Audio recording clip of interview with Woodrow Wilson by Gwendolyn Goodloe, February 28, 1975

I served most of the organizations that have been involved in bringing about progress in the community. I was president of the NAACP during the Horace Heidt-Shamrock Hotel episode. The Horace Heidt organization purchased the Shamrock Hotel and was going to make it an interracial hotel. And the people of the local area, the immediate area around the Shamrock Hotel, which was at the Intersection of Bonanza and Main Street [600 N. Main Street], protested to the City Commission at the time. A group of approximately 250 or 300 Blacks followed me down. We marched on City Hall to give support to the Horace Heidt organization because we felt that this was needed to show the support that this community would give to an interracial hotel. In the real early days here we had total discrimination in all the establishments in uptown Las Vegas and the small Strip area. We had only one or two hotels on the Strip at that time. So we were defeated when the City Commission voted to deny Horace Heidt a license to operate the hotel. It was a really sad situation for the Black community because that would have put Blacks in positions of authority, management, and the like. It would have helped to raise the economic status of the community, by having people make the type of money that executives and sub-executives make in the hotel industry. So, that was a setback in the community, but we continued to work. I've served on the executive board of the NAACP from 1942 to 1965. I was instrumental in helping secure a grant from the resort hotel organization. Tarea Pittman of the regional office of the NAACP, Jim Gay, Mr. G. David Hoggard, Sr. and I interceded for NAACP trying to secure a million dollar grant from the Hughes organization. The Hughes organization turned it over to the [Nevada] Resort Association. Finally the conclusion—the Resort Association made a $75,000 grant to the Las Vegas branch of the NAACP for operation and promoting the NAACP in the local area. In the political area, let me say this. I was elected in 1966 for the first time, being the first Black ever elected to the Nevada legislature. It was a very unusual situation at the legislature. For a couple of weeks several of the legislators wouldn't even speak to me, but after about ten or fifteen days, those very same legislators were trying to take me out to dinner and lunch and this type of thing. We were very fortunate in making friends and working with the coalitions of legislators in order that we might be able to pass legislation. I authored the Open Housing Statute, A. B. 253. I was able to secure thirty-eight of the forty assemblymen's signature[s] on my bill. I was able to get it through the assembly, because I was in the assembly, and I guided it through the Senate by working with the coalition and was also able to secure monies to implement, the bill. We were able to secure approximately $88,000 for two or three positions and also office equipment to implement the bill. Nevada has one of the finest, strongest open housing bills in the country today.