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.

Debbie Conway was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi on December 8, 1953. She moved to Las Vegas in 1989 after having lived in Chicago and worked in management for Avon. Conway was elected as Clark County Recorder in 2007. She is the first African American to hold that position in Nevada. She has also worked as a trainer at Levi Strauss, as Clark County's Business Development Manager, and as a producer/host of an economics talk show on KCEP radio.

Shelley Bristol is an AIDS activist in the Las Vegas, Nevada community. During the early 1990s Bristol was a legal prostitute in Winnemucca, Nevada. By 1993 Bristol left the brothel and decided to become an AIDS activist. During this time there was a great demand for legal prostitutes' testimony in AIDS prevention campaigns in Nevada. Besides providing her testimony about her experience with HIV/AIDS testing as a prostitute, Bristol also volunteered as a hotline operator with AIDS for AIDS of Nevada.

Isadore Washington was born in Tallulah, Louisiana, the son of Isadore Washington, Sr., and Destelle Washington. His father came out to Las Vegas, Nevada in the 1930s to work on Hoover Dam, and the family followed in 1942 when Isadore was eight years old. His mother worked at the El Rancho and Last Frontier Hotels, the Shaw Apartments and Harrison boarding house on the Westside where black entertainers were expected to stay. Washington recalls playing with Wayne Newton when they were children and life on the Westside where he attended the Westside School.

Ann Genovese was born March 01, 1943 and was raised in Toronto Ontario, Canada. She met her husband, Robert, in Reno, Nevada and they married after knowing each other for only 31 days on September 09, 1967. The couple spent their first few years of marriage on the road with Robert’s band, with Las Vegas, Nevada as their home base. Later, they bought a home in McNeil Estates, and ceased their nomadic life when their eldest son, Joseph, started school. After their children grew up, the Genoveses started and ran a travel agency.

Mike Gausling started in the casino industry as a slot floor person at the Aladdin in 1976. After about a year, he moved to the Stardust in a similar capacity and in 1980 went to the the Sundance, later named Fitzgeralds and The D Las Vegas. Gausling later worked at the Holiday Casino where he held supervisory roles and then after about 12 years in those roles, eventually assisted in opening the Stratosphere. He would then move to The Mirage where he would start on the floor again before moving into higher positions at that property.