Amie-Pilot, Ruby, 1932-

Ruby Amie-Pilot was born April 03, 1932 and raised in Karnack, Texas. In 1952, Amie-Pilot boarded a train with her two young sons, Curtis Rufus Jr. and Herbert, to join her high school sweetheart and husband, Curtis Amie, in Las Vegas, Nevada. His family had moved to Las Vegas in the 1940s, seeking better job opportunities. Upon arriving, however, Amie-Pilot found the living conditions quite appalling.

She found work in the Desert Inn kitchen drying and wrapping silverware to supplement the family income and soon they bought their first home, a trailer on the Westside. Amie-Pilot’s career path was diverse: she was the first African American hired as a fulltime sales person at Sears; she worked with Hazel Gay as a window decorator; experienced the challenges of business ownership when she and Esther Langston opened a travel agency; and actively worked at Palm Mortuary for nearly three decades.