Transcript of interview with John E. Jeffrey by Frank Vivirito, April 1, 1976

UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey i An Interview with John E. Jeffrey An Oral History Conducted by Frank Vivirito Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2019 UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as 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. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey iv Abstract On April 1, 1976, Frank Vivirito interviewed John E. Jeffrey (born July 20th, 1938, in Sioux City, Iowa) about his life in Southern Nevada. Jeffrey discusses his occupational history and the disparity of work conditions and opportunities for Black and Mexican workers in the Henderson plant. The interview concludes with a brief description of Jeffrey’s family’s medical history. UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey 1 (Audio begins mid-sentence)—yes well, in 1938, and came from Iowa. I had five sisters that are in the area, four of them are in the area and myself. How long have you lived at the present address? Oh, let’s see, I’ve lived at this address for about sixteen years. Let’s see what others—there’s a couple things you should know. My family came here in 1941, just at the tail-end of the depression, and my father was having trouble finding work in the Midwest. He’d been a truck driver in that area for several years. He came out here when he heard of the building of the defense plant down near Henderson. He was a heavy equipment operator here during the construction of the Dam, or the Plant, and then he changed over and went to work for Stafford Chemical Company after the war was over. He worked on the construction and then he worked as a superintendent in a chlorine plant, which later became the Stafford Chemical Company after the war. When the Defense Plant Corporation sold the industrial complex here to the state, and the state in turned, turned it over to various industries that are here now. But, my father came here seeking employment and found it here, and stayed here, well, until the time he died. What’s your education background? I have a high school education. I’ve had about seven years of technical education, all related to electrical work. Two years in the maintenance field and five years in construction, as far as technical schooling is concerned. I’ve been an electrician, or worked in the electrical industry for about nineteen years. What would you say is the key points in your life? Well, I’d say, probably the most important, in my adult life, was getting married. Got married when I was eighteen years old. Then, choosing my occupation as an electrician was another. Getting involved in politics was another—first as a person working for other candidates during UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey 2 the time they were running for office, and then running my own campaigns first when I ran for the city council here in Henderson within the state assembly. Have you ever been active in the church? Oh, I attend. I haven’t really been all that active. My religion is Catholicism; I’ve never really taken an active part in the church other than attending. How much has the property changed since, in the last twenty years? Oh, it’s changed a great deal. The first recollections I have of Henderson were probably in the early forties, before we had a post-office built. People used to receive their mail at the plant at the gate. They used to have to go to Las Vegas for everything; there were no stores here in the early days. And then there were stores built a little later on—the buildings actually belonged to the government, but they were pleased, I suppose, to private enterprise. There was a grocery store, and kind of a general clothing store and post office—drug store and barber shop, that was just about the extent of our Downtown area. At the same time, Las Vegas had probably less than twenty thousand residents. My dad used to tell me of men that came here, including himself when he did. The area was booming because of the work at the plants, but there was no housing. My father stayed in the back of a Ford Passenger car for three months, (unintelligible) and make down into a bed, and used to park out in the desert. Other people that were here with families at that time stayed in tents, Tent City, below Henderson, about where Henderson Dodge is now. There was a cafeteria there. It used to feed the men at the plant, and there was a little trailer park there in the Tent City. My dad also told me of people that would go into the clubs in Vegas and buy a stack of keno tickets so they could pull up a chair up against the wall and sleep. Conditions were pretty primitive here at that time. By the time we came here, it wasn’t quite that way and my dad lived here by himself for several months during the time when he first came here, and UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey 3 then when we came here, probably about in May of ’41, we moved into the second house that was completed here. But I can remember even in high school, which would’ve been twenty to twenty-five years ago, St. Louis Avenue is just about the outer easterly limits of Las Vegas—Oakey and Sahara were still dirt roads. Tropicana wasn’t even all the way through to the highway yet. What there was, was dirt. They used to call it Bond Road before the name was changed. So things have changed quite a bit. Has the education system really improved much since then? Well, I guess that’s a matter of opinion. I think we’ve gotten away from the basics, at least in my own experience. Complaints that I get from different people in the county, I think that we don’t stress the three R’s the way we used to, although, for other areas, vocational and academic areas, we’ve got much broader fields than we used to have. Some people think that we’ve gotten too broad and are putting too many people out of high school that really don’t know how to read and comprehend what they read. We do have a much broader educational spectrum going than we used to have. What’s the ethnic ancestry of your family? How far does it date back? Well, my family, I can’t trace my family back very far. My grandfather was a mining engineer, moved around quite a bit, shortly after the time my father was born. My grandmother and grandfather split up when my father was still quite young—he was probably around five years old. He never really knew his father and I really don’t know anything about my grandfather’s history on my dad’s side. My grandfather on my mother’s side died before I was born. They never really talked about him very much, so I don’t even know where he was born. The ethnic background from my mother’s side is mostly German. On my father’s side, it’s mostly Scotch and Irish—some English. Kind of a Heinz variety family. (Laughs) UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey 4 What is the—do you have any set goals that you are working for now? Oh, nothing specific. Probably continue to work in the occupation that I’m working in. Politically, I don’t have any ambitions at the present time, other than the office that I hold now. ‘Course, I hope to improve my life and the life of my family, and that might be kind of a general statement, but as far as any long-term goals, I really don’t have any at this time. Are the people in town as close as they used to be? I would say no, that they’re not, although Henderson never really has been as close a town as some other towns of the same size because Henderson’s population has been quite transient. The plants here and the blue collar work involved in the plants, unskilled and semi-skilled labor, has had a tendency to bring people in who were looking for work at the time and when they get on their feet and better their vocational skills, or earning power, have a tendency to move on. Many of them moved on to Vegas. There’s a lot of old Henderson residents that uprooted and moved to Las Vegas. But we haven’t had a great number of people that have stayed here over the years that have become—that have caused the community to become a closer knit community. Boulder City for example is a much closer community than Henderson, it always has been, in my experience. What’s the—what’s Henderson’s major source of income? Would it be the plants? I would say that it’s not. I would say that Henderson’s major source of income would be the tourist oriented industry in Las Vegas and the service and construction industries that are connected with it. I saw a survey here about five years ago that stated that only about forty percent of the people that worked with titanium metals for example, are from Henderson. Sixty percent are not. Henderson provides an income base for the county as a whole and more for Henderson than any other area of the county. But Henderson isn’t solely dependent on the plants. UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey 5 What got you interested, mainly in politics? Well, I’d say that—my father had an interest in politics, similar to mine, to what mine was in the beginning. He worked for various candidates during his lifetime that he believed in, that he believed would further the issues and causes that he believed in. It started pretty much the same way. I started in Young Democrats when I was about twenty-six, and that was about the time we got out of the apprenticeship school and we had some time to spend. I got into it mostly as an outlet, something to do, to begin with, and became more deeply interested in partisan politics, and went on to become a member of the Clark County Central Committee and the Executive Board and the State Executive Committee. Then when the elections came up in Henderson for the city council, it didn’t—I didn’t see anybody running that I could readily support, and decided to run myself, and I’ve been a candidate ever since. What’s the difference between, in the racial balance right now? Has it changed any? Well, I think that the racial balance has changed quite a bit. Also, the conditions that the various races live under, here in Southern Nevada, changed a great deal. First of all, when I was in high school even, in the mid-fifties. There was only the two Black families in Henderson, and they were fairly well accepted as far as the school children are concerned. Their children, Black families’ children were accepted. But any racial difference, if you weren’t a White American in those days, the opportunities weren’t just near the same as they are today. I can remember a Mexican man that worked in the office at Stafford Chemical Company, Manuel Sanchez was his name, and he’s still alive and retired living here in Henderson now. He was always a very highly respected person. He was a bookkeeper at Stafford. My dad didn’t have the same bias and prejudices that many people had them, and he told me several times that Manuel would’ve gone much further if he had been White instead of Mexican. But he had gone even farther than the UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey 6 average Mexican could go in these days. He had several help him, I mean, well at least he got a job as a bookkeeper. It was a job of high status in those days for any non-White. There was also a man there that was a labor foreman, Joe Williams, was his name. He was a Black man. Was—had worked at Stafford, probably, almost as long as my father had, he was a very capable foreman, and he was also well-respected as an individual. But he had gone to the extent of his potential also. Being foreman of a labor pool, and he wouldn’t have even been able to go that far, but in those days, the labor pool was all Black. There were no White men in the labor pool, and there was no opportunity for a Black man to go anywhere but the labor pool. Now of course, with the Civil Rights Act, and several other things that have happened, in the past ten to fifteen years, why, that’s changed a great deal. Everything was left to the people’s social conscience, and unfortunately, in those days, they didn’t have much of a social conscience. What kind—? Were people that I knew of then, we didn’t have any large number of Black friends, but if a Black man were to take a bus trip from here to Reno, for example, he better take a sack lunch because there was no place he could get off the bus and eat at between here and Reno. They weren’t allowed in the Downtown clubs, they weren’t served in any of the Downtown restaurants, they had to be served strictly on the Westside of Las Vegas or they’d (unintelligible). Have the attitudes of the races change very much, do you think, since then? Well, I really don’t know. I don’t know what the Black man’s attitude was then. I know what the stereotype thoughts were, even as late as ten years ago. You know, we used to think that the blacks were happier, had rhythm and all that, (Laughs) all that stuff. I think the average White person in those days, had the idea that the blacks were happy with their lot in life. And I don’t think it was until the civil disobedience started that we found out, as a group of White people, UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey 7 that nothing could be further from the truth. I think that a large number of them were resigned to their lot in life. But I don’t think they were very happy with it, and I think we see a lot more resentment now than we did then. I think we see a lot more resentment among the blacks now than we did then. Because I think now, maybe because they’ve got a forum now, they’ve got remedies now. They’re using them more often. I think the general attitude has changed between Black and White. I don’t know whether the Black man’s attitude has changed that much or whether he’s just finally able to voice his, be able to voice his objections to society. We hear a lot more from the Black community now than we ever did before. What sort of man was your father? Oh, he was kind of a, lone to be, kind of a rough, tough individual. He—the guys that worked for him at the plant used to call him the “Bull of the Woods,” after the old cartoon characters, I guess, that used to be around. I haven’t seen them in recent years, but they used to have a machine shop cartoon series and the boss was the “Bull of the Woods,” that everybody kind of watched out for, and that’s the nickname that he picked up down there. He was known as Jeff to everybody in town, really. Friends, family, as well as those who might not have been friends. (Laughs) He didn’t have very many enemies, at least not that I knew of. He was well thought of, he was fairly quick tempered, and very quick to state his beliefs and opinions. And he was a working man, even though he was part of supervision, he never really changed his attitude much. He spent his time with the men that worked for him, a lot more than the he did the other supervisors. He seemed to be closer to the working man than he was to any other group. And he was a self-made man. He had an eighth grade education, and did a lot of studying, and working, and during all of his adult life, he was always working to learn. Have the working conditions improved in the plants? UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey 8 I’d say that the wages hours and general conditions have improved. As far as the material that they use down there, and the safety practices and so forth, I think in some cases, they’ve even gone backwards. I don’t think they’re as safety conscious now as they were years ago. I think they’re more profit motivated now than they were years ago. The men make more money an hour now, in relation to the cost of living. They work under better union agreements now than they did years ago. It wasn’t at all unusual for men to work seven hours, seven days a week, twelve hours a day to make a living. I never saw very much of my dad when I was a kid, he was at work most of the times, it seems like. People in general have a lot more leisure time and really have more money to spend than they did when I was a kid. I can remember that we didn’t have a car for years in our family. If my father made more than the average, he had six kids to raise, but the bulk of our, my father’s earnings, went to pay grocery bills. What did the people do for recreation? Oh, there was more community oriented recreation. My father played softball for the Democrats (Laughs) as a—there were a half a dozen softball teams that (unintelligible). They had a movie theatre here that was open every day. They changed each program three times a week. They had a pool hall here that a lot of the men and the older teenage boys congregated at. And that’s about all I can think of. Well, they had a teenage club, for the teenagers to go to. Television wiped out a lot of those things, I guess. Would you say that recreation went downhill then? I would say that in Henderson, commercial recreation has definitely gone down. There’s more city recreation here than there was then. There wasn’t any, any group at that time—it was a government town. There wasn’t any organized recreation activities sponsored by publication UNLV University Libraries John E. Jeffrey 9 states like there are now. But there were several profit-motivated recreation facilities that the city had then that haven’t been able to make it in recent years. What’s the history of family illnesses? Well, I don’t come from a very healthy family. My mother had kidney problems, she lost one kidney and the other one was bad, and eventually died of kidney disease. Had arthritis, we’ve had problems with arthritis with two or three family members, sugar diabetes with a couple of distant relatives, my father died at a young age, I guess mostly from high blood pressure. He’d had TB when he was a child, he only had one lung, but it was mostly high blood pressure that killed him I guess. (Audio ends)