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In this clip, Nathaniel Whaley talks about the differences between the opportunities for weekend entertainment for black and white young people in Las Vegas in the 1940s and 1950s.
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Nathaniel Whaley oral history interview, 2013 March 06. OH-01961. [Audio recording] Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nev
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English
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We'd go there every weekend, and he'd play music, and we'd dance. Oh, man, we'd party down. Every weekend we went to Jefferson Recreation Center because that was the only place we had to go. The white kids went downtown to what they call the Wildcat Lair. They had a place to go. They wouldn't let us go down there. We'd go down, and they'd say, no, you can't come in here. They wouldn't let us in. Wildcat Lair? Wildcat Lair. What is it, like a club? No. It was a recreation center for the white kids. But we couldn't go down there. I can't remember where, but there was a swimming pool down there somewhere. I think they had a swimming pool down there at the Wildcat Lair, too. 12 Then the white kids would go downtown on the weekends, those that had cars. We were younger; we didn't have any cars. The older kids had cars. Their parents would buy them cars and stuff. Every Friday and Saturday they would drive down Fremont Street, back and forth down Fremont Street, back and forth. They'd go down, come up Fremont Street from Fifth Street, what is Las Vegas Boulevard; from Fifth Street, they'd go up to the train depot, which is Main Street. They'd make a U-turn right in the middle of the street, and go right on back down Fremont Street. In other words, they had a circle that went all the time. But they wouldn't let black kids, if they had a car, get in there. Oh, no, we weren't going to get in that. So we didn't bother about it because if we did it was going to be a hell of a fight. That's what they did every weekend. They'd go downtown, Fremont Street. We'd go to the Westside. We'd go to the Jefferson Recreation Center, and that's where we'd party. We'd dance. Black kids, we danced. When it came to going to school, we went to school together all week. That's where we had fun.