On a January morning in 2011, a line of people in their best clothes stretched outside a church on Fort Street in Omaha. Some had driven two days from other states to be there. The South Sudanese in Omaha, Nebraska had come to vote on whether their homeland, half a world away, should finally become its own country. By nightfall the United States press was reporting that the diaspora had voted almost unanimously for independence, and Omaha had become one of the places where a new nation was born.
That a refugee community on the Great Plains could help midwife the world’s youngest country tells you most of what you need to know about this place. Omaha holds the largest South Sudanese population in the United States. What began as a trickle of war refugees in the 1990s is now a community of more than ten thousand people, with its own churches, associations, language classes and a second generation growing up Nebraskan and South Sudanese at the same time.
Omaha and South Omaha: The Place
Omaha sits on the Missouri River, a meatpacking and railroad city that has drawn immigrant labour for more than a century. South Sudanese families settled across the metro, with concentrations in the older, affordable neighbourhoods of South Omaha and in the working-class districts north and west of downtown.
Many later moved out to the suburbs of Bellevue, Ralston and Papillion as they put down roots. The housing is modest: frame houses, brick duplexes, apartment blocks within reach of the highways that feed the packing plants. It is a quiet, spread-out kind of place, nothing like the dense urban enclaves of the coasts, and that ordinariness is part of why it worked.
How Omaha Became a South Sudanese City
Before the South Sudanese
South Omaha was built by earlier waves of newcomers. Czechs, Poles, Lithuanians, Irish and Mexican families came for the stockyards and the packing houses that once made Omaha one of the meat capitals of America.
By the 1980s the great stockyards were in decline, but the packing industry survived in new forms, and the city still needed people willing to do hard work at the line. When refugees from a distant war started arriving, the jobs and the cheap rents were waiting. This is a familiar American pattern, the same engine that drew later African arrivals to places like the Somali community in Columbus, Ohio.
The South Sudanese Arrive
The Second Sudanese Civil War, fought from 1983 to 2005, tore apart the south of what was then Sudan. Whole villages were emptied. Among the displaced were the young boys later known around the world as the Lost Boys of Sudan, Nuer and Dinka children who walked more than a thousand miles to refugee camps in Ethiopia and Kenya, many of them dying on the way.
South Sudanese refugees began reaching Omaha in the 1990s. By 1998 there were already fewer than twelve hundred living in the city. Some came as primary refugees straight from the camps. Others were secondary migrants, resettled elsewhere in the United States first and then drawn to Nebraska by word of mouth, by jobs, by affordable housing and by the simple pull of people who looked and prayed and spoke like them.
The community organised early. The Southern Sudanese Community Association was founded in 1997 as a non-profit offering English classes, budgeting help, driver education and a landing pad for new arrivals. Over the years it has assisted more than thirteen hundred families, the connective tissue that turned scattered refugees into a community.
Omaha at Its Peak
By 2006 Omaha held the largest population of South Sudanese refugees in the country, roughly seven thousand people. The number has only grown since, passing nine thousand and then ten thousand as families had children and relatives kept arriving.
The economic anchor was meatpacking and manufacturing. South Sudanese workers took shifts at the big processors that ring the metro, the same plants that employed Latino, Bhutanese, Vietnamese and Somali workers alongside them. The work was cold, fast and dangerous, but it paid, and it asked no questions about where you had come from.
The community was never a single bloc. Omaha is home to people from many of South Sudan’s peoples, the Nuer, the Dinka, the Shilluk, the Bari, the Azande, the Maban and others. Each group brought its own language, its own church congregations and its own associations, so that the South Sudanese in Omaha, Nebraska are really many communities sharing one city. Chain migration did the rest, each settled family becoming the reason the next one chose Nebraska over anywhere else.
The Change
The defining shift came not in Omaha but in the homeland. In January 2011, South Sudan held its independence referendum, and the diaspora was allowed to vote. Omaha was chosen as one of only a handful of polling sites in the United States, precisely because so many South Sudanese lived there.
More than three thousand people travelled from across the country to cast ballots in Omaha. Across the American polling sites the vote for secession was nearly unanimous. On 9 July 2011 South Sudan became an independent nation, and families in Omaha celebrated in the streets.
The joy did not last. A new civil war broke out in South Sudan in 2013, and renewed conflict since has killed many and displaced millions. For Omaha that meant grief at a distance, vigils in church halls, money wired home, and a community that could not go back even as it tried to build a life here.
The Landmarks of South Sudanese Omaha
St. Richard Catholic Church, 4320 Fort Street. This North Omaha parish served as one of the polling places during the 2011 independence referendum. For a few days in January it became a piece of South Sudan, a room where people queued to vote a new country into being.
The Southern Sudanese Community Association. Founded in 1997, the SSCA is the oldest pillar of the community. It taught new arrivals to read English, balance a budget and pass a driving test, and it has guided more than thirteen hundred families through their first hard years in America.
St. Martha’s Episcopal Church, Papillion. In this suburb southwest of Omaha, the Reverend Joseph Alaak, himself a former Lost Boy who reached Omaha in 2001, was ordained a priest in 2024. He leads Sunday afternoon services in the Dinka language and teaches Dinka to American-born children so the next generation does not lose the tongue.
The Nuer churches. The Nuer community gathers for worship at congregations such as Nile Church, part of a wider network of Nuer Christian fellowship across North America. Sunday is when the language, the hymns and the news from home all come together under one roof.
The packing plants. No single address, but the meatpacking floors of the Omaha metro are as much a landmark as any building. They are where a generation of refugees earned the wages that bought the houses, the cars and the citizenship tests.
Where the Omaha South Sudanese Came From
The South Sudanese in Omaha trace their origins to the southern regions of old Sudan, today the Republic of South Sudan. They come from the cattle country of the Nuer and Dinka along the Nile and its tributaries, from the Shilluk kingdom of the Upper Nile, and from the Equatorian and other peoples of the far south.
Almost none came directly. The typical path ran from a burning village to a refugee camp at Kakuma in Kenya or Pinyudo in Ethiopia, then through the United Nations resettlement system to an American city, and finally to Omaha. It is a journey that echoes other East African communities who found a foothold in the Midwest, from the Somalis of Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis to the Oromo community of Minneapolis, each carrying a homeland in memory while building a new one on the plains.
South Sudanese Omaha Today
Today the community is no longer just refugees. It is teachers, nurses, truck drivers, business owners and graduates. Buey Ray Tut, who came to Omaha as a child, studied political science and economics at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and went on to co-found Aqua Africa, a non-profit that has brought clean water to villages across South Sudan from a base in Nebraska.
The second generation is fully Nebraskan. They go to Omaha public schools, play American sports and slip between English and Dinka or Nuer at home. Their parents send them to weekend language classes so the homeland survives in their mouths as well as their memories.
The present is not without fear. In 2025 the federal government moved to end Temporary Protected Status for South Sudanese nationals, a decision challenged in court, and the threat of return to an unsafe country hangs over some families. Yet the community endures, the way it always has, by gathering on Sundays, voting, working the line and raising children who belong to two places at once. The journey that began in a war on the Nile did not end in Omaha. It simply found a new chapter on the Missouri River, and like the wider story of the Liberian community in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, it is still being written.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did South Sudanese refugees settle in Omaha, Nebraska?
South Sudanese refugees settled in Omaha in the 1990s because the city offered plentiful jobs in meatpacking and manufacturing, a low cost of living and affordable housing. As an early community took root, word of mouth and chain migration drew thousands more from camps abroad and from other US cities.
Does Omaha really have the largest South Sudanese population in the US?
Yes. Omaha has held the largest South Sudanese population in the United States since around 2006, when it numbered about seven thousand people. The South Sudanese in Omaha, Nebraska now number more than ten thousand across the greater metro area.
Did South Sudanese in Omaha vote in the 2011 independence referendum?
They did. Omaha was selected as one of only a handful of polling sites in the United States for the January 2011 referendum, and more than three thousand people travelled there from across the country to vote. The diaspora vote for independence was nearly unanimous, and South Sudan became an independent nation on 9 July 2011.
Which South Sudanese peoples live in Omaha?
Omaha is home to people from many of South Sudan’s communities, including the Nuer, Dinka, Shilluk, Bari, Azande and Maban. Each group maintains its own church congregations, languages and associations, so the South Sudanese presence in the city is really several communities sharing one home.
Who were the Lost Boys of Sudan in Omaha?
The Lost Boys were young Nuer and Dinka boys orphaned or separated from their families during the Second Sudanese Civil War, who walked vast distances to refugee camps before being resettled. Many were resettled in Omaha starting in 2001, and some, like the Reverend Joseph Alaak, became community leaders, clergy and professionals in Nebraska.
If your family’s story passed through Omaha, or any of the places South Sudanese refugees made home, Atlas of Home can help you trace that journey. From the camps at Kakuma to the packing floors of the Missouri River, to wherever you are now. Explore your story →
Further reading: South Sudanese Americans and the 2011 South Sudanese independence referendum on Wikipedia.