Barbara Bates Kirkland was born 1934 in Shreveport, Louisiana. On a sunny day in 1946, Kirkland and her mother stepped off the train from Shreveport and onto the Western street of Fremont in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Kirkland’s mother, Atha Toliver, found employment as a maid. Toliver, who was determined that her daughter would get an education and a finer future, saw this as her opportunity to achieve this for her daughter. Later, she opened Eva’s Flower Basket, a floral shop that Kirkland would operate after retiring from teaching.

Aaron Mayes has been a photographer in Southern Nevada since the early 1990s starting at the Henderson Home News, then spending nine years at the Las Vegas Sun. Prior to working with the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries Special Collections and Archives as the Curator of Visual Materials, Mayes photographed campus life, social events, athletics, and promotional images as part of UNLV Photo Services.