An Interview with Eva G. Simmons
An Oral History Conducted by Claytee D. White
African American Collaborative
Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ©African Americans in Las Vegas: A Collaborative Oral History Project
University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2012
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Henderson Libraries Las Vegas Clark County Public Libraries Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries Wiener-Rogers Law Library at William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas Las Vegas National Bar Association Vegas PBS Clark County Museum
Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Project Manager: Barbara Tabach Transcriber: Kristin Hicks Interviewers, Editors and Project Assistants: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White, B. Leon Green, John Grygo, and Delores Brownlee, Melissa Robinson.
ii The recorded Interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish.
The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews.
The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the African Americans in Las Vegas: A Collaborative Oral History Project.
Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada Las Vegas
iii Preface
Growing up in Somerville, Texas, Eva Goins Simmons never imagined moving to Las Vegas, Nevada—but she moved here twice: Once briefly in 1957 to be with her sister and then again continuously in 1963 after college graduation and marrying her husband George Simmons.
She shares the story of how she rooted her life in the desert community, devoted herself to education and to her family. Eva attributes her life successes to her list of friends and mentors.
Despite their college educations, the employment opportunities for educated African Americans were limited. Eva had a degree in sociology, health and recreation; her husband had an engineering/architecture degree from University of Texas, Austin. Their persistence and talents eventually led to successful careers.
George worked for Sproul Homes during the building of Berkley Square and at the Nevada Test Site. Eva's career path worked its way through the Clark County School District from teacher to administrator. She provides an understanding of the Sixth Grade Centers and Prestige Schools, which were spawned during the desegregation era.
Today there is a school named after her in North Las Vegas—the Eva G. Simmons Elementary School. She also was active in the Delta Sigma Theta sorority and the formation of Les Femmes Douze, a scholarship-granting organization.
iv Table of Contents Interview with Eva G. Simmons February 4, 2013 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Claytee D. White
Preface iv
Talks about her early life, growing up in eastern Texas; temporarily living in Las Vegas and then enrolled at University of Texas, Austin, lived in segregated dorm; started Delta Sigma Theta chapter there. Describes meeting her husband; how her sister moved to Las Vegas; how her mother became probation officer; Judge Robert "Moon" Mullen. Explains how she and her husband came to live in Las Vegas 1 - 6
Explains 1963 racism and how she and her husband George faced in attaining a employment that matched their educational degrees; George worked for Sproul Homes (Berkley Square) and at the Nevada Test Site; Eva becomes teacher despite hurdles; "voluntary desegregation plan;" career advancements; Elementary and Secondary Education Act Title One 7 - 12
Speaks about being appointed assistant personnel manager under Supt. Claude Perkins; lists blacks who held administrative positions during that era. Talks about Sixth Grade Centers; Prestige Schools; Sullivan Programed Reading 13 - 16
Describes the beginning of the scholarship-granting organization Les Femmes Douze; first debutante ball in 1964 in the Gold Room; 2012's group of debutantes and continued interest in the organization; garnering media coverage; story about Frank Sinatra stopping in once; selection process and expectation of the girls chosen. Black Community Organizations Network; baccalaureate program for graduating black students 17 - 24
Shares types of entertainment and places they would go including Huntridge movie theater; had summer jobs at El Morocco in the cage and for Allied Credit; describes Jackson Street of the mid-1950s; Harrison House; 1960 plans to march to desegregate the Strip and recalls participating in sit-ins in Austin, Texas. Talks about downside of integration 25 - 29
More about husband's design work with Nucleus Plaza Shopping Center; house developments, Regal Estates, Valley View, Sproul Homes. Her thoughts about the future of Westside; Eleanor Walker; NAACP; last thoughts about Las Vegas 30 - 34
Index 35
v vi This is Claytee White and I'm with Mrs. Eva Simmons in her home here in North Las
Vegas. The date is February fourth, 2013.
How are you doing today?
I'm well, thank you. How about you?
Fantastic. It's wonderful to be here.
Thank you.
Could you spell your last name for me, please?
Yes. S-I-M-M-O-N-S.
Thank you so much. I want to start by just asking you to tell me a bit about your early life, where you grew up, your parents and what they did for a living?
I was born [1938] in a little town in south Texas called Somerville, Texas. It's near Houston and
Austin, actually. I think I was six years old when my father died and my mother moved to
Austin. So I claim Austin as my home because I had all of my formative years there, attending elementary, junior high, high school and college there in Austin.
My family moved to Las Vegas in the mid-1950s and my mother and I came to visit. My sister [Shirley (Morris) Willis] had a little baby girl who was born weighing only two and a half pounds. So it's a miracle that she even lived. I think she's about fifty now. So back in the day they didn't have all these little tubes and little things. Anyway, my mother could not go back home and leave that pitiful little baby, so there I was. I worked here a couple of years, saved my money and went back home to college, which is what I really wanted to do.
I was one of the first undergraduates to enroll at the University of Texas, Austin, and I lived on campus in a segregated dorm, of course. But I was in my hometown, so that was really kind of nice. I had wonderful mentors from my teachers and whatever. So I never felt alone; I
1 always felt supported and encouraged. In fact, it was because these ladies' help that I received a scholarship to pay my college expenses. So I was destined to become a Delta [Delta Sigma
Theta] because these women were all Deltas. So I chartered a Delta chapter there at the
University of Texas. I had a wonderful life. There's nothing that I regret.
Wonderful. How many blacks were enrolled in your class?
Well, when I entered the university, there were three hundred blacks university-wide, which included undergraduates and graduates. The girls lived in what was called a co-op because the residential fees were lower. We earned part of our room and board by doing the chores at the co-op. And the boys, the young African men were way across campus living in what had been some former military barracks. Of course, I never saw them, but my husband has told me what they were like. So they were far worse off than we were. Some of the young men would subscribe to have their meals at the co-op because that was more cost effective for them and they were getting good meals and they had access to the young women who were there.
Is that how you met your husband?
That's how I met my husband. In fact, my boyfriend at the time introduced me to my husband
[George] [laughing].
Silly man.
Yeah. On Friday nights the young men would come over and we would play cards and dance to the forty-fives, which were popular then, and just have a great time there in our little home, as we called it.
And it was a parlor?
Yes, a huge one with a dining room adjacent to. We'd push the furniture back and we'd just have a ball.
2 That's wonderful. Your sister was already in Las Vegas. How did she get to Las Vegas
and why Las Vegas?
My sister ( Shirley ) married an airman whose parents lived here in Las Vegas, worked on a
place that they called "the ranch." And I know exactly where it is, off Tonopah and Owens, but
it was out in the middle of the desert when I first moved here, of course. But anyway, that's how
my sister ended up in Las Vegas.
My mother absolutely hated Las Vegas. She was concerned about the ramifications of
the bomb at the Nevada Test Site, and rightly so we know now. She didn't like it that the whole
economy was predicated on gambling and that kind of stuff. And she said of all places for
Shirley to end up, here in Las Vegas.
But what she loved about Las Vegas was the weather. Where we lived in Austin we were
part of the tornado alley and when the clouds grew dark we had to sit down near our mother and
be quiet because that's the way she had to do it at her family's home except they had to go down
into the vegetable cellar. So if I had something going that evening at church or at school, I
always prayed that the clouds would not roll in because I knew my mother would not let me go.
So that's how we ended up from Texas to Las Vegas.
So the year that you came out that the small baby was born, you stayed for a year and a
half?
Yes.
How old were you at that time?
I was eighteen.
So did you finish high school here or had you already finished?
No. I had already graduated.
3 So did you work between, that year that you spent here did you work?
I did work.
Tell me about that.
Yes. Work was even fun because this was all so different. It was fascinating to me and I was
one of those kids who wanted to know about everything and experience everything. So I did
work. I worked at Western Laundry, which was down on Western Street or Avenue, which is off
Martin Luther King and Charleston. I remember that I was making six dollars (a shift). I
remember that my mother encouraged me to save every penny so that I could go back home to
school. Nevada Southern held classes at Las Vegas High School and that just didn't seem like
college to me or my mother, although my mother was anxious about me going all the way back
to Texas with no one there. I had no relatives there, just her good friends, those ladies that I
mentioned took charge of me and it all worked out very well.
Now, what kind of work did your mother do?
My mother was a probation officer out at juvenile court. But prior to that breakthrough, because
everything was a breakthrough, she worked in the powder room at the old Stardust Hotel, which
was a good job for a black person back in the day.
Anyway, I saved my little six dollars that I made every shift at the laundry and eventually
had enough money and I took off. I cried all the way from here to Texas because I was really
torn leaving my mother and wondering about how I was going to make it. But I had enough
money for my tuition; I knew that. And I had enough money to rent a room because I didn't
know about the dorm then. But as I said, I had these wonderful mentors and they secured a job
for me with the Austin Recreation Department at our park, which was the Rosewood Park there
in Austin. I was making a $1.35 an hour; that was a lot of money.
4 But now, after making six dollars an hour—
No. Six-dollars a shift. That was for eight hours' work at the laundry.
I see why it was so precious. Your mother must have had a college education.
She did not.
So how did she become a probation officer?
A college education was not required back in that day. And Judge Mullen, who was black—
Yes. Robert "Moon" Mullen.
When "Moon" Mullen became the juvenile court judge with Mike O'Callaghan's help, he sought
to right some of the discrimination there. And "Moon" Mullen was a neighbor of my sister's on
Leona Street. That's kind of the way it happened.
Oh, thank you for that. Give me your mother's name and your sister's name.
My sister's name is Shirley Morris. She's probably better known as Shirley Willis because that
was her name at the time when she worked at the old Jefferson Center and at Doolittle. And my
mother's name is Eloise Robertson; that was her second marriage.
After you finished school—and what was your major?
Sociology, health, PE and recreation.
So when you finished that you decided to come back to Las Vegas?
Yes. Well, I married my husband my senior year. He already had a degree and he came to UT
to get his second degree in architectural engineering. We visited Las Vegas—I'm thinking the
August after I graduated from college and we had been married the year prior to. So we were
ready to go and do our thing. He said, well, we can live anywhere that you want except Midland,
Texas, which is where his parents lived. There was absolutely nothing in Midland but oil and
wild rabbits. And whenever we visited there I didn't get any sleep because I always felt like the
5 house was on fire from smelling the burning oil in the oil fields.
So I must have shared that with my mother, which was a mistake because I didn't plan on living here because this was not my notion of a cosmopolitan city where you can do things and go places. Anyway, so the pressure was on. My mother; my sister; Barbara Kirkland, who was my sister's neighbor; Mabel Hoggard; Edith Abington, who is now deceased—she and her husband were early teachers here—but all of these people that I knew in Las Vegas as a young person were calling and writing, telling me Las Vegas has all kinds of possibilities for you and your husband.
So we came out to visit that August and arranged to take some exams because a lot of the exams were civil service exams. Nevada didn't have a lot of people, especially black people, with a college degree. And so I took the exam for Nevada State Welfare, received the results on a postal card back in Austin when we went back to prepare to relocate here. Relocated to Las
Vegas.
Do you remember the date?
I'm thinking that was like September. 1963...
I never heard anything, never heard anything. I didn't know what was going on. So I'm whining to my sister because she knew people. So finally, she mentioned it to Judge Mullen who mentioned it to Mike O'Callaghan who at the time was director of the whole health and welfare system for the state of Nevada. Well, Mike went through the files up in Carson City of all of the applicants. And lo and behold, there were these little files with these little red checkmarks on them. So he was a smart man. He pulled those. Guess who they were? All of the black folks.
So Mary Wells, the lady that I mentioned was a part of Les Femmes Douze, was one of
6 those. Sandra, her husband was an attorney here, early, early attorney.
Porter?
Yes. [Sandra Porter]
Earle White, Robert Reid.
Reid, Sandra Reid—and Eva Simmons. We went off to Carson City, Nevada, to get the orientation to become social workers. Governor O'Callaghan arranged the housing for us at the
Central Motel, downtown Reno—and it is still there—picked us up, transported us to Carson
City for our training, picked us up, brought us back to town in Reno and interrogated us about how our day had gone and how we were feeling about everything. Actually the people were very nice; I guess they really didn't have an option because here's the director obviously mentoring for these three black women. So we became social workers.
But social work wasn't what I wanted to do. While I was here I had interviewed for a position with the Clark County School District [CCSD] , not realizing that they didn't place black folk in position in the secondary schools, only the elementary schools regardless of your preparation. So here I am with a degree in health, PE, recreation and dance, a minor in sociology, being placed in a first grade classroom.
But another part of that story is I interviewed with J. Harold Brinley—there's a middle school named in his honor—who was a Mormon bishop who had a new granddaughter that he was so enamored with. I really didn't have an interview because he talked about his granddaughter the whole time; that was fine, too.
At any rate, the next year here comes this contract out of nowhere in the mail, which I quickly signed and sent back to the district. My first assignment was at Mountain View
Elementary School, and I have an explanation for that. Mountain View is way on the east end in
7 what I think is called Sunrise Manor Township or something. But we had to submit a picture within so many days. When my picture arrived, suddenly I was reassigned to what was then
Madison Elementary School, which is now Wendell P. Williams.
Which is located?
In the heart of the black community. So my theory is a graduate from the University of Texas was misleading, but when the picture came that squared the record, and so I was sent where I belonged.
Where did you and your husband live when you first arrived?
On J Street, J and Doolittle. Those apartments were new and that's where we lived with a lot of other black teachers who had been recruited in by Mr. Fitzgerald from places like North Carolina and Virginia and places like that.
And tell me who Mr. Fitzgerald is.
H.P. Fitzgerald—there's a school named in his honor, too—was the first black principal in all of the state of Nevada. So he was like our mentor, period, just because we were black.
What kind of work was your husband George able to find?
A porter's job at the casino.
And now, he has a master's degree?
Uh-huh, in engineering. And he has a story, too. But in brief, he eventually secured a job with
Sproul Homes. That's the first subdivision after Berkley Square that was built for the Negroes. I remember that his boss' name was John; I don't remember the last name. But at any rate, when
John was ready to retire and divest his business, he hooked George up with someone in the chain of command for—I want to say TreCorp, but I'm not sure that's correct, but one of the prime contractors for the Nevada Test Site. And so that's how he got that foot in the door.
8 My husband is a highly disciplined man and he always wants to know more about what
he's doing. So he took this correspondence course; it took him a couple of years to get through
that, but it was all about project engineering and whatever it was that related to whatever was
going on at the Test Site. His supervisor was an Asian gentleman whose name is Vincent Gong.
We became friends with Vince and Shirley. Vince assigned projects for George to handle. One
day Vince was really overloaded with stuff and he's talking to George and he's saying I really
wish I had somebody who knew how to do whatever it was, and George says, oh, I know how to
do that. And Vince says you do, how did you learn to do that? And he says, well, I took this
correspondence course. And I can't think of the name of the course; I wish I could. And Vince
said, oh, great, then you take this project. And from then on Vince became increasingly aware of
my husband's abilities and he became his workplace mentor. And now he oversees a section
at—what is the name of the company now?
Still out at Mercury or someplace else?
No. The office is down on Losee Road. It's called N S Tech, National Securities Technologies.
They bid on those contracts, so every year the name changes—well, every time they bid.
Would your husband be interested in being a part of this project that we're doing for the
African-American experience in Las Vegas?
I will ask him; I'm just not sure.
We don't have enough people with that scientific type of a background. We have attorneys,
like I've told you, and schoolteachers and all of that, but probably nobody in the hard
sciences.
Yes. I will ask him.
Please. This is so good. I want you to tell me about your career next. But I'm really
9 interested, of course—after the career, then we want to talk about the good stuff, like Les
Femmes Douze and all of that. So when you then got into CCSD, what was your trajectory through the years?
Well, I taught for ten years at Madison, at Jo MacKey. Jo MacKey was one of our newer schools, Jo MacKey and CVT Gilbert. So the district is in the throes of trying to stay segregated and black people are in the throes of suing the district. And so one of the initiatives that the district put forth was a voluntary desegregation plan.
We're talking about the early seventies now?
Yes. And they named Jo MacKey and CVT Gilbert as prestige schools. I was selected to go to
Jo MacKey. Then later I worked at Lois Craig Elementary School. The sixth graders were in the elementary schools then because it was prior to the sixth grade center plan. And the sixth graders in my opinion were in charge of the school, not the principal, and so I'm whining; every night I'm whining to my husband about the unruly children. So he said to me, well, if you think you can do it so much better, why don't you go to school and become a principal? I don't know why I hadn't thought of that; that was so unlike me. So that's what I did.
And you went to school where?
UNLV. Got that master's. And let me tell you how that happened. The district had a partnership with UNLV called Teacher Corps, which was one of the antipoverty related programs. I was selected chair of the Teacher Corps Advisory Committee because all of the
Teacher Corps interns were young people, mostly white, from somewhere else who had a degree in something other than education. The task was to give them a competency-based teacher education so they could then certify; they would finish with a master's degree and obtain teacher certification.
10 Well, a vacancy occurred among the team leaders. I don't remember who left. But anyway, I was selected that team leader, which meant I was able to get my master's degree through UNLV without cost, what a gift. And so I did that and two years later I was an elementary principal and I absolutely loved it. So I served as principal—no, I take that back.
My first administrative job was coordinator for Title One because the school that I worked in,
Lois Craig, was a Title One school.
And tell me what Title One means.
It's the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, E-S-E-A Title One. It's still around. So I worked out there in the "ED Shed," as we called it, on Flamingo Road. And that was a real novelty; we had one black to precede me there—well, two; and that was John Bass, who is now deceased, and James Pughsley before him, who is now consultant. He did lots of things.
But while I was working in Title One, the big deal was to bring the district into compliance on its equipment that was all over the place where it should never have been, out in the valley, if you get the drift, down at the City of Las Vegas; I mean equipment was everywhere. Well, I was hell bent on passing that audit about that equipment. Not only did I round up all of that equipment and get the inventory straight, but the district received an accolade from the education people overseeing Title One grants because of that.
Well, that captured the attention of John Paul, who is now deceased, who was a deputy superintendent at the time. I was a spunky little person; I guess I still am. But Mr. Paul admired that because here I am in a building full of white people—we didn't even have but a thimbleful of black clerical staff there. The custodian for the building was black and a terrific adviser. He is deceased now, too.
But anyway, I caught Mr. Paul's attention. There came a time when a report had to be
11 given to the board about the progress that the Title One kids made and all. Mr. Paul, who was deputy superintendent, took me into that board room. He sat up on that podium where board members sit. He listened to my presentation. He pretended to be a board member and threw all kinds of wild questions at me because I had to think on my feet and respond to the questions.
When he was satisfied that I could do that he coached me on which board members to make frequent eye contact with, just a wonderful man.
And so that next year I'm an elementary principal, back at the Lois Craig Elementary
School where I had worked. And so I thought, oh, how wonderful, I'm going back to the school from whence I came. Well, what I learned was it's difficult to make the shift from colleague to supervisor in an environment that you once shared. So I've learned lessons in all of my administrative positions. But my attitude has always been no matter what my status within this organization, I need to teach the people that I'm responsible for supervising what they need to do and how they need to do it because that will compliment me. So that's what I've done. So I went from Title One coordinator to elementary principal.
Then Claude Perkins was appointed superintendent and there was a vacancy in personnel for assistant personnel manager. I come back from vacation, my husband and I. I go to the board meeting because I want to know what's going on and I'm named assistant personnel manager. Well, that was in the days of affirmative action, so we needed to write a plan; we needed to have a strategy. I needed to establish rapport with all of these white male supervisors, who, in fact, would be the ones to make or break the plan by acquiescing or not to the strategies there. And by God's grace that went well, too.
When I started in that role, there were seven black administrators in this whole district; I could name every one. I put together a plan where I would meet individually with each of the
12 ethnic groups; and I did, right out there at the Ed Center. I told them about the goals and objectives of the plan and encouraged them to enter the administrative eligibility process, which
I was also responsible for, coached them on interviewing and getting their resume together and whatever.
Anyway, when I left that position to become area superintendent, the percentage of minorities in administration had increased from seven percent to twenty-seven percent. Now, women were also considered to be minorities then, so that certainly helped a lot. I don't know in a tangible fashion, but I understand now it's drifting back the other way. But somebody else will have to take care of that now.
But I still get calls from young people who bump across somebody and they say, oh, you're going to interview for a job; you need to call Eva. And so they call and they either come by or we play interview on the phone. And I feel really good when I see these young people out doing their thing and coping with their struggles.
Do you remember the seven names of the blacks who were in those administrative positions?
Okay. Let me try. There was James Pughsley. There was James Ship. There was Theron
Goynes. Did I mention Hershel Williams? There was Helen Toland. There was Evelyn
O'Gwen. And I don't know where Ms. O'Gwen is. And there was Eva Simmons. There we were. Is that seven?
That's seven.
There you go. Now, notice all of those were men except three. That's right.
Now, by this time Dr. Pughsley was director of elementary education. So he had a cluster of elementary schools where he supervised those principals. Mrs. O'Gwen was principal
13 of the sixth grade center kindergartens. So the kindergarten children in the sixth grade centers had their own person and, in fact, the black community insisted on that as an accommodation for our black kids because we knew who would get all of the attention. Mr. Ship was principal at
Madison. Mr. Goynes was at Highland. Helen was at Kit Carson. Hershel was at Elbert
Edwards. Did I get them all?
I think so.
I want to know more about your understanding of the sixth grade centers—how it worked, how it was put together?
And I can e-mail you the sixth grade center plan; I have it on my computer. I'll make a note of that.
That was the plan that the judge accepted to make the Clark County School District a unitary school district even though there were a limited number of schools with a predominant
Caucasian population included in the plan because they didn't want to be anyway except for those families who had been involved in the prestige schools, the voluntary.
Explain prestige schools for me when you finish with the sixth grade centers.
So all of the black children who had been in grades kindergarten through grade six were bussed out to the predominately white schools. And when the white children reached sixth grade, then they were bussed into the sixth grade centers. The kindergarten children remained in their neighborhood schools. So that's kind of it in a nutshell. Of course, the curriculum was augmented.
Upgraded?
Yes, upgraded. Specialists were brought in to teach the music and the art and the PE and all of those things. The day was organized in a block system so that for half of the school day the
14 children were involved in reading, language arts, math, and the rest of the day they floated from one specialist to another and then the schedule flipped. And so these little kids thought they were really hot stuff because they felt more like the junior high students, being able to change classes and all of that. Security was tight, of course. As I said, they rode the bus over and they rode the bus back.
And black sixth graders participated in that; is that correct?
Yes, the black sixth graders stayed at the sixth grade center; that's where the desegregation part occurred that was acceptable to the judge.
So tell me what a prestige school is and how that worked.
The prestige schools' label was given to Jo MacKey and CVT Gilbert elementary schools. The white students who attended, attended because their parents saw value in them having a diverse learning environment. That really struck me, too, because one of the students in my second grade class was the son of the hospital administrator for Sunrise. I can't think of his name right now. But anyway, the mom and dad came and we were seated at the table. They were over there and I was over here. And I had the child's little portfolio and going through the grade book talking about what we had covered and whatever. And all of a sudden the husband says to me,
"I'm not interested in that; I know that he can read, write and figure. I want to know is he building relationships with people?" Isn't that amazing?
Yes.
Brandness was his name. His former wife later taught for me. Isn't that something?
But that was revealing. The curriculum was also augmented, they say, but it was also dictated. I remember that the reading materials were Sullivan Programed Reading.
Which is?
15 It's probably still around; I don't know. But I'll give you a thumbnail on what it was like. Kids could, in fact, progress at their own speed because the reading book was more in a workbook format. And the mini lesson that we would teach each of the groups would teach them the phonetic aspects of that so they'd have little work pages in this reader that might leave out the vowel, might leave out the ending consonant or the beginning consonant. So in the work pages they would have to fill all of that in. So the practice was related to the lesson. The early levels of Sullivan were phonetically consistent. So if you learned to read "cat," then you can read
"that" and "mat" and "sat" and all of those kinds of words. So maybe it was better; I don't really know. I always thought that one of the cons of Sullivan readers was that the students didn't get the comprehension part; there was no time to discuss so you could pull in the experiences of the students related to the story and all of that, which is the way I was taught to teach by Susie
Parker, who is Jackie Brantley's mother; she was my mentor. That's sort of what the prestige schools—
And it was from first through fifth or sixth?
Yes, first through sixth.
Wonderful. Thank you for that.
You're welcome.
And now the good stuff. Tell me about Les Femmes Douze.
Okay. As I mentioned earlier, Mr. Fitzgerald recruited a whole crop of young black teachers from Virginia and North Carolina and places back that way. And so I'm thinking right now that there probably were close to two or three hundred of us; I mean really a critical mass. But the black community was growing and we needed black teachers for those black schools, so there you go. We were chatting, a group of us, and the leader of the pack was Gwendolyn Bennett,
16 who was Reverend [Marion] Bennett's wife at the time, who thought we should do something to pull our girls together because they had been bussed somewhere throughout their high school, secondary school experience; they didn't even know one another unless they lived close enough in the black community or attended the same church or whatever. So the notion of debutantes was borne the summer, maybe the spring of 1964. Our first ball was in November of that year.
Wow, that was fast.
Yes, it was fast. We selected girls with a 2.0 GPA, good character and who wanted to participate. We started out with a formal tea with the gloves and the hats and all of that. We're going to do that this year, too. We're going to have a retro tea for our fiftieth year. The program has grown and has become more sophisticated over time, but the reputation of the organization still stands.
As an afterthought, when the girls graduated we're thinking, well, what now? The deb's last name was Watkins. I'll think of her first name, hopefully. But anyway, she was going to a local beauty school and we gave her a fifty-dollar scholarship. Well now, I don't know what that bought back in 1964. But anyway, we started to build on the notion of this being a scholarship-granting organization. So this past November, November of 2012, we granted thirty-seven thousand dollars in scholarship to about twenty-two girls.
So once we made the decision that we were going to be a scholarship-granting organization, well, how are we going to get the money? So we did a souvenir journal. The girls and their parents went pounding the streets for ads; so did the ladies. We stopped doing that eventually. That was a lot of work. And so that's how we acquired the money.
At the first ball, which occurred at the Convention Center, the Gold Room—you probably haven't been here long enough to know the Gold Room at the Convention Center.
17 Well, the convention center then was this little old domed building, which looked humungous to
us, and off to the side was a smaller ballroom known as the Gold Room. That's where we had
our first debutante ball with eight girls and enough security for the president because they
insisted that we hire security. I don't know what they thought we were going to be doing up in
there. Anyway, we hired the security because that's what we had to do. We had our little ball
and we had a fall theme and the little book was about an eighth of an inch think, but it was a
beginning.
Isn't that great?
And just Saturday afternoon we were here putting together the program proposal for the group
for this year coming.
And how many debutantes did you have in 2012?
Thirty-two. The last three years we've had thirty-some girls. The highest number we've ever had was thirty-six and that was in the eighties.
So does it surprise you that in 2012 with social media and cell phones and iPhones that
young girls are still interested in being debutantes?
No, that part doesn't surprise me. What surprises me is that we get no media attention to these
girls. We had seven girls this year with a four-point-seven average because they were all taking
AP courses and will go away to college with twenty-four credits in the bank.
So how do you go about trying to get media?
Well, we worked on that Saturday, too. We send our little press releases. We send pictures and
script after the ball. They tell us it depends on the space and whatever that's available.
Sometimes we pay to have the coverage in the newspapers. Now, that was a shocker that we would actually pay to put some news that compliments students in the newspaper. So our
18 coverage has been slim in recent years. I think the coverage in the earlier years was probably
easier to obtain because there was not a lot going on for students especially black students. And
I don't know if they expected us to have some troubles or whatever because for a number of
years we had to hire that security. Maybe they were waiting on an incident or whatever and they
were going to be there just in case.
One year we had the ball at the Sands and Frank Sinatra actually entered the ballroom
and greeted the girls. He didn't stay a great long time because you know how the buzz gets
going and then all of a sudden he's surrounded. But that was one of the highlights and that was
one of our earlier years. Too many years now for me to remember what year was that.
But I love this. I just love you going through that like this. This is wonderful. Tell me
what girls have to do. I know you select them according to their grade point average and
their good character. How do you define good character?
Well, we define it according to the rules and regulations of the school district. You don't have a
record in the dean's office. You don't have a record out at juvi. And remember, since we were
all in this little compact area, we knew everybody and everything anyway.
Exactly. Did churches play a part?
Not a direct part. But I can tell you that Second Baptist determined at some point that every year
their girls would get the award for the highest level of solicitations for their booklet, and they do.
I'm not remembering who it was this past year, but she had something like seven or eight
thousand dollars. I remember another Second Baptist young lady who finished her debutante
program with ten thousand plus. I mean they take it seriously. And it's wonderful.
I think it is, too. So tell me from day one. The tea that you invite the young ladies in to
participate in, what happens step by step from that spring through the November
19 debutante ball?
Okay, I will. The first step, of course, is recruitment. And we have had wonderful cooperation from the Clark County School District. We send the recruitment materials to the director of guidance and counseling, Kim Boyle, and then she sends it to all her counselors. They preliminary pull in girls who meet those criteria because they know them very well now and encourage them to complete an application.
And these girls are usually juniors or seniors in high school?
They're juniors. So the girls we select for this year will graduate in June 2014. So they start out, we call them rising seniors. We send invitations to those girls having at least the 2.0 GPA, which we're going to raise because you can't even get into UNLV with a 2.5 GPA. Our girls always have excellent GPAs. And we are not at all shy about telling a young lady who's on the line, honey, your future is more important than debutantes; you need to spend your extra time studying, because we meet every Monday night once we have selected.
So we select the girls. Then we have the tea. And at the tea we give a broad overview to the girls and their parents or guardians on about what's expected and what we do and why we do it and what is the percentage of ad money that they get back; this year we gave eighty-five percent back to the 2013 girls who will get their scholarships awarded in November. So we go through all of that and we give them a chance to ask questions. We show a video from the prior years so they get a real sense of it.
And we have a very structured program. We have three meetings with the parents. We coach them and give them sample letters to send back home to their friends and all those folks to help with those ads. We give them the cost of the ads, the due dates, how they have to be submitted. We meet with the parents to tell them what the requirements are for the girls' attire.
20 Then we have a wrap-up meeting with the parents where we give these girls who will get their scholarship awarded in November of 2013 an application packet with instructions on what they need to do to send back to us. And we write the check in the parents' name and the girl's name.
Then we meet every Monday night. And we do have some fun. We have some activities so the girls can get acquainted because they're from everywhere, Agassi and Centennial and
Gorman and West Prep—they're from everywhere—Trinity. We have a FAFSA [Free
Application for Federal Student Aid] workshop.
What is that workshop, FAFSA?
Yeah. The federal form that you fill out to qualify. Is it FAFSA?
Yes. But it's the financial need?
Yes. We have a scholarship workshop and we tell them about scholarship sources. We help them write that letter that becomes a part of that scholarship packet. We tell them about local scholarship sources like Delta, like AKA, like the black attorneys, like the urban chamber.
That in itself is so valuable.
Each girl has a special mentor that she refers to as her big sister. And I just love to say I can't get rid of mine because I'm still in touch with a whole bunch of them over all of these years.
Wow. And the big sisters are all women who've been through this or women who are founders?
Who are part of this organization.
So now, of the original twelve founders, how many are still active? And how have you filled in so that you have enough people to do all this work?
That's right. Let's see. There's Eva, there's Lois Bolden, Barbara Kirkland, Ruth Hicks, Esther
Langston. I think there are five founders still with the group. The rest are other ladies that we
21 have invited in. And we really got smart one year when we started to feel a little weary and we
said, well, we should invite some of our former debutantes who are established back to the group
and we call them our auxiliary members, which I never liked because some of the founders felt it was our job to tell them what to do and I didn't see that as being a growth experience for those
girls. So I got myself elected president again and I never refer to them as auxiliary members; I just refer to them as members, so we got rid of that auxiliary. But in fact, one of our auxiliary
members is our current president now and she's a wonderful, energetic president. And my
daughter is a member of the organization and she's a good worker, too.
Oh, that's amazing.
Ten years after they have been associated with the group they can be invited back to serve the
needs of the new girls. And we have a cap on the membership of thirty, but I think we only have
twenty members now and we have two emeritus members, two founders, in fact, who still pay
their dues, come when they can. One lives in Atlanta; the other one lives in Charlotte, North
Carolina. So that's how we get to the twenty-two.
Thank you so much for that. That's wonderful information.
Earlier when we were talking you mentioned another group that you were
instrumental in getting together, the Black Community Organizations Network.
Yes.
Tell me about that because I'm supposed to know everything and I don't know anything
about this.
The Black Community Organizations Network, known as BCON, is an organization that plans
and implements a baccalaureate program for graduating black seniors. It started with the first
black superintendent in the Clark County School District, Dr. Claude G. Perkins, who suggested
22 to a few of us, few worker bees that he knew about that we should be doing something special with our graduates. And so we had the first baccalaureate at True Love Missionary Baptist
Church and the speaker was Dr. Henry Ponder, who has served as president of various HBCUs
[historically black colleges and universities]. He was also one of the prime movers with the
United Negro College Fund at one time. And Eva McGough is involved; she is the sister of Dr.
Ponder. So it was Reverend Wilson, Eva Simmons, Eva McGough and Dr. Claude Perkins; we were really the four that started the baccalaureate.
Soon, a year or two afterwards, we saw the need to expand because we do drape the students with a medallion so that they have something on their necks that gives them pride when they go through their graduation exercises. And so we needed money to buy those medallions.
And we'd have a reception for the graduates after the ceremony, and we don't do that anymore because we have too many graduating, which is wonderful. We do the program at the little theater, the new one at Las Vegas Academy. And we fill that up.
Oh, good.
But we moved from True Love to Second Baptist because it was bigger and pretty soon we outgrew Second Baptist. And they loved calling it the home of BCON; the ministers were so wonderful. And so now we're at the Las Vegas Academy and we'll see how long we stay there.
So what do you actually do for these seniors?
Well, we let the counselors know of the activity. We ask their help in getting the word out to the black graduating seniors. We provide a significant speaker at the baccalaureate, giving them their charge for when they leave high school and go on to college. We have a little ritual that we wrote where the graduates have a part, the parents have a part, the organizational members have a part and then we have a piece that we all say together. We have a significant speaker. We call
23 them up by school. We announce the name of the student and what college they're going to.
And if they have some outstanding achievement from high school, we will mention one or two things. And then we drape them with the medallion and then they go back and wait for all of the students from their school. And they're dressed in their robes. We had to get permission for them to get their robes early. It's just beautiful with all of those black young people in those colorful robes excited about graduation, excited about being a part of BCON. And that's what we do.
And the same organizations contribute. I think Delta has been a platinum contributor for many, many years. When we started we had a flat fee for organizations to pay to be listed on the program as one of the sponsors. And now we've kind of opened that up so that organizations can contribute beyond that or whatever because we have so many medals to buy now.
And BCON should be approaching forty years at least. So we've been doing that for a long time, too.
When you and your husband first arrived in Las Vegas, and especially when all of these couple of hundred black teachers came here from all over the country, what kind of entertainment did you participate in?
Well, there were a few places on the Strip that we could go to. We could go to Pussycat A Go-
Go, which was a little club on Paradise Road. They had dancing and whatever. I don't remember gambling there. We could go to the Huntridge Theater, which I think now is being considered—
It's on the National Register of Historic Places.
That's right. And I'll come back to the Huntridge in a minute. We could go to the El Cortez downtown and have dinner.
24 But in the black community itself we had the Cove Hotel, which no longer stands. We
had the El Morocco Club where I worked one summer between college years. We had the Town
Tavern. We had the Louisiana Club. We could go to Jerry's—
Nugget.
Uh-huh, to eat. Of course, he had gambling, too. We could bowl at the Silver Nugget, which
was further on Las Vegas Boulevard. And so maybe that gave impetus to us forming our little
Delta groups and AKA groups and Alpha groups and BCON groups and Les Femmes Douze.
The El Cortez allowed integration before some of the other hotels?
We could go there to dinner.
Interesting. Tell me about the Huntridge.
The Huntridge Theater was owned by Lloyd Katz. In those days Edie and Lloyd were all
members of the NAACP. Dorothy Eisenberg was a big supporter. All of that. And so they did
what they thought was appropriate for things that they controlled and that's why we were able to
go to the Huntridge.
That's wonderful. The year that you worked at the—El Rio, was it?
No. The El Morocco.
You worked at the El Morocco one of the summers.
Yes.
What was that like and what did your mother think of you working on Jackson Street?
Well, Jackson Street didn't have a negative name in those days; that was where our commercial
district was. We had the beauty shops and the barbershops and Mom's Kitchen and the casinos,
the Brown Derby. I never got into the Brown Derby because it didn't have a good reputation
then. I didn't frequent the clubs; I just worked there.
25 So what kind of work did you do?
I worked in the cage because I had a little bit of college, remember? So that made me special.
Another summer I worked at the Allied Credit downtown on I think it was Third Street.
And I almost called the owner's name. But Eleanor Walker's aunt was the executive secretary at
this credit place. What do you call the places that would screen you for credit?
Not credit bureaus?
I don't remember. But that was the kind of place it was. She is the one that hired me for the
summer to be the clerk there. Eleanor and I were teenage friends when I first came here. So it's
all about the network and luck I think.
That's great. Describe Jackson Street to me when you came here in, what, '63?
Okay. Well, when I first came here, remember it was the mid-1950s—they had the neon lights.
The Cove Hotel actually had a showroom and they had performances there. The Moulin Rouge
had already closed, but I had read about it in Jet Magazine. The El Morocco had a stage and they
had—I guess she must have been a stripper, but a beautiful young lady. What I remember about
her after her exotic dancing and all of this is she would go over and sit at the bar and she would just drink. And I felt sorry for her. I didn't know the implications of all of that. I guess there
were drugs around then. But if drug stuff was going on—in many ways I was naive I guess. But
I worked in the cage, putting money on the racks and chips on the racks and whatever they told
me to do.
Did you ever see any movie stars from the Strip over on Jackson Street at that time?
I don't specifically recall any, although I do know where the black entertainers lived in the house
on F Street. And I almost called the lady's name.
Mrs. Harrison.
26 Yes, who ran the house. But I do not specifically recall seeing any of those on Jackson Street. I remember marching with a group or preparing to march with a group that was going to march on the Strip that was led by Bob Bailey to desegregate the Strip.
So are you talking about in 1960?
That's about right.
Tell me about those days.
It was exciting. I had in Austin participated in the sit-ins and stand-ins and I was always afraid that my mother would see me and make me get home to Las Vegas. But I'm pretty grown up now and my mother had eased up some and the NAACP was really—[pause in recording]
I was talking about the march on the Strip and all of the excitement of the NAACP getting ready to march on the Strip. And I don't know how it happened that the people on the
Strip decided to acquiesce, but my memory is that most, if not all, of the properties on the Strip were locally owned.
What do you mean by locally?
Owned by people who lived here rather than corporations. And so my belief is that the Bob
Baileys and the Lloyd Katzes and the Eisenbergs and all those people had some influence with those people and probably were able to convince them, look, it's really not a good idea to have a lot of black folk marching on the Strip to gain access.
So at that time who did the community see as the owners of those hotels—the Sands, the
Desert Inn, the Dunes?
I almost called the guy at the Stardust. Was it Jack Entratter who went with the Sands?
Uh-huh.
And the guy at the Desert Inn, what was his name?
27 I want to say Major Riddle, but he's not the one; he was at the Dunes. So did you see those
as connected to the mob at all?
No, I didn't. I didn't have that kind of comprehension about all of that. No, I did not.
Okay, good. So most of the young professionals coming into town gave no thought?
No. We were accustomed to what we were accustomed to and we had our stuff in the black
community. It's only retrospectively that I think about the negative impact that desegregation
had on black communities because we were not looking to mix with people; we wanted an equal
opportunity. But we could not see—or the elders could not see this is going to have a negative
impact on our commercial district.
Exactly. They were looking at it politically and economically.
Yes.
And they knew that we needed better jobs.
Yes.
So what do you see as the downside of integration?
There are probably quite a few. In the area of education I don't think anyone lectures our kids
the first thing in the morning about how important it is to get an education. I had that in my
black schools. In fact, we were taught you've got to be better than the other guy to even have a
chance, and we believed that. We took it seriously that that was so. I don't think our kids have
that kind of motivation now.
So did you even see black schools in Las Vegas teaching that in the beginning when all the
black teachers were coming into the black community?
Probably not because we were under a lot of pressure to be an example because we didn't have
that many of us here. And we celebrated when Mr. Moore became a counselor, the first black
28 counselor at a secondary school. Of course, we already celebrated Mr. Fitzgerald. We celebrated Helen Anderson Toland when she became the first black female principal in the whole state of Nevada. Those were accomplishments for which we could all be proud, as we had been in our segregated community. When I talk to my grandchildren, I tell them that the postman who delivered mail in my community was a significant black person because we didn't have but one and he was doing something that one person could do that most people were not doing. The black police officer was a significant person. That lady who owned her own beauty shop was a significant person. And they don't think about that now because now everybody has to learn to cut all textures of hair. And so there you go.
We lost that incentive to provide those kinds of services for our people; we did. We didn't have the people preaching and the educational arena. That's another reason BCON is so important because we preach to them then. And, we lost our commercial district.
That's what I was going to say. So now Jackson Street that you just talked about as being vibrant now has how many businesses left?
Well, the Town Tavern is trying to open again. I think the Louisiana Club is closed.
I know the El Morocco has been closed. Even Hamburger Heaven, which was our hangout as young people, gone.
Exactly. That was even demolished as a building. So now the Town Tavern is the only one on the nightclub/casino type businesses left. And I don't even think there are any beauty shops in that area. There's some beauty shops now on Martin Luther King.
Yeah. There might be one liquor store over there. They seem to always survive, although I did notice that the Hughes family that owned the black liquor store now has one up on Decatur between Lake Mead and whatever the other street is going south.
29 I didn't know that.
But I should back up and tell you that when my husband worked for John Sherman—that was the guy—he designed Nucleus Plaza Shopping Center, my husband [George] did, and that was the first shopping center in West Las Vegas. Of course, we lived right around the corner in those apartments on J Street.
Then he worked for Sproul Homes. Of course, we couldn't buy any Sproul Homes until they got the bright idea to build some right over here in the black community.
And those were called?
Regal Estates. Eventually we did buy a Sproul home in the area that they call Valley View. You know the Valley View area?
Yes. So was that the first home that you and your husband purchased?
Yes, the one on Veronica Street; they called it Teachers' Row because there were so many teachers on that street. But it was wonderful for our kids because they saw successful people on that street, and almost all of the kids in that neighborhood went to college. It's a little short street, but we called it a neighborhood.
So now, Veronica Street, is that off Lake Mead?
It's off D Street on the east. It's north of Lake Mead.
So that becomes like Engelstad or one of those.
Yes. There you go. Now, you know Ralph Engelstad, who was building homes then and for which that street is named—maybe his family still owns what was the Imperial Palace. Then he started his slide when they discovered that he was collecting Nazi artifacts and having a Nazi party out there. Remember that?
Yes. I want to stop by talking about, well, two things. You were preparing to march for
30 that initiative to integrate the Strip.
Yes.
Did you ever march with Ruby Duncan and that group for Welfare Rights?
I did not.
When you look at that general Westside community now—we talked about Jackson Street in that community—now when you look at it, the Smith Center is right down the street from it, downtown a few blocks away is being renovated and such great things are happening down there. What do you see as that core Westside community?
I have a theory.
I'd like to hear it.
My theory is that this big event center that they're going to build—what is it they call it?—urban renewal and gentrification.
And eminent domain.
Eminent domain. I think that's the future of West Las Vegas; I really do. Land is affordable. No telling who owns it now, other than Reverend Bennett. I hear he's bought up a bunch and good for him.
But when I came here as a young person the black people who were working associated with the dam or the Nevada Test Site were the people who could afford to build their homes, lovely homes on H Street and whatever. I think it is so sad that the young people—these are probably great-grandchildren now—have let that property go that their great-grandparents struggled to build and beautify for a nickel and a dime because it's undervalued.
Berkley Square was one of the first black developments, like a hundred and sixty- something houses, very small, nice area.
31 Yes.
It is probably one of those areas that you are considering right now as you talk about
grandchildren and all of that. Do you see Berkley Square often? Do you go into that
community often?
Not so very much anymore. My grandson had a little friend who attended college with him
whose grandfather still lives on Alexander; going and coming with Jacobi I would have an
occasion to stop at Mr. Barker's house. What's the other street south of Alexander and Berkley
Square?
Is it Wyatt? There's a Wyatt.
Does it run parallel to Alexander? My nephew, my niece's husband's parents lived on whatever
that street is and it is still pretty nice, kept up and all. But both of his parents are dead now; I
think his brother is living in the house. So I had some occasion to visit that house.
I did some work over there in 2008 when I was working for President Obama. Some of
the elderly people there needed absentee ballots, so I would go over and help them fill out the
request and put my stamp on the envelope and mail it for them. But other than that, no, I've not
been there a lot.
I think I share what you see as the future.
Do you?
Yeah.
It just makes sense to me.
Wonderful land.
I don't think there is space at UNLV.
Perfect location.
32 Perfect location.
*So close to downtown. I really appreciate this information that you've shared today. If you had it to do all over again—or if you wanted to write a book about your experiences here in Las Vegas, what would you talk about or what would you name the book?
Oh, jeez. I would probably talk about all of those things. I would talk about the girlfriends that I acquired, Eleanor Walker being one of them, and how hard we worked for Eleanor to be elected president of NAACP and how we rallied with her to form the youth group and get it going. That was an exciting time. We thought we were in charge of some stuff. I'd probably write about that.
I would probably lean pretty heavily on the memories of my sister because I've heard her talk about when her and her husband first moved here black people were living in shelters that they built out of whatever they could find, cardboard and whatever. Of course, she and her husband were living out on the ranch, Mr. Bryant's ranch; Bryant was his name, where her in-laws worked. But all of those things would be fascinating to me. I would probably interview a few of my friends who were teachers early on in the school district or during the time that I was to see what their memories are.
I'd probably call it My Adventure. When I married at the age of twenty-three, my mother said, "It's about time," because in those days girls graduated high school, finished college and got married. But my college was interrupted because I spent that time here. I don't know what she thought. But I tell you I did not intend to live in Las Vegas and my husband and I were engaged two years before I set a wedding date because I had things I wanted to do, places I wanted to go. But anyway, I've had a wonderful marriage. We've been married now fifty-two years, same husband.
33 Well, I think that's amazing. And would you change Las Vegas now for another city?
When you look back on what has happened.
Not really. I enjoy visiting Chicago and L.A. and D.C. and New York, but I don't want to live in
any city where I have to drive an hour and a half before I get to work going and coming. Vegas
is pretty busy now, so I like quiet little North Las Vegas a lot.
I don't like shoveling snow.
Oh, I've never had that experience, but I don't think I would like it, either. I don't even know
how you do that when you get old.
Yes. And a lot of people do.
Yes, I know they do.
I love this.
Well, thank you so much for thinking of me.
I appreciate this so much. Oh, yes. And I will call your sister because I don't know
anything about the ranch and I'm really excited to learn that.
Yes. Okay.
I would love to interview your husband because he has a completely different aspect of this
history.
I will lean on him because he's probably going to be reluctant. He tells me all the time that I do
community service for the family; that's his excuse.
Well, if I can find one of my brochures about this project, I will leave that for you and him,
as well.
Okay, great.
Thank you so much.
34 35 INDEX
Hicks, Ruth, 21 A Huntridge Theater, 24, 25
AKA fraternity, 21, 25 I Allied Credit, 26 Austin, Texas, 1, 3, 4, 6, 27 Imperial Palace, 30
B J
Bailey, Bob, 27 Jackson Street, 25, 26, 27, 29, 31 BCON, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29 Jerry's Nugget, 25 Bennett, Gwendolyn, 16 Jo MacKey School, 10, 15 Bennett, Rev. Marion, 17, 31 Berkley Square, 8, 31, 32 K Black Community Organizations Network, 22 Bolden, Lois, 21 Katz, Lloyd and Edie, 25 Boyle, Kim, 20 Kirkland, Barbara, 6, 21 Brinley, J. Harold, 7 Kit Carson Elementary School, 14 Brown Derby, 25 L C Langston, Esther, 21 Clark County School District, 7, 14, 20, 22 Las Vegas Academy, 23 Cove Hotel, 25, 26 Las Vegas High School, 4 CVT Gilbert School, 10, 15 Les Femmes Douze, 6, 10, 16, 25 Lois Craig Elementary School, 10, 12 D Louisiana Club, 25, 29
Delta Sigma Theta sorority, 2, 21, 24, 25 M
E Madison Elementary School, 8 McGough, Eva, 23 Eisenberg, Dorothy, 25 Mom's Kitchen, 25 El Cortez hotel-casino, 24, 25 Mountain View Elementary School, 7 El Morocco Club, 25, 26, 29 Mullen, Judge Robert "Moon", 5, 6 Engelstad, Ralph, 30 N F NAACP, 25, 27, 33 Fitzgerald, H. P., 8, 16, 29 National Securities Technologies, 9 Nevada Southern College, 4 G Nevada Test Site, 3, 8, 9, 31
Gold Room, 17 O Gong, Vince, 9 Goynes, Theron, 13, 14 O'Callaghan, Mike, 5, 6, 7 O'Gwen, Evelyn, 13 H
Harrison House, 26
36 P Sullivan Programed Reading, 15
Parker, Susie, 16 T Paul, John, 11, 12 Perkins, Supt. Claude, 12, 22, 23 Teacher Corps, 10 Ponder, Dr. Henry, 23 Teachers' Row, 30 Porter, Sandra, 7 Title One, 11, 12 prestige schools, 10, 14, 15, 16 Toland, Helen, 13, 29 Pughsley, James, 11, 13 Town Tavern, 25, 29 True Love Missionary Baptist Church, 23 R U Robertson, Eloise (mother), 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 27, 33 United Negro College Fund, 23 S University of Texas, Austin, 1 UNLV, 10, 11, 20, 32 Sands Hotel and Casino, 19, 27 Second Baptist Church, 19, 23 W Ship, Prinicipal, 13, 14 Silver Nugget, 25 Walker, Eleanor, 26, 33 Simmons, George, 2, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 30, 33 Wells, Mary, 6 Sinatra, Frank, 19 Wendell P. Williams Elementary School, 8 sixth grade centers, 14 Western Laundry, 4 Somerville, Texas, 1 Williams, Hershel, 13 Sproul Homes, 8, 30 Willis, Shirley (Morris), 1, 3, 5 Stardust Hotel/Casino, 4, 27 Wilson, Reverend, 23 Strip, 24, 26, 27, 31
37