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.
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas Gaming Web Archive is comprised of archived websites collected since 2016 that represent gaming and gambling organizations in Las Vegas, Nevada and around the world. Websites in this collection represent casino hotels, lotteries, gaming commissions, and investor relations for various organizations including the Nevada Resort Association, Caesars Entertainment, Genting, MGM, Ainsworth Game Technology, and the North American Gaming Regulators Association.
The third annual Gay Pride parade at Sunset Park, 1999. Photographer: Dennis McBride; Grand Marshall Congresswoman Shelley Berkley (right) and her assistant, Tod Story (left).
The third annual Gay Pride parade at Sunset Park, 1999. Photographer: Dennis McBride; Grand Marshall Congresswoman Shelley Berkley (right) and her assistant, Tod Story (left).
The Las Vegas Bugle Collection on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) History (1984-2002) consists of correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, and ephemera chronicling issues of the LGBT communities in Nevada. In addition to records of the newspaper, the Las Vegas Bugle, the collection also contains documents pertaining to the founding of the Gay Community Service Center of Las Vegas, Nevada; Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG); local political campaigns; and photographs documenting LGBT life and culture in Las Vegas, Nevada.