Oral history interview with Billy Paul Smith conducted by Claytee D. White on October 13, 2013 for the African Americans in Las Vegas: a Collaborative Oral History Project. Smith discusses his careers as a chemist, mathematician, health physicist, and a tutor for young people. He talks about experiencing segregation in Las Vegas, Nevada, as well as his experiences in Area 51 and Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository.
Thornton Duard "TD" Barnes was born in Texas on January 25, 1937, grew up on a ranch at Dalhart, Texas, and graduated from Mountain View High School, Oklahoma. He then embarked on a ten-year military career. He served as an army intelligence officer in Korea. Following two years of radar and missile electronics schooling, he taught foreign students the Nike radar and missile system, and deployed with a Hawk missile battalion during the Soviet Iron Curtain threat. He attended Artillery OCS, where an injury ended his military career.
On 18 May 1955, Seth R. Woodruff Jr., manager of the AEC Las Vegas Field Office, announced that he had "instructed the Reynolds Electrical and Engineering Co., Inc.
Ora Bland migrated to Las Vegas in 1953 from Vicksburg, Mississippi. Her husband was a radiologist and worked in Area 51 of the Nevada Test Site. He never shared information about his work and would sometimes stay at the Test Site for a week or more without coming into the city. Bland remembers the Westside business community when the Brown Derby, the Mexican store, Johnson Malt Shoppe, and Bravo Market existed. An extremely independent person, she handled most of the childcare and worked at the downtown post office (now MOB Museum) for 20 years.