Skip to main content

Search the Special Collections and Archives Portal

Search Results

Display    Results Per Page
Displaying results 1 - 10 of 360

Clinton Wright oral history interview: audio clip

Date

2005-10-13

Description

Clinton Wright discusses the riots in the predominantly Black Westside neighborhood in Las Vegas in 1992 after the Rodney King verdict. Wright describes how the riots lasted three to four days, and he thought they were instigated by people who came from California and Los Angeles. He said that the shopping center in the Westside burned, there were firebombs, and white drivers were attacked and beaten up while the police did little to control it. Wright was known as a photographer and a newspaper offered him $50 per hour to take pictures of the riots. After some consideration, her turned this offer down because he believed it would be dangerous for him with a camera.

Sound

Jimmy Gay oral history interview: audio clip

Date

1972-04-12

Description

Jimmy Gay discusses racism in Las Vegas before and after World War II. He says that prior to WWII, there wasn't a lot of prejudice, and there were only a few African American families. After WWII, he says that the influx of soldiers returning and the migration of Black families from the South led to Las Vegas becoming the "Mississippi of the West."

Sound

Mabel and David Hoggard oral history interview: audio clip

Date

1977-02-23

Description

Mabel Hoggard discusses how she came to live in Las Vegas and her employment history. She was on her way to Los Angeles and stopped in Las Vegas to visit relatives in 1944. She was offered a job as a secretary at the USO (United Service Organizations) and her relatives persuaded her to stay and live in Las Vegas with them instead of moving to California like she had planned. After working for the USO from 1944 to 1946 she applied to be a teacher. She had been a teacher before but lost her job because she refused to contribute part of her salary to a campaign fund. She faced some racially-based opposition when she first started teaching in Las Vegas but Maude Frazier advocated for her and the members of the school board renewed her contract after her first year, and she said she didn't "have any trouble" after that first year.

Sound

LaVerne Ligon, B. J. Thomas, and Leonard Polk oral history interview: audio clip

Date

all of the dates: 2012-07-09, 2012-07-18

Description

LaVerne Ligon discusses auditioning for the show Hallelujah Hollywood at the new MGM. She auditioned for Bob Mackie and Donn Arden, who wanted her to be topless in the show. She refused. Three weeks later, Donn Arden called her and said that she had changed his mind and he really wanted her in the show and she didn't have to go topless. In fact the entire line of Black dancers that he was putting together for the show did not have to go topless.

Sound

Audio from interview with Mike and Sallie Gordon, March 2, 1977

Date

1977-03-02

Description

Full interview audio with Mike and Sallie Gordon in March 1977 in which they discuss arriving in Las Vegas and their business enterprises.

Sound

Audio clip from an interview with Dan Connell by Shirley Emerson on November 18, 2013

Date

2013-11-18

Description

In 1954, Dan Connell enrolled as a sophomore at Las Vegas High School, newly arrived from Ocean Gate, New Jersey, where his father was a New Jersey state trooper. The family’s first living space was a converted two-car garage close to McCarran airport. Living there seemed far out of town at the time; so far out that the school district could not justify providing him bus service. Instead, the family was reimbursed for his transportation costs. Dan also worked fulltime in a restaurant near McCarran Airport while going to high school. This was followed by two years in the military. Afterwards, he returned to Las Vegas, went to school, married his wife Linda, and eventually settled in the Westleigh neighborhood of Ward 1 in 1973. Westleigh remains their home, the place where they raised four sons, lived near their parents, enjoyed Sunday dinners surrounded by family and friends, and the neighborhood where their sons delivered newspapers. All four sons, David, Donald, Mark and Brian, still

Sound

Audio clip from an interview with Treva Roles by Judy Harrell on February 12, 2014.

Date

2014-02-12

Description

Treva Roles is one of six children born to Louis and Katherine Smith, and spent her childhood in Erie, Pennsylvania and Chicago, Illinois. During the Great Depression, Treva’s father used his entrepreneurial skills and creativity to turn his traveling salesman profession into a lucrative family business selling personal inventions. Eventually, he decided to sell the business, and buy a motel out west and “retire.” The motel ended up being the Fair Price Motel in Las Vegas, and Treva soon moved out to help the family run it. Her parents lived on Fremont Street. Shortly after moving to Las Vegas, Treva met Ralph Roles, a local fireman, whose family lived on West Charleston Blvd. The two were married just three months later. While on their honeymoon, Treva’s parents purchased the Del Mar Motel, and soon thereafter, Treva and Ralph purchased the Rummel Motel. Treva and Ralph owned and operated the Rummel Motel for 20 years, selling to Taiwanese investors in 1979. Treva and Ralph raised their three sons, all of whom are now chiropractors. In 2000, the couple fulfilled a dream of living on a golf course when they moved to Sun City Anthem. Two years later, Ralph lost his battle with Alzheimer’s. Treva’s current community activities include playing mahjong and involvement with the Women’s Club at Sun City Anthem.

Sound

Audio clip of an interview with Tom Kerestesi by Wendy Starkweather on October 3rd, 2013

Date

2013-10-03

Description

Thomas Kerestesi was born in Redding, California. Son of Austrian immigrants, Tom’s family relocated to Las Vegas in 1956 when his father was offered a job with the Cragin and Pike Insurance Agency. The Kerestesi family moved into McNeil Estates, the neighborhood where the father would live for nearly fifty years until his passing. Tom attended West Charleston Elementary School and Hyde Park Junior High School, before entering Bishop Gorman High School. In high school, his extra-curricular activities included tennis and participated in Boys State. After graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno with a major in Accounting, narrowly missing being drafted into the military, Tom moved to Los Angeles to begin in own career in insurance. Longing for home and newlywed, he soon moved back to Las Vegas with his wife Buffie, and joined Cragin and Pike as an agent alongside his father. Tom would remain at Cragin and Pike for the next 38 years, where he dealt with underwriting the gaming and construction industries. Tom has served as a member of the Las Vegas Rotary Club, president of the Nevada Independent Insurance Agents, and has been awarded Outstanding Alumni of the University of Nevada. Tom and Buffie have two children who both also still live in Las Vegas.

Sound

Audio clip of an interview with Kenneth Fong by Lois goodall on February 22, 2014

Date

2014-02-22

Description

Kenneth Fong reflects on growing up in Las Vegas and being the son of two successful and philanthropic community members, Wing and Lilly Fong. When Ken was born the family live in a modest home on 20th and Stewart. It was a close-knit neighborhood and era, kids played tag and roamed freely. When he entered third-grade, his parents moved their family to a newer subdivision near Rancho and West Charleston Avenue: the Scotch 80s. Their new custom home on Silver Avenue reflected Asian architecture and the family’s Chinese cultural heritage; it also included a pool and a small basketball court. Memories of the neighborhoods are distinct. He learned to be comfortable with his sister and he being the only Asian Americans in school at the time. He kept busy with community volunteering at Sunrise Hospital and tutoring younger children on the Westside among other high school activities. Ken speaks lovingly of his parents and their achievements, family outings to local venues such as Mount Charleston and Red Rock and to California, where they bought Chinese baked goods. His mother, Lilly was born into a large Chinese American family of ten children, each of whom achieved a college education. After her marriage to Wing, she moved to Las Vegas with plans to work as a teacher. Ken retells the story of her encounter with discrimination and overcoming that, and her trajectory to be the first Asian American elected the Nevada Board of Regents. His orphaned father, Wing, immigrated to the United Sates in 1939 to live with uncles. They worked as cooks in Las Vegas and established the first Las Vegas Chinese restaurant, Silver Café. Wing was merely thirteen years old and spoke no English. These were not to be obstacles. He would go on to graduate from Las Vegas High School, earn a college degree in business, have a successful career in commercial real estate and banking, building the notable Fong’s Garden. Ken calls his father his most influential mentor. Today Ken is also a successful in real estate management, active at Grace Presbyterian Church, involved in Rotary Club, and a proud father of two daughters.

Sound

Audio clip of an interview with Ian and Shanna Anderson by Barbara Tabach on October 11, 2013

Date

2013-10-11

Description

In 2011, Ian and Shanna Anderson moved into their McNeil Estates home with their two young children. Though both of the children born-and-raised Nevadan, neither Ian nor Shanna is. However, as the couple explains in this interview, letting their roots grow in Las Vegas has been quite easy. Ian has lived in Las Vegas since 1997 and Shanna since 2008. Ian was raised in Central corridor of Phoenix, where he explains he was in the minority as a white person. Shanna, by contrast, is a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan. They met, married at Taliesin West (Scottsdale, AZ) and settled in Las Vegas, where both work in the office furniture industry. Shanna and Ian share a passion for design, especially midcentury modern design. So when they felt the need to move from their Summerlin home, they looked for a house in the center of the city. Something clicked when they saw 2601 Mason Avenue. It was a burnt out shell of a dwelling, but their vision of what could be became a tale of imagination and patience. They talk about the upside and downside of living in this Ward 1 neighborhood; there is the proximity to work, concerns about education for the children, and where they shops and play. They talk in detail about owning a perfect family home in a remarkable part of Las Vegas.

Sound