Oral history interview with Faye Duncan Daniel conducted by Claytee White on October 18, 1996 for the Women's Research Institute of Nevada (WRIN) Las Vegas Women Oral History Project. In this interview, Daniel discusses moving to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1965. Daniel discusses living in Vegas Heights and her interactions with the local African American community. Daniel discusses her various jobs including a brief time as a police officer. Later Daniel discusses leaving Las Vegas to obtain her college education and her eventual return, to work as one of the first African American women in management in the Las Vegas hotel industry. Daniel also discusses her experiences with racism and gender discrimination.
Archival Collection
Oral history interviews with Essie Shelton Jacobs conducted by Claytee White on February 01, 1996 and April 16, 1996 for the Women's Research Institute of Nevada (WRIN) Las Vegas Women Oral History Project. Jacobs begins her interview discussing her immediate family and siblings in detail, and how they influenced her to move to Las Vegas, Nevada in 1963. Jacobs goes on to discuss finding work in Las Vegas and her job as a housekeeper at the Aladdin Hotel, where she and eventually became a supervisor. Jacobs discusses her experience at the Aladdin including the Culinary Union, gender discrimination, employment for African Americans, and encounters with celebrities. Jacobs goes on to describe the the Culinary Union Local 226 in more detail, discussing membership, strikes, and race relations.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Viola Johnson conducted by Claytee D. White on March 03, 1996 for the Women's Research Institute of Nevada (WRIN) Las Vegas Women Oral History Project. Johnson discusses leaving Fordyce, Arkansas in 1942 to join her parents in Las Vegas, Nevada where her first home was a tent. Johnson goes on to discuss life with her parents in Las Vegas including their work and church activities. Johnson also describes her work at the Flamingo Hilton and Sands Hotel and Casino as a maid, and at the Riviera Hotel and Casino making sandwiches. Finally, Johnson talks about labor conditions and the Culinary Union during the early years of the Las Vegas Strip casino development.
Archival Collection
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Architecture Records (1980-2011) include marketing material, curriculum development material, student letters to the Nevada legislative counsel, journals, newspaper clippings, and architectural drawing sets for the school building's construction.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Marietta "Margie" Llorente Gonzales conducted by Cecilia Winchell, Vanessa Concepcion, and Stefani Evans on November 1 and 22, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project. Margie Llorente-Gonzales discusses her upbringing in Manila, the Philippines and her family history within the country, recalling the lives of her parents, grandparents, and great grandparents. She talks about her childhood, educational pursuits, and courtship with her husband in the Philippines. Margie shares how she and her husband immigrated to the United States, how she adapted to her new life as an immigrant dependent on her extended family, and how she and her husband came to settle in Las Vegas. She talks about her artistic pursuits in the forms of dance choreography and performing, scriptwriting, broadcasting, and publishing newsletters. Margie also discusses her employment at McCarran Airport and her political activism, canvassing, and committee work in the Philippines and the United States.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Stella Kalaoram conducted by Kristel Peralta and Cecilia Winchell on August 2, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project.
Stella Kalaoram discusses her childhood in Singapore, the occupations and ethnic diversity of her family, and the four languages she speaks: English, Mandarin, Malay, and Tamil. She shares her immigration journey to the United States with her husband, from Singapore to San Bernardino, California in 1990, and their move to Las Vegas in 2000. Stella also shares her employment experiences as a dental assistant, a housekeeper for the Cosmopolitan Hotel and Casino, and as a shop steward for the Culinary Workers Union. She also talks about contracting COVID-19 and her hospital experience, her family's differing religious faiths, and her translation work to empower the Asian-American community.
Subjects discussed include: insurance benefits; Volunteer Organizer (VO); mask mandates; vaccine hesitancy; food traditions; language barriers; Baba and Nyonya cultures.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Cynthia Leung conducted by Vanessa Concepcion, Kristel Peralta, and Stefani Evans on June 24, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project.
Cynthia Leung shares her personal history growing up in Palm Desert, California and the story of how her artistic parents met. Cynthia's mother, a brush artist, immigrated alone from Shanghai and Taiwan to the United States where she met her husband and Cynthia's father, a Chinese-American architect. Cynthia talks about her educational pursuits and her move to Las Vegas to become a defense attorney. She discusses her career as a prosecutor before becoming the first Chinese-American women elected as a Las Vegas Municipal Court Judge, and her experiences within the court system witnessing discrimination, mental illness, and the opportunity for diversity in law.
Subjects discussed include: Joy Luck Club (book); Women in Need of Change (WIN) Court; alternative courts; Las Vegas legal community.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Barbara Atkinson conducted by Claytee D. White on August 5, 2019 for the UNLV School of Medicine Oral History Project. Atkinson begins by talking about her family and early life. She recounts her experience in medical school, women in medicine, and sexism and discrimination in medical schools. She brings up her mentors and what she had learned from each of them. She explains her pathology specialization, her research, and publications she has written. After, Atkinson talks about her occupation history and her retirement. She mentions how some attitudes about women and sexism have changed and some have stayed the same within the medical profession. She was hired by Don Snyder, John White, and Carl Reiber in 2014 to make a medical school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She goes in depth about the process, plans, obstacles, and the general medical training the students go through. Atkinson then talks about the history of Nevada's medical schools in Reno, Nevada and Las Vegas, Nevada. Lastly, she talks about her opinions on health care, her outlook on future generations, future plans for UNLV School of Medicine, and community of color interactions.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Tina and So Lin Kwan conducted by Cecilia Winchell and Stefani Evans on November 6, 2021 for Reflections: The Las Vegas Asian American and Pacific Islander Oral History Project.
Tina Kwan and her mother, So Lin, discuss their family's history within Guangzhou, China and the United States. So Lin shares how her siblings immigrated to the United States and sponsored the rest of their family to join them in Las Vegas. Tina, So Lin's daughter, discusses her educational career pursuing medicine with degrees from the University of Nevada, Reno; the University of Arizona; and with a fellowship at Arkansas Children's Hospital before joining Children's Heart Center Nevada where she is a pediatric cardiologist. Tina and So Lin talk about the Kwan's restaurant, the Fortune Inn Restaurant, which was open for 15 years and closed in 2005. They also discuss Chinese superstitions and customs, diversity within Southern Nevada, anti-Asian discrimination, and learning English as a second language.
Archival Collection
Oral history interview with Stephen Round conducted by Claytee D. White on October 25, 2017 for the Remembering 1 October Oral History Project. In this interview, Stephen A. Round, a career military contractor, describes his experiences during the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada. Round mentions moving to Las Vegas in 2013 and in later years staying at the Aria on the evening of October 1. He describes the chaos of the shooting and the 12-hour-plus lockdown at the Aria hotel and casino. The day after the shooting, Round built a memorial around the shooting site and protected it. Once the memorabilia of that first site was taken to the Clark County Museum, he moved to protect the second memorial at the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign where crosses devoted to the victims had been placed. Along with his preservation of the memorials, Round describes his preparation of a book that was signed by many who visited the sites. Round explains that he was able to see some of the best and worst of humanity during those days of watching and caring for the memorial sites as well as helping any victims, families of the victims, and sympathizers of the Las Vegas 2017 shooting.
Archival Collection