An Interview with Helen Anderson Toland
An Oral History Conducted by Claytee D. White
African American Collaborative
Oral History Research Center at UNLV
University Libraries
University of Nevada Las Vegas
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©African Americans in Las Vegas:
A Collaborative Oral History Project
University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2012
COMMUNITY PARTNERS
Henderson Libraries
Las Vegas Clark County Public Libraries
Oral History Research Center at UNLV Libraries
University of Nevada Las Vegas Libraries
Wiener-Rogers Law Library at William S. Boyd School of Law, UNLV
Nevada State Museum, Las Vegas
Las Vegas National Bar Association
Vegas PBS
Clark County Museum
Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries
Director: Claytee D. White
Project Manager: Barbara Tabach
Transcriber: Kristin Hicks
Interviewers, Editors and Project Assistants: Barbara Tabach, Claytee D. White, B. Leon
Green, John Grygo, and Delores Brownlee.
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The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the
generosity of a Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) Grant. The Oral History
Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to
generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank
University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the
opportunity to flourish.
The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of
fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of
the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the
narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews.
The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the
auspices of the African Americans in Las Vegas: A Collaborative Oral History Project.
Claytee D. White
Director, Oral History Research Center
University Libraries
University Nevada Las Vegas
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Table of Contents
Interview with Helen Toland
February 21, 2007
in Las Vegas, Nevada
Conducted by Claytee D. White
Preface………………………………………………………………………….………..iv
Helen born in 1926, in Marceline, Missouri; only child. Talks about experience and
benefits of her personal schooling in one-room elementary school for black children; to
avoid bussing to high school in Dalton, Missouri lived with relatives in Illinois. Attends
University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, scholarship recipient. Describes work
careers of her mother and aunt and her; her lack of exposure to options; eventually learns
about speech correction/therapy which became her major.…………………………...1 – 4
Talks about working as first black speech correctionist for the Louisville, Kentucky
school, black schools only; four years. Moves to Los Angeles, works on masters at
University of Southern California. Becomes active in NAACP. Describes Jim Anderson,
who she moves to Las Vegas to marry in 1964. Jim was involved in NAACP, civil rights
and Pullman Union. Discusses when Martin Luther King Jr. gave speech at Las Vegas
Convention Center and prejudice in Las Vegas at the time; mentions consent decree and
Labor Industry Committee………………………………………………………...…..5 – 9
Describes her career as Clark County School District speech therapist; worked with both
black and white children when she arrived in 1964. Talks about black positions on casino
floors. Becomes a first black female school principal (1965) at Kit Carson Elementary
School; talks about “parent cooperation” and student field trips including to Disneyland
and overnight camping at Mt. Charleston…………………………….…………….10 – 15
Provides information about Nevada activist and philanthropist Maya Miller; serving on
board of an environmental group called Foresta. More about outdoor field trips; reviews
some of her photos. Recalls Kit Carson School; sixth grade centers and bussing from
Westside…………………………………………………………………………….16 – 22
Talks about appointment to Robert E. Lake Elementary School; dedication to providing
students with loving experiences, importance of public relations skills. Widowed and
marries Elton Toland and moves to Los Angeles in 1972; self-employed speech therapist.
Widowed again and returns to Las Vegas in about 1980. Shares memories of lobbying
trips to Carson City………………………………………………………………... 23 – 29
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Provides her observations of the changes that had occurred in Las Vegas while she was
living in Los Angeles; results of the consent decree she saw. Recalls Jimmy Gay, Faye
Duncan Daniels, as examples of black success on the Strip. Returns to speech therapy
work rather than being a principal again; retired at age 67. Tells of purchasing her house
in Bonanza Village development in 1964; local civil rights movement; Mabel Hoggard as
first black teacher in Las Vegas; attorney Charles Kellar, her neighbor and community
activist. Recalls welfare mother marches and Ruby Duncan………………………29 – 36
Remembers a trip to Mexico; travels to Africa. Discusses her view of Westside’s future;
organizations she has helped organized and been involved include as Les Femmes
Douze……………………………………………………………………………….37 – 45
Index……………………………………………………………………………………..46
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Preface
A child of the 1930s, Helen Anderson Toland was born Helen Eileen Herndon and is a
native of Missouri. She attended University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and
received her master’s degree in speech corrections/therapy from University of Southern
California.
In the early 1960s, a romance with Las Vegas civil rights worker Jim Anderson budded in
Los Angeles at NAACP meetings. In 1964 they married.
Her career in Las Vegas moved along quickly. She was immediately hired as a speech
therapist and by 1965 she was moving up the educational hierarchy as the city dealt with
civil rights. She became the first black female principal for Clark County School District
when took the position at Kit Carson Elementary School; a position she would hold for
seven years.
Jim Anderson passed away and Helen returned to Los Angeles after marrying her second
husband Elton Toland, a Los Angeles hair products manufacturer. When Elton died,
Helen moved back. It was a changed civil rights landscape and she shares some of
observations about it.
Helen is an avid traveler who frequently visits the continent of Africa. She remains active
in the Las Vegas African American community.
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I’m Claytee White. I’m with Helen Toland in her house here in Las Vegas. It is
February 21, 2007.
So Helen, how are you today?
Helen Toland: Very well, thank you.
Good. Could you give me your whole name, and spell your last name for me?
My maiden name is Helen Eileen Herndon, and I use the name Helen Anderson Toland
because of two husbands.
Before I talk about your first husband, because I’ve heard that name ever since I’ve
been in Las Vegas, I want to start by having you tell me about your early life, where
you grew up and what is was like.
I grew up in a small town, Marceline, Missouri. The largest population we’ve ever had in
that town is between four and five thousand. I’m not sure what to tell you about what it
was like. We never had more than a hundred black people there, so we had our separate
church, our separate schools, and there was no social mixing at all.
Do you mind telling me which year you were born?
I was born May 3, 1926.
So growing up in a small town, you went to your own local schools. What about
college?
Well, let me say that we had a school from grade one through eight, a one-room school
with all eight grades for black children, but there was no high school in Marceline for
black children. What they arranged was for children there to go to a school that was thirty
to thirty-five miles away. They would get on the Marceline school bus early in the
morning, that’s the bus that was going out in the country to pick up children to bring
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them back for nine o’clock classes, and a car from the school in Dalton, Missouri, would
meet the school bus at the end and take the children on to the high school in Dalton. Then
in the afternoon they reversed it.
My mother didn’t want me to do that because the weather was bad. You know, we
had lots of cold, sleet, rain and so forth. Sometimes something happened to make the bus
late. Sometimes something happened to make the car late, and there was a possibility of a
lot of just exposure to poor weather. So I went to live with an aunt and uncle in
Springfield, Illinois, to go to high school, and I went to Feitshans High School in
Springfield, Illinois.
Tell me how the white kids in your town went to school.
It was a small town, so there was one white elementary school and one white high school.
…We really don’t know anything about their schools because I was never in the
elementary school, and I may have been in the white high school once for a program of
some sort, and that’s may.
What was it like living in the larger town to go to high school?
Actually, I had had a very good background. There are some positive things about being
in a one-room school. One of the positive things is you hear all of the classes and all of
the grades, and so you’re kind of worked into what you’re going to study, and it isn’t
presented as a big surprise. We also had good habits of behavior and good study skills,
because we had to get our lessons when other kids were reciting.
The morning was divided into reading and arithmetic, and we all had ten- to
fifteen-minute class reading lessons, from nine until a quarter to eleven. Then we had a
short recess, and then we had arithmetic until lunchtime, and everyone loved to read out
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loud. I remember kids who didn’t observe commas or periods, so they could just keep
reading.
Isn’t it great that we have that love for reading?
Yes, yes. Then for arithmetic, one half the school, and at the largest, the school had only
twenty-six children, one half would be able to put their arithmetic on the board and the
other half would have theirs on paper, and so the classes just kept coming, first grade,
second grade, third grade and so forth. There were five in my class.
Did you stay in touch with all five?
Yes. They’re only—no. One I’m not in touch with, but one I am, and the rest have
passed.
That’s amazing. How many children were in your family?
Just me.
You were an only child.
Just me.
How did you feel leaving your mom and dad?
Well, I left my mother and my grandparents. My mother and I lived with my
grandparents. I didn’t think too much about it. I had a little homesickness, but I adjusted.
How often did you get to go back and see your mom?
On Christmas and summers.
So it was just like being away at college.
Uh-huh.
So when you got ready to go away to college, it wasn’t a big surprise?
That’s right. I went to college from Springfield, not from Marceline.
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Where did you go to college?
The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. They were giving tests because
Sangamon County—that’s S-a-n-g-a-m-o-n—was giving a certain number of
scholarships, and I took the test and won one of the four-year scholarships.
Had you already decided what you wanted to do, what you wanted to be?
No, I didn’t know about any careers. The careers that I knew most about were those of
very menial jobs, you know. My aunt had been a schoolteacher in Missouri. When she
moved to Illinois, she worked as a restroom attendant in a factory in Springfield. My
mother only did housework. You know, that’s all one could do in my hometown. So the
jobs that I knew about were just kind of from hearing about them, but actually not
knowing about them. I knew about a nurse and I had heard about a social worker, but I
didn’t really know what a social worker did, and I knew about being a teacher. So when I
went to college I was going to be a social worker.
And what happened?
I made an A in my first speech class. It was public speaking and it felt so good. I kept
investigating other courses and taking them in speech. Finally found out about speech—
what we called then speech correction. Now they call it speech therapy, speech
pathology, and so forth. So that was my major.
Oh, I didn’t know that. So you got your four-year degree?
Yes.
As a speech—what was it called at that time?
Speech correction.
Speech corrections. And at that time what could you do with that degree?
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I went to work in the public schools in Louisville, Kentucky, as a speech correctionist,
again working in the black schools there. I was their first black speech correctionist.
How long did you stay there?
I stayed four years.
How did you get to Las Vegas?
That’s a long, winding trail. [laughter]
So tell me.
I went from my job in Louisville, Kentucky, to Los Angeles. I didn’t like parts of the
South, I was being stifled by the South, and in Los Angeles I worked on my masters at
USC [University of Southern California]. In fact, I got my masters at USC. I had a son. I
had married in between while going to school, married and left my husband, and I was
active in the NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People]
there. So in the NAACP. I had met Jim Anderson, and he somehow or other had moved
up to Las Vegas. So I came up to Las Vegas to marry him.
How long did you live in Los Angeles?
I’m trying to think. I came to Las Vegas in ’64.
We could almost figure it out. We can do that because we know how long you worked
before you left. So, okay, so we could figure it out. So in 1964 you came to Las Vegas to
get married. Had you been here before?
Only for a day or so, but he was living up here then, and I had come up during the Easter
vacation that same year, and he said to me, “Well, Helen I guess you ought to go down
and put in for a job.”
And I said, “Well, you just have to tell me why I should put in for a job.”
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He said, “Well, we’re gonna get married, aren’t we?” [laughter] So that was my
proposal.
What kind of person was Jim Anderson?
Jim Anderson was just an extraordinary person. He was very talkative, very
knowledgeable, very personable, had worked in civil rights. He had also worked for the
dining car cooks and waiters union. For the union he had to negotiate contracts, and he
always said that he was well aware of the fact that he represented those people, the union
workers, and that therefore he had to speak politely, respectively, and in such a way that
when the company bosses talked with him, he would not bring about resentment against
the workers.
Was that the Pullman—
Yes. [The sleeping car porters union.]
How long did he do that?
I don’t really know, because he had said that he’d sort of made a vow to himself when he
had come up here one time—I think he couldn’t even eat in the bus station—that if he
ever made a change, he was coming to Las Vegas.
So at that time there was a very active NAACP here. Reverend Bennett was
president of the NAACP, or Charles Kellar. You know about Charles Kellar the attorney;
he was very active in it—and Reverend Bennett, Charles Kellar, Bob Bailey—quite a few
other people. And Jim just had something exciting going in the NAACP.
That Easter that I came up, I came up because Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the
banquet speech for the NAACP.
Tell me about that banquet.
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It was in the Convention Center. At that time it was in the Rotunda. They put everything
up they needed, you know, the tables, the chairs, etc. I was not used to being so close to
all of the, shall I say, celebrities or important people. My big surprise was that Martin
Luther King was introduced by, then Governor Grant Sawyer. He had come down for the
occasion, and it was just thrilling.
Do you happen to remember anything said that night?
Of course not. [laughter]
You remember Grant Sawyer. Do you remember anyone else in the audience who
helped put this affair together? Did Jim help put it together?
Jim, and the H. P. Fitzgeralds were here, Sarann Knight was here. I can’t think of the
names, but everyone who was active in the NAACP cooperated.
Oh, that’s exciting. What did Jim tell you about the atmosphere in Las Vegas in 1964,
the racial atmosphere?
It was exceedingly prejudiced, and the big thing that we were concerned about was the
job prejudice. But also about that time there was a law being passed in Washington, D.C.,
about equal employment, and we remember that—I’ll think of his name in a minute. He
was our senator. I’ll think of it. Anyway, his was the vote that brought about cloture, that
brought about them stopping debating and voting in the U.S. Senate. I saw him some
years later and I got to tell him how we remembered that vote for cloture.
The big problem here was jobs, and black people could get jobs, mainly through
the Culinary Union, a few through the Teamsters.
When I first came in, you gave me something that we called the consent decree. Do you
remember when that was passed?
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I think that the consent decree was passed after 1970. I think that might say 1973, but I’m
not sure.
So before we get there—
Now, Jim worked as chairman of the Labor Industry Committee with the NAACP, and he
personally visited employers and prospective employers, and then he would have
someone specific go to them, and the people were just so excited because it wasn’t just a
case of being interviewed; it was a case that the job and the person had been matched.
The first job that he got for a black person was for a woman whose name I don’t
remember, but she went to work as the salesperson at Penney’s downtown, and she
worked in the yard goods section, I believe. So we could count over a period of time over
five hundred individual people that he got jobs for.
How did he actually do this?
He walked into—well, the people would come to him. He would go to prospective
employers and just talk with them. He had a very nice way with people. He went in easy,
relaxed. In some ways I think he was the way they describe [Nelson] Mandela.
He was doing this for the NAACP?
That’s right.
As a volunteer?
Yes.
What was he doing at that time for his income?
He was working for a man who built the Briarwood Apartments. You know the
apartments that are at 1900 West Lake Mead?
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So that’s Lake Mead and what? Is it before I get to Rancho?
It’s right across the street from West Middle School.
Yes. I know exactly where it is.
Okay. The man who was building those apartments was named Nick Paglia, and he was
from someplace in the East, like Ohio or someplace. Jim worked for him in, quotes,
“public relations,” but his main job was kind of to hold Nick’s hand, because Nick had
stomach ulcers and everything. Nothing went smooth. First, there was the job of building
the apartments, of getting the financing. I’m sorry. There are a lot of houses over there
too. There are apartments and houses. Well, building the houses and then getting people
to move into them. Marge Elliott at that time was the real estate person here who handled
that. You know Marge or know of Marge?
Yes.
Okay.
That’s just exciting.
Uh-huh.
What kind of work did you do when you first got here?
When I first got here, I went to work for the Clark County School District as a speech
therapist. One of the interesting things is over Easter Sunday—the school district here
was closed on Easter Monday. So I went out before Easter, put in my application, talked
with someone out there. You know, sometimes when you’re a teacher, you can read
upside down, and he wrote on whatever he wrote, “Looks good.”
So I was working in the Enterprise School District down in Los Angeles as a
speech therapist, the only one, because we only had four schools. So when he called
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Monday afternoon to inquire about the speech therapist, they gave the call to me.
So I think it was obvious that I was on the job.
With a school system like Enterprise, four schools, how many students did you interact
with, let’s say, over a week’s time?
Oh, probably at least sixty, but I would see them twice a week or whatever length of time
it took.
And here, once you came to Las Vegas?
About the same. We pretty much made our own schedules according to the number of
children and the severity of the children. At that time there were only about five or six
speech therapists in Las Vegas in the school district.
So, in 1964, now how many schools are we talking about, approximately?
I’m not sure.
How many did you work with?
I worked with four or five at a time.
Were you working with the schools that were in the black neighborhoods?
Some in the black neighborhood, but I also worked at Vegas Verdes and I also worked at
a junior high that’s close to Vegas Verdes.
In 1964 you were able to work with black kids and white kids.
Yes.
Were there other black professionals in the white schools?
Not many. The change came about just during that time.
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In 1964, even though this place was supposed to be very segregated, supposedly the
Strip had been integrated in 1960. Could you tell?
Yes, because—not so much yes, but we were very interested in getting people in jobs out
there, and when we would walk through the casinos, we walked through and counted the
blacks we saw as dealers and other people, and what were they doing.
How did you get the blacks in positions as dealers and things like that?
You’d be surprised at how blacks here were meeting on Sunday mornings in somebody’s
garage practicing dealing, practicing flipping cards.
Who were some of the people who taught them?
Well, I’d say Clarence Ray, and I remember Fred Molten practicing. …It’s just that
you’d be at somebody’s house and they’d be practicing dealing, and then there were
casinos here on the west side, and so people actually were working at it over here. So
those were the same ones who would be teaching.
Did you become involved in the NAACP once you got to Las Vegas?
Oh yes. Oh yes.
Did you hold any special positions or serve on the board?
Not until recently.
Tell me about from 1964 to about 1970, you were involved in the jobs, getting more and
more jobs. Did you have anything at that time to do with that part of the NAACP’s
work?
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I think that I just helped plan little smaller activities and so forth. I didn’t have any big
responsibility. By that time—let’s put it like this. I only worked as a speech therapist one
year and then I was made a principal.
In 1965 you became a principal.
I think so.
Tell me about that, and how did it happen so fast?
Well, first of all, by that time I had my master’s, and there was a man in personnel whose
name was Dr. Brown, and we took him my transcript, and I had everything, every
requirement to be a principal except one unit. So I think I took a unit from USC
[University of Southern California], where I had gone before, in something like how to
teach math or principles of teaching math or something like that. Also, their system was
that you declared in the fall that you wanted to be a principal, and they took you through
an orientation course. You went once a week for quite a few weeks, and at the end of it
you had to take a test. You were told there was nothing to study for the test, just get a
good night’s sleep the night before.
But there was a new principal here from Chicago, he was over at Madison School,
and his name was Dr. Caliguri, and Dr. Caliguri told me that teachers in Chicago studied
eighteen months for that test. He got me some materials, like a book on supervision and
another one, you know, how to pass the national administrator’s test, and one or two
more, and I really studied those books. He said he thought I wasn’t studying enough, but
I studied.
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When I took the test, I made the highest grade that had ever been made in the
district. They said, “She knocked the top off of it.” So it was kind of hard to overlook it.
Now, mind you, I had no experience in administration. I came from speech
therapy, but we had a good time and really educated our kids at Kit Carson.
Is that where you became the principal, at Kit Carson?
Yes.
What was that like? Were you the first female principal?
I was the first female black principal there in the district. Mr. H. P. Fitzgerald was the
first black principal. They moved him up to Jo Mackey. Then the kids went to almost
any school over here that they wanted to go to. I cannot tell you what tremendous parent
cooperation we had.
Give me an example of what you mean, of what a principal means, by “parent
cooperation.”
Well, anything that we wanted to do, the parents cooperated, and we did things. Turn that
off a minute. I’ll show you…
In speech therapy we took the individual child and worked according to his or her
needs. I felt that we should do the same thing on a larger basis. And my job in speech
therapy, it was to bring the children up to the point where they could function normally in
speech. So I thought that they should function normally in regular school. When I say
that, that meant we acted like we were all their mothers. You know, “You do do this, you
don’t do that, and you—”.
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We had a very warm school atmosphere. I said, “Well now, they tell me they’re
not going to learn to read, so I guess I have to show them.” So we went on field trips. Oh,
I can’t tell you how we went on field trips. We used up all of our field trip budget, then
we used up some other people’s field trip budgets, and when they said we had no more
money for field trips, we wrote notes home saying, “The class is going thus and so, and
the bus holds forty-two children. Can you send twenty-five cents for your child to go?”
Now, we didn’t leave any children behind, because we sold popcorn at the school, so the
popcorn money made up for what a kid couldn’t bring.
But when I tell you we went on field trips, one of the more modest one trips was
taking the class to the pancake house for breakfast. That meant that everybody brought, I
think, forty-two cents for an order of pancakes. We went on the bus. The children had to
be on their best behavior, their good manners; they had to know how to use forks and just
all the things you’d teach your own child taking him out to eat.
How do you use that as a reading experience?
They had to write about it. They had to talk about it, and it was real to them. They wanted
to talk about it. We had one field trip where some teachers from Madison School and
from Kit Carson School caught the train with kids at seven-thirty and rode to the first
stop, which was maybe twenty miles up the tracks, and they were met up there with the
cars and we brought them back down. Meanwhile, every kid, those kids had all had a
train ride. They had all had lunches. They ate their sack lunches on the train for breakfast,
they had that experience. I remember Reverend Bennett being in one of those cars that
met the trains up there.
That is amazing.
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But those were just two of the field trips. We went every place. One big thing we did—
we took our children on Saturdays—this was not under the school auspices, this was
under the kind of PTA [Parent Teacher Association] office auspices, even though we
arranged it—we went twice a year to Disneyland. Then some years we went to the Rose
Bowl Parade. Now, to go to Disneyland, my goal was that every child should go to
Disneyland once before he or she finished the sixth grade. There are some things that we
didn’t talk about out loud. But we rented Greyhound bus drivers and they never counted
the number of children who were in those seats, and you know children are small.
[laughs] So that’s how we got all of our children to Disneyland.
I remember one little girl said, “Miss Anderson, I’m eleven years old and I’ve
never been to Disneyland,” and I loved the fact that she thought it was her right.
So I said, “You go out and you see how much money you can earn. See if you can
earn five dollars, and we’ll see that you get there.” Somehow or other she earned five—
she came in with five dollars.
I remember one man coming down, very disgruntled, saying, “My mother-in-law
wants to go and here’s the money for her.”
That’s great.
He just didn’t understand.
I think that is wonderful. Do we do anything like that today or can we do anything like
that today, a school principal?
I don’t know what school principals can do, but when our children were in the fifth grade,
we took them up to Mt. Charleston overnight for a camping experience, but we called it
our Outdoor Environmental Program. Here’s one of the groups and then when these same
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kids were in the sixth grade the next year, we took them the same place, except we stayed
three days and two nights, and the kids did the work, like washing dishes. We did most of
the cooking, but they assisted in cleaning the tables and so forth.
I had had the experience of a camp run by Maya and Richard Miller up in the
Carson City area; theirs stressed environmental education. We were friends. They sent
their top staff down to take our teachers up to Lee Canyon to point out to them the things
to point out to the kids, and there’s something every time you go up a hundred feet in Mt.
Charleston, the landscape changes the same way it will if you go so many miles north.
I had no idea.
Yes.
Tell me about Maya Miller.
Oh, phenomenal woman, phenomenal woman. I always said that she was a loyal
Democrat in a den of Republicans up there. And that meant that she was a thinking
liberal woman in a very racist climate. I had been friends with her until she passed.
How did you meet her?
Jim did lobbying for the NAACP, and when he would go up there lobbying, he met her
and then we met as a family. I’m the godmother of her first grandchild.
That is wonderful.
Maya spent her eightieth birthday going to Africa, and she came through—I have to look
on the map. … She came through Namibia and we did some birthday observing together
during that time, and I’ve made many trips there. She and her family have been here at
various times, and up until just recently I was on the board of what we call Foresta, F-o-re-s-t-a. It’s an environmental group which had lasted maybe for forty or fifty years, but
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because all of us were getting so old, we closed it.
You couldn’t get any young people to take over?
Well, it was more complicated than that.
This is just so exciting. Now, while you’re still looking through that folder—
Now, when we went to camp—well, you can’t see, but there’s—
Okay. So this is The Nevadan?
That used to be with the Sunday Review Journal.
And this is a photograph of some of your children, and where are you in this picture?
I don’t think I’m in that picture.
“School as big as all outdoors was—.”
But let’s keep turning.
These are probably some of your students.
Those are my students. This fellow, Steve, was sent up by Maya and Dick Miller, a real
scientist. Now let’s go over one more.
And here was have Kit Carson’s outdoor schoolroom, and you have all kinds of
photographs of your children and all the things that they’re doing.
I took every adult who could be taken, and we have another paper—I don’t seem to have
it here—that had our head custodian with three or four kids. He also was helping.
The bosses didn’t really—how shall I put it? Things went on and they had never
gone on before, so they weren’t sure what their reaction should be. The first time I took
the kids to camp, I did all the right paperwork. I turned in all the papers, and the morning
that we were supposed to go, I had still not gotten an okay. I understand it was on one of
the vice superintendents’ desk, and you know what we did? I said, “Well, they didn’t tell
17
me not to.”
I like it.
And we went, and it was successful, and nobody ever said anything about it before.
During those days you could clip coupons, grocery coupons, and take them to
Thriftimart, and Thriftimart gave us money for the coupons, and that’s partially how we
bought the food, but you’ll see in the back here that—let’s see if I can find one with the
cost to the parents. We sent all of this home. No, this is not it. Let me look in this one.
No, let’s look in the back page of yours.
Right here?
Uh-huh. Now the page before that, that’s what the children had to pay for that trip.
Okay. So we have here, this is a trip that’s going to Lee Canyon, the camp fee is
twenty-five cents, the insurance fifteen hundred dollars in medical and twenty-five
hundred dollars, twenty-five cents, food two dollars. It cost two dollars and fifty cents
for the kids to go to Lee Canyon.
Uh-huh.
This is amazing, and you even have here what the kids should bring with them.
Pajamas, everything. What time the bus is going to leave. So this entire packet that I
have in my hand went home with the child?
That’s right. Just take a look at it from the beginning, and you’ll see the kind of
information we tried to give the parents.
So you tell them about the outdoor education program that you’re putting together,
why the children should go to these kinds of camps, creative expression, singing,
recognizing and appreciating the great beauty of the outdoors, and then it goes on to
18
the camp activities, and you list here all activities and the objectives for going to camp,
and there are eight different objectives. And then we have a page called follow-up
activities, and you show how then it’s going to help them in geography, history,
science, language arts. Wow. And then it starts with the day-to-day schedule, starting
with the first day at nine o’clock in the morning, everything that’s going to happen.
This is wonderful. Then we get back to the page where I started, where you have the
amount of money.
Here’s one of our pictures.
Now we’re looking at pictures of children as they’re getting off of the bus.
And all of these two captions are Joshua Tree area.
Oh yes. Okay, the beautiful Joshua tree with all the kids around it. Oh, this is simply
amazing. Did you enjoy being a principal?
I loved it.
It sounds like it.
People used to say to me, very politely, “How many children do you have?” Meaning me
personally.
And before I thought, I’d say, “Seven hundred.” [laughter]
How many children did you and your husband have?
Well, I have one. One son.
This is amazing. I love this idea.
We had almost no discipline problems. The biggest threat I could give one of the children
was, “Well, now, if you’re going to behave like that, I don’t know how we can take you
anyplace.”
19
Wow.
The children felt very cared for.
How did you instill that kind of caring in your teachers?
Well, people want to care, and you just have to allow it. First of all, I was a speech
therapist. I had never taught the first grade. Well, I had for one half day and it gave me a
headache. [laughter] I went home with a terrible headache. So I said to the teachers, “We
will have a marriage. I will bring what I have to bring and you bring what you have to
bring.”
I had various ideas. For instance, I remember the year that we were going to work
on vocabulary, and every teacher was to teach two new words a week. I remember I left
the complete choice of words to them, but that meant by the time school was over, their
class would have a larger vocabulary. One first-grade teacher chose the words the first
day for twins. I don’t know how the subject of twins came up, but what kind of twins are
there? They have identical and what’s the other one?
Fraternal.
That’s right. So her kids in the first grade, whatever else they knew, they also knew what
identical and fraternal twins were.
In terms of parent cooperation, the parents just were happy to see their kids liking
school, and the kids went home excited about it. So the parents didn’t have too much to
complain about.
And that was how many grades in your—Kit Carson, right?
Six. Six grades. Kindergarten through sixth.
How long were you at Kit Carson teaching—I mean, as the kindergarten-through-sixth
20
arrangement?
I think eight or nine years, I’m not sure which.
Did you ever want to leave there?
It never occurred to me to leave. The reason I left is because school integration came in
and they made all of the schools on this side of town sixth-grade centers.
Explain to me what a sixth-grade center is.
It has all sixth grades. Sixth-grade children from all over town came to one of these
schools.
And where did that idea come from?
Well, let’s put it like this. When we had the lawsuit, we did research to see how other
cities were handling integration, and we had several ideas that we brought forth, we, the
NAACP members, that we brought forth to the judge, but all of these were somewhat
equalitarian. For example, there was the thought to combine two schools. One would
have first, second, and third grade, and the other would have fourth, fifth, and sixth
grades, a white school and a black school. There were that kind of things. They were
things that were going on in the United States.
Well, the powers-that-be got together here and decided that they wanted to do this
in a way that would cause the least movement or change on the part of the white students.
Did they say that?
Well, they did it. I mean, it was just very plain. So all of the white kids stayed in their
home schools except for the sixth grade.
What happened to the kids then in the traditional Westside?
They were bused to white schools all over the city.
21
Starting from kindergarten?
Yes.
Through the fifth grade?
They stayed here for kindergarten, and then, yes, they were bused.
First through fifth grades?
Yes.
They were bused throughout the city?
Yeah, that’s right. Then they were back home for the sixth grade, and then they were
again taken out for the junior high and high school. So our kids traveled eleven years out
of twelve. The white kids traveled one year out of twelve.
Were the sixth-grade centers more technologically advanced?
No.
And with integration, what happened to black teachers?
Black teachers were scattered all over town. It was interesting, our black teachers were
warm, caring, and teachers that we just accepted, “Okay. She’s a teacher, and that’s that,
you know. This is what we have.” They went to the other schools and the kids loved
them. Oh, how the kids loved them.
All kids?
Especially the kids in their room. No matter what the white parents wanted to say, the
kids loved them. They just did the normal things that we’re used to doing for our kids. I
remember a brand-new kindergarten kid coming into the office, and I sent for the
kindergarten teacher, introduced her to the parent, and she looked at the little boy and
said, “Come on, baby,” and he just went on out. [laughter]
22
Oh, that’s great. How did the parents on the Westside feel about their children having
to be bused for eleven out of twelve years?
Well, we did not know what was going on in the white schools. For all we knew, what
they were saying was true, that they had more than we had or that they had something
better than we had. We just did not know. So when the kids went out there, that’s when
we found out what it was like.
Tell me what you mean by that.
We found out that there was a question of acceptance. The schools were scattered so far
all over town that the parents found it very difficult to go out. They couldn’t just drop in.
Like they were accustomed to doing?
Like they were accustomed to doing, uh-huh. The white teachers knew nothing about our
culture. So, for example, at Kit Carson we had one teacher who sang solos at funerals;
that was just one of her missions in the community. Now, every time she was asked to
sing at a funeral, the other teachers on her same grade level took her kids for an hour or
two, and no one thought a thing about it. We were part of the community, and this kind of
thing was just not understood. They didn’t do it out there, you can believe they didn’t do
it, but they would not have understood it. That’s one of the things that was so striking
about our party the other night was the immediate rapport and caring and understanding,
and we have that.
When you refer to the party, tell me what you mean. Explain that party to me, that I
was not invited to.
There were two men here from South Africa, so we just invited people over to meet them
and to have dinner, and we had a short program. You know Keith Brantley? Well,
23
anyway, the poet?
From the Art Center?
Yes.
Yes.
Keith wrote a special poem in their honor. I’m going to give you a copy. Lou Raglen
[phonetic] who is a quote, “third generation,” Inkspot?
Yes.
All these old folks rolling back and forth, clapping and keep beating to the music, and he
sang. It was his serenade to them. Then they explained what they were doing here. They
have a group in South Africa called SATMA. It stands for South African Traditional
Music Awards. What they’re doing is having awards for traditional cultural entertainment
that is very much like the Grammy Awards here. So these two men were here. One of
them is head of SATMA, and the other one is head of South Africa’s government’s
Heritage Program, preserving the heritages. They were to meet someone else in Los
Angeles because there’s a singing group that was nominated for something, and if that
singing group won anything, they would not be alone, they would have the South African
backers with them. I don’t believe they won anything, but that’s why they came. So they
came through here. Marcia at the Art Center arranged things for them. Fitzgerald’s hotel
downtown gave them free rooms, and the party was to allow them to meet some of the
townspeople.
That is wonderful.
I do that all of the time. Every time someone comes from Africa, I invite people over to
meet them.
24
So you’re like our ambassador?
Sort of.
Oh good, and in a few minutes I want to talk about some of your trips to Africa. But
getting back to the school system, we were kind of in the middle of the integration
process. When you left Kit Carson, where did you become a principal at that point?
Robert E. Lake Elementary School.
Where is that located?
Out fairly close to the mall on—
Meadows Mall?
No, this other one.
On Maryland Parkway?
On Maryland Parkway.
So the Boulevard Mall.
The Boulevard Mall.
Did you have the same kind of experience that you had had at Kit Carson?
We took part of it with us. We were sort of like the song “I Shall Not Be Moved.” We
shall not be moved from loving kids. We shall not be moved from planning interesting
experiences for them. We shall not be moved from the respect and regard we had for each
other.
I met a teacher just the other day who, she looked at me and said, “Are you Miss
Anderson?”
“Yes.”
Well, at the second grade or third grade at Robert E. Lake, her community service
25
that her class was involved in was to walk up the street to a convalescent home once a
week. We encouraged them to do some kind of community service, and now one of her
relatives is in that same nursing home.
Do the kids still go?
Well, I don’t know what they did with that program when I left, but it was rough. There
were people having meetings in their homes because they didn’t want all those blacks
over in their school, and they didn’t know what we were doing anyway. However, our
policy was that any parent at any time could come without notice and visit any classroom.
Did they feel then that it was okay?
Not really. We were black. We just couldn’t possibly know. But we went in with that
thought, and I started in that school in the fall. When I was appointed in the spring, we
asked the woman who was the PTA president, Martha Matthews, to invite people to her
house in the mornings or during the day for a series of what we called coffees. She had
coffee and Kool-Aid, possibly. I would go over and take a teacher, and we’d just talk to
any parent who wanted to come. There had been no communication except as employer
to employee between many of those people and us.
How did you come up with these public relations skills, all those ideas?
I had worked in politics, and in politics we had one of the most successful ones that we
had here on the west side was we had a whole series of coffees. We asked people to
invite their neighbors, have anything from four neighbors up, and any politician in the
whole city who was running, who wanted to come over and talk to them, could come, and
we made them coffees. If it was hot we only had Kool-Aid and cookies, but it was
inexpensive and they lasted for as long as people wanted to talk, and that’s one of the
26
ways that people got to meet other people and know who they were voting for. So I just
transferred that. I didn’t dream it up.
I think it’s wonderful. So how long did you remain in the school system as a principal?
Roughly, I think, eight years.
So from 1965—
Seven at Kit Carson and one at Robert E. Lake.
You weren’t a principal any longer?
I not only was not a principal, I married again. That’s when I married Elton Toland and
moved to Los Angeles.
I didn’t realize you left at one point.
Uh-huh.
Tell me what happened with Mr. Anderson.
Mr. Anderson died. I’m trying to think of the year. Anyway, he passed.
Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. You were only married such a short time.
Uh-huh.
Wow. So you met Mr. Toland and moved to Los Angeles.
Uh-huh.
At this time you are really a part of this community. How did you feel about leaving
Las Vegas?
I hated to leave, but there wasn’t much of a choice.
So that was about 1972?
Yes.
So you went back to L.A.
27
Uh-huh.
Why did Mr. Toland decide that he wanted to go to L.A.?
Mr. Toland was already living and working and set up in L.A.
I see. What did he do for a living?
He manufactured black hair products.
Really?
Really.
Okay, great. What was the name of his company?
Le Conte, L-e and then C-o-n-t-e, Le Conte hair products.
Yes.
You saw them once or twice?
I’ve seen them, yes. So where in Los Angeles did you live when you left here?
Fairly close to Wilshire and Normandy.
Did you go back to work there?
I did odd jobs in speech therapy.
Were you an entrepreneur, self-employed?
For a while I was self-employed. One of my biggest clients was Head Start programs.
Did you like it better being sort of an entrepreneur than working in a school system?
I can’t say that I liked it better, but that’s what it seemed better for me to do there. Then
he died, and after he died, I came back to Las Vegas because I had vested years here.
Tell me about going to Carson City from time to time.
I remember Theron Goynes driving us up one time to visit the legislature. Maya Miller
arranged housing for all of us, some of us at her house and others at other people’s
28
homes. I don’t remember who we talked to or what we were lobbying for, but Maya
remembers that there was a teacher, Dorothy Wilson, and Dorothy had on cute little pink
shoes and it snowed. [laughter]
So Maya sounds like she was very serious but a lot of fun too.
Uh-huh.
Did anybody ever get to interview Maya Miller?
Yes, I have some information on her.
I would love to share that information.
All right.
So now you’re back in Las Vegas. How long did you stay in Los Angeles, ‘72 until
approximately—
I would say maybe eight years, something like that.
So about 1980 you came back to Las Vegas?
Roughly.
Tell me how much it has changed from 1972 to 1980.
The big change was growth, that’s the big change. The city has just mushroomed, and it
continues to mushroom.
Tell me the difference in race relations.
The difference may also be in our, shall I say, wisdom, experiences, etc. Now the race
relations can be sort of whatever we want on a personal basis, but there is still a problem
with jobs.
So in 1980 did you see that as well?
Yes. We had the problems that people felt that they should be able to just apply for a job,
29
and so they would go in with the paperwork, and for some reason or other they would be
told that someone would get in touch with them, and their application would be put in the
wastepaper basket by whatever little receptionist took it, and somebody else would see it
happen.
So you know it was true?
Uh-huh.
You were away during the era of the consent decree?
Yes.
But you saw the results of it when you got back.
Yes.
Tell me how it worked.
It worked with them giving blacks a greater variety of jobs. For instance, we knew one
girl, Antonita Logan [phonetic], and Antonita went to Langston for one year. She
couldn’t go to college anymore because of the illness of her mother, but she went to work
in a hotel in the section that takes in the hotel guests, and very quickly she was made
head of that section, and that’s because of her year at college at Langston. That’s what it
did for her.
We also had a big push for youngsters going to school. During the time that I was
at Kit Carson they decided to put black counselors in the high schools, and one of the first
ones that they moved from Kit Carson was Charlotte Cook, and Charlotte Cook was put
at Las Vegas High. The kids at Las Vegas High soon learned where they had to go to sign
up for school loans. It was the First National Bank down on Las Vegas Boulevard South,
and that is what they had to do. The black colleges in the South took them, took whoever
30
went, whoever she wanted to send. The ones who finished were able to come back and
get jobs as teachers, whatever else you’d get a job at. The ones who didn’t finish still had
the same kind of experience that Antonita had.
I like that.
So lots of things were happening during that time.
One of the first black people before this started happening, that got a job on the Strip
was Jimmy Gay. Tell me what you know about Jimmy Gay.
Well, first of all, Jimmy Gay lived right down the street. He was just kind of a goodwill
ambassador. He would entertain people in the casinos who came here on things like
school district business, civil rights business, and so forth. There was one woman who
came out to talk, and I remember he arranged for her and me to go to dinner and a show
together. He was a goodwill ambassador for Las Vegas, for the casinos, and we
appreciated it.
I met a woman here named, and I know I’m going to forget her first name, her last
name is Duncan.
Ruby Duncan?
Not Ruby. This was a younger woman. She got a job because of a program that a Jim
Anderson took her through.
That’s my Jim Anderson.
And I just put it together. I interviewed her back in 1998 or something like that, and
she told me about this man named Jim Anderson causing her to get a job, I think it was
at the Desert Inn.
Probably. I don’t remember which one you’re speaking of.
31
Kathy? Katy Duncan? Oh no. I have the wrong name. I have to go back and look.
Was it Katherine, Katherine Duncan? Tall, slender woman?
Not Katherine. It was her sister, her sister who wears a natural. She’s been to Africa
with you at one time.
Faye.
Faye Duncan Daniels.
Yes.
Faye Duncan Daniels. Thank you.
Now, as part of Jim’s work in the NAACP., he saw that there was a need for young
people to have something to do. So he organized what he called a Special Activities
Committee, and these were very young adults, in their twenties and so forth, and in this
group they did more than just have social events. They talked about things. They learned
about things.
Her speech is so beautiful. Did you work with her?
No.
But she also went on to be one of the assistant managers at a hotel downtown.
I’m not surprised.
She attributes all of that success to Jim Anderson.
I’m not surprised. See, she had what it took.
Exactly.
She just needed somebody to get her started. After she got started, she could see the
paths.
Tell me about coming back to Las Vegas in 1980. Did you go back to the school
32
system?
I went back as a speech therapist.
Did not want to go back as a principal?
No, and part of the reason was that the school system had changed a great deal and
speech therapy at that point was less stressful. When I left the school district here, I went
to the doctor and my blood pressure was 200 over something.
Where did you work then?
In speech therapy?
Uh-huh.
Various schools all over the town.
Then that’s where you retired from the school system?
Yes.
How long did you stay, from 1980 until approximately—
I have to remember. I worked until I was 67, and I’m eighty now.
So you’ve been retired.
So we have to go back and— [laughter]
You’ve been retired for all of those years?
Yes.
Thirteen years?
Yes.
Tell me when you moved to the location where we are right now.
We bought this house in 1964. We were able to get into it in ’65 because it took that long
to find somebody to loan us the money. Finally, the man who lived here found an
33
insurance company that did.
Is that the way blacks had to get financing for houses?
I don’t know, but that’s the way ours went.
This is a beautiful house. Was it like this when you purchased in ’64?
It was just like this. I’m not a house fixer-upper.
But this is nice and big. So in 1964 was this area that we’re sitting in now a black
area?[Helen’s home is in Bonanza Village development.]
It was becoming black. The whites were running. Now they’re trying to come back.
Yes, because this is such a beautiful area. Tell me about the use of the word Civil
Rights Movement. Sometimes when we think of Civil Rights Movement we think of the
South. Now, did we actually use that terminology here in Las Vegas?
We used it, and ours was based on the activities that we were doing here. Our activities
were mainly in education and jobs.
I want to ask you, because of your standing in the community, I want to ask about
some of the other community leaders.
All right.
We don’t have that much information on Mabel Hoggard. Did you get to know her at
all?
I knew Mabel Hoggard.
Tell me about her and what kind of person she was.
Mabel Hoggard was the first black teacher in Las Vegas, and therefore in Nevada. She
was a very, what shall I say, strong, nice person, but she made these definitive statements
like, “Play is the children’s business.” Everyone had a great deal of respect for her.
34
She was also very helpful with the credit union, the West Side Credit Union.
Yes, and very active in the NAACP. Everybody who was here was active in the
NAACP.
Someone else that we don’t know a whole lot about, tell me more about Charles Kellar.
I’ll give you some information on him.
Was Charles Kellar active at the time that Jim Anderson was active?
Yes. Charles Kellar lived in that house right over there, right across the street. He built
that house.
That’s not the house where they shot into the windows?
Yes. It is.
Do you remember that time?
I think it might have happened before I came here, but he could not buy—well, let me
start out with some other things about Charles Kellar. Charles Kellar was born in the
islands, and he remembers getting his first pair of shoes when he was six. He came to
New York. I’m not sure how or why, and in New York whatever division of government
he worked for it allowed him to start buying houses. So when he came here he had sold
his houses in New York, and he had something like $250,000 in a cashier’s check from
the bank there. He went in a bank here, and asked whoever he was to talk to and how he
should negotiate that check, and the next thing he knew there were policeman there,
handcuffing him and saying, “No nigger had got that kind of money honestly,” that was
his introduction to Las Vegas. You can find some more about Charles Kellar in the law
library. I mean his introduction to Las Vegas.
In order to build that house, he could not buy the land because there were
35
restrictive covenants over here. He had to have some white person buy it for him and then
deed it to him.
This is the same area that Dr. West and Dr. McMillan lived?
Yes. Well, Dr. Charles West lived on the next street. Dr. James McMillan may have lived
here, but I remember him living farther west.
Okay, that’s probably right. Dr. West probably moved in here later.
Yes. Charles Kellar was a skillful lawyer, a skillful one, and during the time that he was
practicing Las Vegas was a much smaller town, and there was not a wealth of people who
were good in their fields, and that includes secretaries. Well, his wife had been his
secretary in New York, Nina Kellar, and she was a topnotch secretary. I remember her
talking about the fact that Charles would get angry and he’d fire off a letter to somebody
and she’d take it down, and then she’d sit on it for two days, and by that time he had
eased up a little bit, so they’d change the letter.
What are some of the stories that you heard about integrating the Strip? Do you
remember ever hearing the story about what happened in March of 1960?
No, but I know about the welfare mothers’ marches.
Tell me about Ruby Duncan and what you know about Ruby and the welfare reform.
Well, during that time the welfare mothers organized, because, if I’m not mistaken, the
welfare they were paying in Nevada was third from Mississippi, which was at the bottom.
Kids came to school one day saying, “We going to eat on the Strip tonight.” All the
families, the whole family, kids and all, marched down the Strip, and I think they ended
up—nobody knew where they were going, but I think they ended up going into Caesars
Palace, and I think they all ate. I’m not sure, I think they took Ruby to jail, but then they
36
released her very fast and I think they forgave whatever amount the food cost.
I think you’re talking about two different marches. One time they ate in the Stardust.
Oh, okay, Stardust one time.
Then there was a march to Caesars Palace on a Saturday.
All right.
How did the community look at Ruby Duncan? And when I say the community, there
were some of you who were really associated with the NAACP. You were doing things
like going back and forth to Carson City and getting jobs on the Strip and all of that,
and now here comes another movement; this little part of the Civil Rights Movement,
but it’s about welfare. How did the middle class see that?
The middle class saw it as them needing an adequate amount of money to live on. I don’t
know how they made it on what they had, and we identified with all of us scuffling, all of
us scuffling for our rights. At this time I had made a trip to Mexico, down to Mexico
City, and when I went down there I felt free. I was treated well, and I honestly knew what
I was fighting for because I experienced it there.
What do you mean? Explain that.
Here I had always been second class. Here there had always been me having to ask the
question in my mind if I could, if I may, etc. When I went to Mexico, I looked like
everybody else. I remember on the train some man pulling up his sleeve, and said, “See,
the same.” He didn’t speak much English.
So you’re saying what freedom feels like?
Yes. I honestly knew, and I don’t know what experiences other people had, but mine was
more than a hope. It was a real experience I had had.
37
Is that one of the reasons you started traveling?
It started it. Yes. It started it.
Tell me about some of the traveling. How did the first trip to Africa happen?
The first trip happened because Jim and I were married, this was the summer before he
died, and I had always talked so much about going to Africa. I wanted to go. I wanted to
go, and even though he was somewhat ill, more ill than I knew, we borrowed the money
to go. We figured that we borrowed the money for houses, for cars, for roofs, for
everything else, and we might as well borrow the money to give us mental vitamins. So
we went, and when his insurance money came I paid back the loan.
We went to a travel agent here, and we said that we wanted to go to West Africa
because from our small amount of knowledge all, we’d read about in East Africa were
animals. So he arranged a tour where we went through seven countries in West Africa,
stayed in each one about three days, except for Nigeria and Ghana, where we stayed a
little longer. He arranged it so that we were met at the airport by someone from a travel
agency there, who took us through customs, took us to the hotel, gave us a tour of the
city, and then we had a day or so to do whatever touring we wanted to do.
Do you remember those seven countries, those first seven?
Let’s see if I can remember. Senegal, Mali, the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria, and there’s
one that was French owned that I always forget the name of it, down the coast a little bit,
then Niger. I always have to look that one up on the globe.
Sierra Leone?
No. We didn’t go to Sierra Leone.
That’s wonderful. What impressed you so much about that trip that since that time
38
you’ve been back at least, what, ten, twelve more times?
The thing that impressed me the most was how much we learned that we didn’t know. I
can’t begin to tell you how much we learned that we didn’t know, and it completely filled
a need. We needed to know things about us and our background.
I’ve heard that you’re planning another trip.
I’m planning to go as long as I can move.
Tell me about the next one that you’re thinking about right now.
Well, now since the other day we’re planning to go to the SATMA Awards in South
Africa in September.
Oh, so that’s where the trip is. So where in South Africa?
Durban.
Tell me a little about Durban. Is Durban an area or city or—
Durban is quite a city, and it’s on the Indian Ocean, and people from Europe come down
there for their winter holidays. Remember when they had the conference on race in
Durban? They never told us where those 5,000 delegates were going to stay. Because I’ve
been to Durban, I can tell you that that Indian Ocean coast is lined with big hotels.
It’s just like Hawaii, probably.
Yes. The Holiday Inn itself has five hotels right on the ocean. I have never seen a more
beautiful oceanfront in my life.
How much is it going to cost for one person to go?
Generally speaking, to go to Durban costs roughly $2,000 for a roundtrip ticket. The men
who were here the other night were so thrilled with meeting us, they said, “We’ll put you
up. We run things there.”
39
If we can get a $2,000 roundtrip ticket, which means that they will pay for the hotel?
That’s what they mean. But let me tell you—
For how many in your party?
Let me say that if they don’t pay for the hotel, I have friends in Durban, South Africa that
we always stay at their house.
This is wonderful, because you know that Pat van Betten is thinking about going with
you?
I know that. We also have Charlotte Fuller, who used to live and work here in Las Vegas,
who lives in Durban, South Africa, and we can take as many people to her house as can
sleep on the floor if necessary.
Tell me who Charlotte Fuller is.
Well, what can I say about her? Charlotte has retired from the school system in Detroit.
Then she came here and worked for Children’s Services, and she retired from there, made
a trip to South Africa and took her two nieces. In the course of that trip she fell in love
with it, but she had already lived in Ghana many years ago. So when she made that trip
there she met some woman who was a social worker, who was going on maternity leave,
and Charlotte took her job until she came back from maternity leave, to the point where
she outstayed her six months’ limitation on her ticket and she had to buy a new ticket to
come back.
Then she came back then because she had already put in her application to go into
the Peace Corps. Now, in the Peace Corps they put her in Lesotho, which is right in the
middle of South Africa. She’s been in South Africa ever since. She says she plans to die
there.
40
What is the cost of living in Durban?
I can’t tell you what the cost of living is, but we could live very well there on our
pensions. One time when she had her seventieth birthday party, she was busy remodeling
a beautiful house, and you can see the Indian Ocean from her house, and I think she got
that house for maybe forty thousand American dollars.
This sounds great. After living here for so many years, you know this city. Tell me what
you see as the future of this old Westside area; I should say the original town site for
the city.
I think that if we don’t hold onto our property, people are going to pick it up one piece at
a time. This is a very convenient location. It’s convenient. It’s so close to the center of the
city. It’s close to everything. It’s high enough that we don’t get the flooding. And we just
have to be very careful not to let it go from us.
At one point we didn’t have a supermarket in this area. I think right now we don’t have
a supermarket, and that was a real problem with some of the families without
transportation. What is being done about that now?
Not much, but weekly the newspaper keeps giving us little signals that maybe if one of
these companies gets a little more time or something, something is going to happen. I just
can’t tell you.
What do you see as some of the other challenges for this original town site area?
I think that the greatest challenge is us holding onto our property. You know, they have
done things like taking the property there on D right at Bonanza and putting in Valley
Foods. There’s a big, big building there, and it says “Valley Foods.” That was all
Westside at one time. And then they extended the freeway in that direction, that took a
41
certain number of houses.
So to end the interview, are there other memories about the seventies that you would
like to add?
All of a sudden, you know, I just kind of draw a blank.
You’ve talked about housing. You’ve talked about the school situation. You’ve talked
about the NAACP and the NAACP work. What other organizations were you a part of
other than the NAACP?
Well, almost every one that formed.
Give me an idea, because I see here on the wall, I know that you’re a Delta.
Yes.
Were you ever active with the Delta chapter here?
I was one of the founders of this chapter.
And what are some of the projects over the years that you’ve engaged in through
Delta?
Whatever the chapter did, but one of the best things that Delta did for me was to allow
me, in going to conventions, to find out what was happening other places. That was a
needed something and very important.
Tell me about other organizations that you were a part of.
Well, we’ve had the National Association of College Women, and I was once part of Les
Femmes Douze.
Tell me about Les Femmes Douze, because they’re still very active. Tell me about being
a part of them.
Well, Les Femmes Douze’s mission was to take our young girls, and take them through
42
sort of a rites of passage program, to help prepare them for good citizenship and have it
end with them becoming debutantes.
Tell me what some of the skills and some of the things that you tried to teach the girls
while they were going through this process.
One thing that I thought was really outstanding was when Les Femmes Douze brought
actual employees of the testing association, the testing association that prepares school
tests, etc., to come out and give the girls and the women a very thorough explanation of
what was in the test, how to study for it. How do you attack all of the questions? Do you
do the ones first that you’re sure of? They wanted mainly for the girls to prepare for
college.
One of the things that I saw this past weekend, last weekend was NBA weekend; it was
the weekend that they have the East against the West in basketball. Basketball now is
followed by young adults from the hip hop generation. These are the young adults that
have been growing up listening to rap music all of their lives, and we got so many
reports, personal and the newspaper, about our young people being rude, using all
kinds of profanity, fighting, leaving places without paying for their meals, not
tipping—and you know this is a tipping town—and just being rude. Explain that. I
mean, after working with Les Femmes Douze, explain what has happened.
This is what I think. I think that one of the things that has happened is that our children
have always been pointed out and isolated from what we call middle-class white culture,
and in the isolation they work out their own means of doing things. Also, many of our
young people are very angry. When I was studying psychotherapy, one person was
talking about a little black boy who in a whole hour of what was supposed to be play
43
therapy just kind of sat on a desk and didn’t do much. And finally the therapist asked him
what he was doing. He says, “I’m playing white man.” So then he understood. I don’t
believe that these people could have acted any more arrogant and rude than we have seen
our Republican legislatures behave. It was just a matter of they were doing it with a black
face. We have very few standards that are prevalent and are pushed on a national level.
So therefore, rugged individualism is honored and heeded beyond the point where it’s
effective, even for the people that it’s affecting. And everything that the papers are
coming around to saying about values needs to be looked at.
We’re fortunate that some of us follow the village theory, and we look at our
children and we’re part of the village and we try to steer them well. But then
unfortunately, a lot of the youngsters don’t have it. I remember that—well now, let me go
to this.
One of the men who were here Friday night said that Nelson Mandela said to
them, “We all know what’s right and what’s wrong. So no matter what these people have
done to us, we’re not going to stoop to do the wrong thing. Stand tall.” This is the
message we have to constantly give our kids.
What do you think drugs have done in our communities?
Well, drugs have just ruined the lives of everyone they’ve touched, whether they touched
them as a user or as a person close, whose life is affected by the user. But I’m noticing
now, in fact, I know some women who have managed to pull themselves off drugs. So
we’ve gotten the message. It might be a small number, but they’re handling it. They’re
taking care of families.
Any closing remarks that you’d like to make?
44
I thank you so much for coming over, and for doing this.
I just thank you so much. I really appreciate all of the information.
45
INDEX
Africa interest, 16, 23, 24, 31, 37, 38, 39,
40
Anderson, Jim, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 16, 31, 32,
34, 37
Los Angeles, California, 5, 9, 24, 26, 27,
28, 29
Louisville, Kentucky, 5
Madison Elementary School, 12, 14
Mandela, Nelson, 8, 44
Marceline, Missouri, 1, 3
Matthews, Martha, 26
McMillan, Dr. James, 35
Miller, Maya, 15, 16, 17, 28
Miller, Richard, 15
Molten, Fred, 11
Mt. Charleston, 15
Bailey, Bob, 6
Bennett, Reverend, 6, 14
Bonanza Village, 33
Brantley, Keith, 23
Briarwood Apartments, 8
Caesars Palace, 36
Carson City, Nevada, 15, 28, 36
civil rights, 34, 36
Cook, Charlotte, 30
Culinary Union, 7
NAACP, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 16, 21, 31, 34,
36, 41
Outdoor Environmental Program, 15
Dalton, Missouri, 2
Disneyland, 14, 15
Duncan Daniels, Faye, 31
Duncan, Ruby, 36
Paglia, Nick, 9
Ray, Clarence, 11
Robert E. Lake Elementary School, 24,
25, 26
First National Bank, 30
Fitzgerald, H. P., 13
Fitzgerald’s hotel, 24
Foresta, 16
Fuller, Charlotte, 30, 39, 40
Sawyer, Gov. Grant, 7
Springfield, Illinois, 2, 3, 4
Teamsters, 7
Gay, Jimmy, 30
Goynes, Theron, 28
unions, 6, 34
University of Illinois at ChampaignUrbana, 4
University of Southern California, 5, 12
Hoggard, Mabel, 34
Kellar, Charles, 6, 34, 35
Kellar, Nina, 36
King, Jr., Martin Luther, 6
Kit Carson Elementary School, 12, 14,
17, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30
Vegas Verdes, 10
West Middle School, 9
West, Dr. Charles, 35
Westside, 21, 22, 40, 41
Wilson, Dorothy, 28
Lee Canyon, 15, 18
Les Femmes Douze, 42, 43
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