William H. "Bob" Bailey was born in 1927 and came to Las Vegas in 1955. First employed as an assistant producer and master of ceremonies in the first interracial hotel in Nevada, the Moulin Rouge, he describes the impact that hotel had on black entertainers during its brief existence. Bailey says the hotel brought life to the Westside where, in 1955, there were only a few telephones and the streets were largely unpaved.

Stanley W. Paher is a Nevada historian, author, and publisher. He was born in 1940 in Las Vegas. He was raised in Las Vegas and attended Las Vegas High School in 1954. Throughout his young adulthood, he was interested in mining camps and ghost towns and would visit the ones in the surrounding area. After graduation from high school, he joined the Navy and spent two years in the reserves.

Emory and Agnes Lockette met while they were both in college; she in Albany, Georgia, and he in Dawson, Georgia. He studied architectural and structural engineering. They secretly married in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1949 and moved to Boulder City in 1953 where they were the only African Americans during a time of tense race relations. She earned graduate degrees, including a doctorate in early childhood education, at UNLV. Initially, Mrs.