The issues of the Omaha Guide for its first five years have been lost. It likely struggled financially in its early years, as it had trouble paying the Associated Negro Press for their services. In 1930, Ford left the paper (though still remained president of the Omaha Guide Publishing Company) and moved to Washington, D.C., only briefly contributing to the paper in 1937. C.C. Galloway, a local businessman, had editorial control over the paper after Ford's departure. In a 1931 letter, Galloway laid out his intentions to "put out a Red-Hot paper" that would "smash the color line with a cosmopolitan, by weekly, ten-page newspaper". He hired M.L. Harris (who published the St. Joseph Review in Missouri) and Arthur B. McCaw (a civil servant and law student) to oversee two of its departments and write for the paper.
