Preston Love

Preston Love, Jr. is a longtime community and political advocate. As a former Husker football player, Love is ready for the hard work to tackle the hate that has permeated politics in the years of Trump.

Over the past several decades, Preston Love has worked for civil rights and has championed North Omaha as a source of power and change.

Love is presently teaching Black Studies and Politics at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and is the founder and CEO of the Black Votes Matter Institute of Community Engagement and 4Urban.org.

Preston Love graduated with a degree in economics from the University of Nebraska and earned his master’s degree from Bellevue University.

While at the University of Nebraska, Love played football as a proud Husker and was later inducted into the Nebraska Black Sports Hall of Fame.

Love was an executive with IBM for 14 years, where he was a key manager in marketing and some of the first retail stores for computers in the 1980s.

Love has a long history in politics, including serving as the national campaign manager for Rev. Jesse Jackson’s 1984 presidential bid, working for Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young and with Chicago’s first Black Mayor, Harold Washington.

Love was instrumental in Pres. Barack Obama’s 2008 efforts to secure the electoral vote in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, known as the “Blue Dot.”

He is the first vice president of the NAACP Omaha,an active member of Antioch Church and a board member of the Kids Can Community Center of Omaha, which provides preschool, childcare, after-school services, Love continues to serve his community today.

Love has authored five books, including two children’s books including, “A Bridge to History, The Jackson Papers and Economic Cataracts”; and “A Chronicle of Efforts to Remove the Obstacles of Urban Community Engagement and Economic Inclusion.”

Love organizes an annual Black History Tour, involving more than 40 high school students, traveling to Memphis, TN; Jackson, MS, Birmingham, Tuskegee, Montgomery, Selma, AL; and Atlanta, GA in order to witness history in real time.

Preston Love and his wife Martha live in North Omaha.