When Dr. James McMillan became the first black dentist in Las Vegas in 1953, he wasn’t allowed to stay at a Strip hotel.

Ida Gaines, a civil rights activist from Southern Nevada, heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Las Vegas in 1964. She was moved then, and today, almost 55 years later, she is still touched by her words and her work.

Longtime Southern Nevada civil rights activist Ida Gaines heard Martin Luther King Jr. speak in Las Vegas in 1964. She was moved then, and today, nearly 55 years later, remains moved by his words and his work.

Nedra Cooper was a 17-year-old “military brat” and a senior in high school when she settled in the Las Vegas Valley in 1971, after traveling with her father from base to base.

You don’t have to be a first responder to participate in UNLV Libraries’ “Remembering 1 October” oral history project, although it’s fine if you are. “We want to show how Las Vegas [rallied] together to support each other,” says Claytee D. White, director of UNLV’s Oral History Research Center.

Four years before the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee — 50 years ago Wednesday — Las Vegas shared in his historic legacy.

In early 1960, Dr. James McMillan penned a letter to then-Las Vegas Mayor Oran Gragson demanding that the city integrate.

The historic African-American neighborhood in Las Vegas known as the Westside sits at a crossroads — literally and figuratively.