Johnie Beatrice Sparkman Wright was born on June 8, 1939 in McNary, Arizona. She moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1941. Johnie is a retired nurse's aide who received her training at Rose De Lima Hospital in 1968. As a native Las Vegan she recalls stories of her youth: Brownies, dancing at Silver Slipper and not being allowed on Jackson Street. She remembers moving to Berkley Square in 1959 and what it was like to live there.

Asalee Harris was born in Fortune Fork, a little place outside of Tallulah, Louisiana, on the road to Vicksburg, Mississippi. A family of sharecroppers, the cotton farming was arduous and eventually they moved to Tallulah. She married and her husband's brothers lived in Las Vegas so in 1954 Asalee and James joined them.

Judge Lee Gates was born in Louisiana in the 1940s, but moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1960 with his father. His mother had moved there earlier, gotten a job, and established a home in the historical Westside neighborhood of Las Vegas. He was a student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was a member of the Black Student Association and studied under professor Roosevelt Fitzgerald, who raised his awareness of black history. Gates participated in the civil rights movement and worked as a lawyer before becoming a judge.