Andrew Brewer became Las Vegas NAACP president in 2008.

On a sunny day in 1946, the train from Shreveport, Louisiana, stopped at The Plaza hotel in downtown Las Vegas like it always did. But on this particular day, Atha Toliver and her only child, twelve-year-old Barbara, stepped off the train and onto the dusty Western street of Fremont. Narrator Barbara Bates Kirkland recalls that event and living in Las Vegas for most of the next seven decades during this 2004 interview. Like many others who migrated from the South, Barbara Kirkland’s mother would find employment as a maid. A friend who already lived in Las Vegas had told her of the good paying jobs as private maid. So Atha 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, the entrepreneurial and creative mother opened Eva’s Flower Basket, a floral shop that Barbara operates in her retirement from teaching. Barbara returned to Louisiana for her senior year in high school, attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, and then returned to Las Vegas to teach first grade at Westside School. Barbara was active in the community, was a founding member of Les Femmes Douze, involved with Zion United Methodist Church and was friends with many of the early African American community leaders at the time. She talks about these, describes various neighborhoods where she lived and about raising her own two children in Las Vegas. Barbara was a founding member of Les Femmes Douze. AKA/Akateens.

Eddie & Johnie Wright met met, married in 1957, and raised their family in Las Vegas. Johnie arrived in Las Vegas in 1941, teaching first grade at the Westside school, eventually becoming a nurses aide. Eddie came to Las Vegas from Arkansas, and became the first black ticket agent at the local Greyhound station.

Helen recalls coming to Las Vegas in the 1960s. She married early civil rights activist Jim Anderson in 1964. Helen was the first black female school principal in the Clark County School District.

Gertrude Toston moved to Las Vegas in 1960. She worked for Western Airlines for 27 years, then earned Masters in Education.

Hazel Geran was an employee of the Equal Opportunity Board in 1972, and was still working there at time of this interview. Her first job in Las Vegas in 1948 was as a keno writer at Cotton Club on the Westside.

Interview with Ruby Duncan conducted by Claytee White in two sessions on February 13, 2007 and March 2, 2007. Duncan discusses her employment history and dependence on public assistance in Las Vegas, as well as her participation in the Welfare Rights Movement and Operation Life.