Oral history interview with Pamela Jones Brown conducted by Claytee D. White on June 12, 2019 for the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project. In this interview, Brown discusses growing up in Nashville, Tennessee and meeting her husband, Joe W. Brown, while attending Sweer Briar College and married two months later. They moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in July 1968, where she taught English and French at Brinley Junior High School. She left teaching and joined PBS/Channel 10 as a scriptwriter. The Junior League of Las Vegas became her creative outlet with the "Crossroads of the West" project that documented the history of the town. These short documentaries were produced by the local PBS statio, and she discusses writing the scripts.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Lillie and Johnny Smith conducted by Claytee D. White on October 19, 2023 for the African Americans in Las Vegas: a Collaborative Oral History Project. In this interview, the couple recalls meeting in Tallulah, Louisiana and marrying in 1973. In 1986, they relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada. Both Lillie and Johnny went to Job Corp and received training that they insist changed their lives and the trajectory of their family. Johhny learned how to drive and operate heavy machinery, and his job at Republic Services utilizes those skills. Lillie became a social worker after obtaining a master's degree.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Francisco Miranda conducted by Claytee D. White on January 28, 2022 for the Latinx Voices of Southern Nevada Oral History Project. In this interview, describes his large family and growing up on the Eastside of Las Vegas and spending summers in Mexico on the family farm. Miranda is an organizer, business agent, and political coordinator for the Teamsters Union. He describes coming from a "union family" - his mother in Culinary and father in the Laborers Union. He shares how despite not completing high school, he started at the Teamsters in 2014, soon became a shop steward, and in 2016 when a 10-week stike was called, he worked as strike captain coordinating the line of picketers. Afterwards, he became Chief Steward and was then hired to work with the Teamsters.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Shannon Rabb conducted by Claytee D. White on December 20, 2022 for the African Americans in Las Vegas: a Collaborative Oral History Project. In this interview, Rabb describes her experience living in the Herbert Gerson Housing Development on the Westwide of Las Vegas. She describes it as safe, as community, and as protection from the police. In this interview, Rabb discusses a wide variety of topics including gangs, drugs, Westside businesses, and family with an expanded definition.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Ann-Marja Lander conducted by Claytee D. White on August 14, 2023 for the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project. In this interview, Lander tells the history of her family living in Europe, getting visas for the United States in 1953, and migratng to Seattle. The family then moved to Souther California, and Lander worked in a department store in high school and joined B'nai B'rith as she began to feel closer to her Jewish heritage. After college, Lander recalls following family moving to Las Vegas, Nevada and joined the Westside Newcomers Club and worked as a certified financial planner. Lander discusses being a member of the Second Generation organization, which is composed of children of Holocaust survivors.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Marietta Robertson Turner Whitaker conducted by Claytee D. White on March 23, 2022 for the African Americans in Las Vegas: a Collaborative Oral History Project. In this interview, Whitaker discusses living in Stockton, California. As a young girl, she performed as a majorette in high school, and found school integration very challenging since the family lived in a non-Black neighborhood. Whitaker was a Girl Scout, entered talent shows, and participated in radio call-in contests to win prizes. Her early work was in retail at J.J. Newberry's and Macy's. Instead of college, Whitaker married, divorced and remarried. After her move to Las Vegas, Nevada, she worked on the Westside for the Town Tavern, Uncle Ben's Barbeque, and Seven Seas.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Christy and Crislove Igeleke conducted by Claytee D. White on November 10, 2023 for the African Americans in Las Vegas: a Collaborative Oral History Project. In this interview, Christy Igeleke, mother of Crislove, describes her childhood in Nigeria where she owned a sewing school. Her daughter, Crislove, was born in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1990 and now serves as the Deputy City Attorney for the City of Las Vegas.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Claytee D. White conducted by Stefani Evans on November 2, 2023 for the African Americans in Las Vegas: a Collaborative Oral History Project. In this interview, Claytee D. White, founding directory of the Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries, celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the OHRC by contributing her oral history to the collection.
She begins by explaining how the system of sharecropping worked in her family near rural Ahoskie, North Carolina, and she talks about the field work involved in raising cotton, tobacco, corn, and peanuts. The fifth of eight children and the first daughter, she shares memories of going into town with her mother, of admiring her women teachers, and of attending North Carolina Central College (now University) for two years before moving to Washington, D.C., and working for the telephone company.
After recalling her two years in D.C. and 22 years in Los Angeles, California, she describes "running away" to Las Vegas, Nevada in the early 1990s. Here, at the History department at UNLV, she recalls learning to conduct oral histories. White shares memories of her first interviews with Hazel and Jimmy Gay and Lucille Bryant. She talks of matriculating to the College of William and Mary for her PhD and of returning to Bertie County to live with her mother and administer the office of The Shaw University Center for Alternative Programs in Education (CAPE). She describes how she was offered the position of OHRC founding director, why it matters that she was an "opportunity hire," and how it feels to be the only Black person in a room.
Archival Collection
The Clyde F. Merrick Photographic Slides (approximately 1971-1979) contain color photographic slides taken by Clyde F. Merrick, longtime resident of Las Vegas, Nevada. The majority of slides in this collection depict signs for different businesses around Las Vegas including the Las Vegas Strip and the Westside. Some of the businesses documented in this collection includes Fong's Garden, Leon's Shear Magic Beauty Salon, Lucas and Son's Antiques, Dick's Tricky Trikes, Mohan's Custom Tailors, the Twenty Grand Club, Owens TV Repair, and Caesars Palace. The collection also documents a variety of different types of businesses around Las Vegas including bars and nightclubs, beauty salons, car washes, gas stations, and restaurants. Merrick was also a car racing hobbyist and a number of slides in this collection depict what is presumed to be the Las Vegas Speedrome racetrack (later known the Las Vegas Motor Speedway). This collection also includes photographs of locations outside of Las Vegas and Southern Nevada.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Hamed Ahmady conducted by Stefani Evans on March 22, 2023 for the Reflections: the Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. Interviewed by Stefani Evans. Culinary Union Local 226 organizer Hamed Ahmady recalls his childhood as the oldest of six children in Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan. As an child, he remembers hearing about the September 11, 2001 attack in New York while living in a Taliban-controlled city on a television connected to a concealed antenna that received signals from Uzbekistan. He recalls how, one month after he graduated high school, he became an translator for the U.S. Army, which he did for more than four years. He talks about securing his Special Immigrant Visa (SIV); landing in Los Angeles, California in 2013 and moving his family to the United States; and supporting his siblings and parents in Afghanistan. He also discusses relocating his family from California to Las Vegas, Nevada in 2018, finding a mosque community, and working with Culinary Union Local 226.
Archival Collection