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Alice Key oral history interview
Identifier
Abstract
Oral history interview with Alice Key conducted by Claytee D. White, with Joyce Moore and two unidentified individuals on November 11, 2004 for the African Americans in Las Vegas: A Collaborative Oral History Project. In this informal interview, Key talks about her early education, sharing anecdotes along with more serious comments. She continues talking about her early activism, beginning with housing discrimination in Los Angeles, California, the work of President Lyndon Johnson on equal rights, her work on the Clark County Nevada Economic Opportunity Board, and the issue of hiring Black front-of-house employees at the casinos and hotels. She continues chatting about families who own or owned casinos in Las Vegas, different church leaders in the city, and ends talking about early Black entertainers, including Dorothy Dandridge and the Barry Brothers and her own experiences as a dancer.
Archival Collection
Claude, Buddy, and Skip Trenier oral history interview
Identifier
Abstract
Oral history interview with Claude, Buddy, and Skip Trenier conducted by Betty Rosenthal on March 10, 1978 for the UNLV University Libraries Oral History Collection.
In this interview, Claude, Buddy, and Skip Trenier, members of the musical group "The Treniers", discuss their experiences performing on the Las Vegas Strip as Black men. They share their group's history playing music at the Flamingo Hotel and Casino and other establishments in Las Vegas, Nevada beginning in 1948. Their discussion covers not only their performing careers but also their experiences with desegregation, racism, and discrimination in the city of Las Vegas.
Claude, Buddy, and Skip Trenier share their accounts of both being a popular act in Las Vegas, requested by out-of-towners from New York and Chicago, and also how they were nearly fired for refusing to play music when noticing customers of color being treated unfairly at their shows. The trio talk about how they could not enter casinos from the front entrance, how most casinos did not formally desegregate until after 1960, and how there were very few Black entertainers, musicians, or dancers during the mid-20th century with a few notable exceptions including Sammy Davis Jr.
Archival Collection