Audio recording clip from the first interview with Senator Joe Neal by Claytee D. White, January 24, 2006

Yes, out of the Westside, because at that time blacks, if they wanted to, could have taken over the mayor's job. They had this many votes. You see, in the early 60s, 1960, when I look back at it, and '62, when I was here studying and still going to school, and when I came back in '63, you had pretty close to 8,000, 9,000 votes just in the Westside alone. When you look at that, and consider the fact that it only took about 25,000 votes at that time to elect the governor, that was a hell of an influence. And you had the mayor and everybody else coming to the Westside trying to get the votes. So they decided that they would build the houses just across the North Las Vegas line, and that would pull that population out. And it did. It was effective. But what it did, it put North Las Vegas in jeopardy. When I came down here, North Las Vegas had two assemblymen. They had Dave Branch, and they had a guy by the name of Paul May. They ran staggered terms. I decided that I would run against Paul May just in the black community, now, not run in the white community. My campaign would just be in the black community. I almost beat Paul May. But I was talking about reapportionment; one man, one vote, single-seat district. At this time, I'd gone to work for Reynold's Electrical Engineering Company. I went to work for Reynold's in February 1966 as a compliance officer. Paul May came over to my office and said to me, "You've been talking about this reapportionment." In fact, this was 1970 when I actually ran against Paul. Yeah. He said to me, "You were talking about this reapportionment. What is it that you want out of this?" I had a blackboard in my office, so I went to the blackboard and said, "Here's what I want. I want one senator, two assemblymen. I want a hospital trustee." We had a hospital trustee at that time. I said, "I want a school board representative. I want a county commissioner. I want a board of regent, and I want a state board of education person out of that." And he said, "Okay, I'll work with you on this." Well, in the 1970 election, the Republicans actually took over in the assembly. But the Democrats took over in the senate. So I'm associated through Reynold's Electrical Engineering with the Atomic Energy Commission who is associated with EG&G. EG&G had a guy by the name of Frank Young who ran for the assembly as a Republican. So I went to Frank and I said, "Frank, you guys, Republicans, want to increase your numbers and hold on to the seats?" He said, "Well, yes." I said, "Here's the way you can do it. You can support single-seat districts, and you can get that on." Frank said, "Well, yes." It so happened that Frank Young became the chairman of the Election Committee. So he and Paul May put this plan together, which included just what I said it should. And they pushed it through the assembly. It went to the senate. And the senate passed it. Now, this is 1971. In August, after the session was over, the Democratic Party sued the legislature over the single-seat districts. Now, why did they do that? Because to create single seats at that time meant that you would take Democrats' votes from the enlarged number of seats that they were running in Clark County, which was nine. They could only get one person elected, and that was Woodrow Wilson. You see, they have nine seats up. Blacks would come in and support those nine people, and they would lift Woody over the (indiscernible). So Woody ran for three terms. He was the first person that got elected. So when they did that, I went and got me some Republicans to counter-sue. And we got together with a law firm -- it wasn't a law firm. I guess it was a gentleman and his daddy, Doug Beener. He had a son. His son died, but I think Doug, the old man, is still living. So we got him to counter-sue and to go for single seats across the board, in both houses, the senate and the assembly, knowing full well we're not going to get that. But the court more than likely now would go with the legislative reapportionment, which gave the blacks their single seat. On December the 13th, 1971, a three-judge panel met in Reno, Nevada, in the federal court and ruled that the reapportionment of the legislature would stand. That gave us the senator, the two assemblymen, the board of regents, the state board of education, the school board trustee -- I forgot that ~ and the hospital trustee. The law changed that and wiped out the hospital trustee because, you know, they used to elect a board to the hospital, but they changed that. And so we were left with those particular seats. So I ran for the senate in 1972. That's how it got started. Of course, following that election, now, George Franklin sued the county commission and stopped the reapportionment of the county commission. Now, why he did that is — (End side 1, tape 2.) The legislature could not reapportion the county commission. They had to do that themselves. So the first person who got elected to the county commission was Aaron Williams. And then he gave up his seat. And some guy — I forgot this guy's name. I think his name was Bowers -- ran. He was with Channel 8 at the time, and he got elected during the time when Franklin sued. And then when they changed it back over, we ran Woodrow Wilson against this guy and took the seat back, you see. And, of course, Woodrow Wilson got into problems, you know, with taking money.