Before Nathalie Martinez graduated from UNLV in 2021, she worked as a student oral historian for the Latinx Voices Project, collecting oral stories in English and Spanish about the eastside of Las Vegas.

A panel of local leaders, community activists and educators looked to the past and the future during a discussion Saturday about Las Vegas’ Historic Westside.

In honor of Black History Month and, as chair of the Boulder City Democratic Club, I was afforded the opportunity to invite Claytee White, director of the Oral History Research Center at the UNLV libraries, to participate in our monthly Zoom meeting.

When Shanta Patton discusses the gap between Black and white homeownership rates, she starts with the game of Monopoly.

Nevada’s Neon Museum is installing an 808 square-foot mural honoring diverse communities and individuals who impacted Las Vegas’ cultural history.

An old African proverb states that “When an elder dies, a library burns to the ground.”

Currently, Nevada has about the fifth largest population of Asian Americans. That’s 238,000 people or 8 percent of the state’s population. For comparison, the national average is 5.6 percent per state.

Beyond the glitz and glamour of the Strip, Las Vegas boasts a lesser-known local history of Civil Rights activism—and many of its key players lived and worked in a neighborhood called the Historic Westside.