Lovell Gaines was born in Louisiana and went to Louisiana State University. He moved to Reno, Nevada after serving in the Vietnam war. Gaines taught for one year and then worked for the Nevada Department of Corrections for thirty-plus years. He was extensively involved in the Reno chapter of the National Association for the Adancedment of Colored People (NAACP). Then when he moved to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1975, he ran for and became the local NAACP chapter president. He served as president from 1980 to 1982.

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.

Hazel Gay was born in Fordyce, Arkansas in 1923. Hazel met her husband, Jimmy Gay, when she was about twenty years old while she was attending school in Thornton, Arkansas. Eventually, Gay and Jimmy were married secretly with no one knowing until several weeks later. Gay and her husband went on to have four children, all currently living in Las Vegas, Nevada. Before the family moved to Las Vegas, they lived in Fordyce, Arkansas.