Nebraska Spelled Backwards

The Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben have been running Omaha's civic life from behind a theatrical curtain since eighteen ninety-five. The name is Nebraska spelled backwards, which was the point. The story goes that the organization was dreamed up on a train returning from New Orleans, where Omaha businessmen had attended Mardi Gras and came home inspired by the krewes, the masked societies that organized the New Orleans festivities. One of the men suggested they reverse the name of their state, since, as he observed, everything in Nebraska seemed to be going backwards at the time, this was in the aftermath of the Panic of eighteen ninety-three.

The Omaha Commercial Club, precursor to the Chamber of Commerce, chartered the Knights in eighteen ninety-five to project the city's economic stability and boost civic morale. They organized an annual Coronation Ball, an elaborate formal spectacle in which prominent Omaha families rotated through ceremonial royalty, a King and Queen of Ak-Sar-Ben, with great fanfare and local press coverage.

In nineteen nineteen they built a racetrack in south Omaha to fund the organization's charitable activities, and for most of the twentieth century the Knights ran one of the region's premier horse racing venues alongside their civic and philanthropic programs.

The organization shifted away from racing after financial troubles in the nineteen nineties and focused on scholarship programs, agricultural recognition, and the annual Ak-Sar-Ben Stockshow and Rodeo. It still operates today, more than a hundred and thirty years after its founding, still spelling Nebraska backwards and still raising money for the heartland it was created to promote.