Skip to main content

Search the Special Collections and Archives Portal

Audio clip from interview with Nathaniel Whaley by John Grygo, March 6, 2013

Audio file

Audio file
Download ohr000848.mp3 (audio/mpeg; 2.23 MB)

Information

Date

2013-03-06

Description

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.

Digital ID

ohr000848_clip
    Details

    Citation

    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

    Rights

    This material is made available to facilitate private study, scholarship, or research. It may be protected by copyright, trademark, privacy, publicity rights, or other interests not owned by UNLV. Users are responsible for determining whether permissions are necessary from rights owners for any intended use and for obtaining all required permissions. Acknowledgement of the UNLV University Libraries is requested. For more information, please see the UNLV Special Collections policies on reproduction and use (https://www.library.unlv.edu/speccol/research_and_services/reproductions) or contact us at special.collections@unlv.edu.

    Standardized Rights Statement

    Digital Provenance

    Original archival records created digitally

    Language

    English

    Publisher

    University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Libraries

    Format

    audio/mpeg

    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.