Ernie Chambers

Ernie Chambers was elected in 1970 to represent North Omaha’s 11th District in the Nebraska State Legislature as an independent, and was reelected each term for the next thirty-four years, becoming the longest serving state senator in Nebraska’s history and its first African-American senator. In his decades in office, Chambers (dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved sweat-shirt) has spearheaded the move to abolish corporal punishment in schools, to afford equal state pensions to women, and to switch to district-based voting to give nonwhite citizens a fair shot at election to public office.

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