wide basketball championship, Cudahy Rex also played throughout the Omaha region and in local Urban League and YMCA open tournaments. During the 1936-37 season, the Rex team was directed by Creighton University trainer Otto Williams, according to the Omaha Evening Bee-News.

The existence of the Cudahy Rex team was an important step by the company during this time because African Americans in Omaha could be arrested, jailed, and fined merely for having “no visible means of support,” then forced to work off their fines laboring for the city.

The company’s president, Ed Cudahy, Jr., was known for his progressive views and in his 1938 letter to employees openly asked why, with all the country’s “wealth, comforts and conveniences of life,” had America “not long since conquered the depression and why millions of our workers are unemployed.”

Cudahy Rex™ is a trademark of the Black Fives Foundation. All rights reserved.