An Interview with Ruby Duncan

Transcription

1 An Interview with Ruby Duncan An Oral History Conducted by Claytee D. White African American Collaborative Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas

2 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, Melissa Robinson. ii

3 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 iii

4 Table of Contents Interview with Ruby Duncan February 13 and March 2, 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Claytee D. White Preface..vi SESSION I: Ruby, single mother, tells about working at Sahara Hotel making salads and a debilitating fall in Continues to work off and on; in 1968 takes a position at the New Frontier Hotel; though a Culinary Union member, she received no advice or guidance Begins her life story at the age of three, lived family to family, not knowing her biological parents; at age seven an aunt in Tallulah, Louisiana took guardianship of her; talks about backwoods life, picking cotton and education through 9 th grade. Trauma of rape and becoming pregnant as a young teen; quit school to have child; worked for $8 a week; family begins to move to Las Vegas for better paying jobs Rode bus to Las Vegas in 1952 at age 18 to join her child and family; describes where here family were living, a motel in Whitney (Henderson) area; did housekeeping work for a comedian who worked at Frontier hotel for about three years. Meantime, she moved to Westside (circa ); becomes stay-at-home mother. Talks about Christensen family home built of stone. Describes Westside neighborhood of that era, housing alternatives including Cadillac Arms, Berkley Square. Mentions where people had moved from to live in Las Vegas Arkansas, Louisiana. and so on Remarks about Mexican Americans in the West Las Vegas community, Judge John Mendoza, Binion family. Talks about where her children attended school: Westside School, Kit Carson, Clark High School. Recalls integration of the 1970s; how it impacted her parenting; situation at high school with one of her sons, determination that her children would have an education. Names her seven children Talks about Westside entertainment of the 1950s and 1960s; lists the clubs, restaurants; changes that occurred after integration on Jackson Street. Describes what her children did after school and on weekends for entertainment: Doolittle park, church and homework. Member of PTA. Remarks about Bonanza Village Describes how her welfare activism began; reaction to violation of rights when on welfare; organizing meeting of welfare mothers; story of how she became the spokesperson for the group (1969). She calls the press to tell her personal story and bring attention to the cause of black welfare mothers. The movement grew to include all ethnic groups on welfare; UNLV student support during march. Talks about Sun s investigation; Legal Services and meeting with advisors Mahlon Brown, Jack Anderson; Frank Schreck, local director of Welfare Department iv

5 SESSION II: Talks about support from Ford Foundation grant for Welfare Rights Organization; their protest and removal from welfare office; being put into police custody; satisfied that they had made a point they went home. Describes formation of Operation Life; George Wiley and his importance as the national director of welfare at the time; Poor People Pulling Together; orchestrated complaints at the County Commission and more, including attending the Democratic National Convention in Miami, Florida; learns about WIC, Women Infants & Children. Describes the process and names of those involved in helping set up WIC in Nevada; supplemental nutrition program Tells about attorney Jack Anderson in more detail; hired by attorney Mahlon Brown. More about obstacles of mother on welfare; legal relationships; League of Women Voters; behind the scenes help for Operation Life. Mentions more about VISTA; George Wiley of the National Welfare Rights Organization; attended his funeral. Explains about lobbying; meeting with Gov. O Callaghan Explains implementation of the food stamp program; Operation Life begins; how she is talked in to heading it up by Mahlon Brown. First program was WIC. Located at old Cove Hotel; received funding to fix it up; meanwhile begins health screenings. Successfully goes before Library Board with request, and a competitive request from Bob Bailey. Several valuable programs began; Ford Foundation gives her a salary Talks about NAACP s less than cordial relationship with Operation Life; receiving advice from Pres. Jimmy Carter, who puts her on several White House Conferences. Visits the Oval Office, meets with HUD, meets with Sen. Ted Kennedy. Spearheads effort to get women into maledominated work positions. Activism at Palms Room (Stardust Hotel) with busload of children, Welfare Rights, being arrested, rescued by Judge Reed March 6, 1971: March on the Strip to Caesars Palace; includes Jane Fonda, Rev. Ralph Abernathy and thousands of protestors. Describes several others who joined with her, members of her board Index v

6 Preface The 1970s Welfare Rights story of Las Vegas would not be complete without the narrative of Ruby Duncan. Ruby s life story began in the backwoods of Louisiana near Ivory Plantation, where she and other family members would work. Though her family was poor and her parents were dead before she was four years old, Ruby s early life was nurtured by caring relatives. When one of her aunts moved to Las Vegas in the early 1950s, they insisted on her following them. Las Vegas life promised better wages and a fresh start for Ruby. She had no formal education past the 9 th grade, plus she was a teen mother as a result of a rape. Though she willingly worked menial jobs, life was not that easy. During this two-session interview, she shares details of her employment history and the hardship of having to depend on public assistance to make ends meet. In Las Vegas, she also found the love of a husband with whom she had a family and her voice as a community leader. Ruby s intellect and passion for fairness and justice made her a natural leader. Others looked to her to lead them and she describes how she became an active leader in the Welfare Rights Movement. Her relentless concern for the health and welfare of poor people in the Las Vegas community resulted in Operation Life, where she was executive director until Operation Life was responsible for creating a library, a medical clinic and jobs program. vi

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8 Session I February 13 th, I'm with Ruby Duncan in her home here in Las Vegas. My name is Claytee White. So how are you today, Ruby? Oh, I'm just great. No other way but blessed. Oh, that is wonderful. Now, you have been just a little down recently. Yes. So tell me what happened. Well, I had an accident and I had to have a knee replacement and the knee replacement always messes with your back when you've had back surgery. Now, Ruby, does this have anything to do with the fall that you had years and years ago? No. This is a fall that I had a couple of years ago. But the back problem is from the fall I had at the Sahara in Well, let's go ahead and start talking about the Sahara (Hotel/Casino) and then we're going to go back to your early life. But tell me what happened that day at the Sahara. Well, to be fair with you at the time I had seven children, seven mouths to feed, and I was the only parent. I went in and talked to the chef. He was great enough to give me a part-time job and the job lasted for about six weeks because the person was off that had that job so I worked in their place until they came back. All of a sudden this person decided that they would take off. So he called me back because I was so persistent. Because I had to take care of these seven children five men they are men now and two women. What was the job? The job. In the beginning I was what you call a salad person in the back kitchen. So I had to 1

9 make at least twelve hundred salads between the hour of two o'clock and five o'clock because the show would start; at least five-thirty they would start serving dinner. So part of the salad I made had to go to the coffee shop and the rest would go to the showroom. It was interesting and I didn't know that I could do it so fast. I had to make the salads, then I had to make about a hundred-and-twenty gallons of coffee, and I had to make about sixty gallons of tea. I made they call this agua soup. And I might be pronouncing it wrong, but it's what you call a white potato soup. I had to make that. The gentleman that was over the salad department was a wonderful boss, Bob. Bob would show me everything, and Lily, both of them. They worked with me and I learned how to make the soup. And then I had to make salads afterwards, like shrimp salad. Bob would show me how to section the lettuce off and make the salad look so beautiful. I thought that was interesting and it was fun. Before I left at night I had to make sure there was about sixty little cups of Jell-O made for the next day. Part of that went to the coffee shop, also. I also had to go down to the bakery and make sure I brought back a big platter of sweets, goodies and rolls, different kinds of rolls and bread for dinner. By the time that I got all that there then I had to make sure that I started cleaning the whole station up. When all that s over I was ready to come home. So now, how many hours did you work? Eight hours. Eight hours. But see, doing all of this after you do all of this, then you had to start preparing something for the next day and leave in your refrigerator for the next person that comes on and some for dinner, like tomorrow night. So after I worked so well at that, the chef come to me and asked me how would I like to work as a short-order cook in the coffee shop. And I told him, I said, Well, I don't know how to do that. He said, You know how to do this. As fast as you learned how to do this, I know you know how to do that. And so I went up in the 2

10 coffee shop and then that's how I started to doing pancakes and all kinds of sandwiches. But you had to make sure that your station was full. Now, before I would leave work at ten o'clock at night, I would always make sure that the station was replenished for the next person that comes in. Well, sometimes there are some of us that will not make sure that everything is completely filled for the next (shift) because we're running out of there. The next morning I come in the station (and) I had to totally replenish the station. So I would always come ten or fifteen minutes early so that I would make sure that the station was replenished and I wouldn't have to worry about running backwards and forwards to get what I knew was to be gotten. The owner or the CEO of the hotel always liked a certain grapefruit and I had to bring this big platter of grapefruit. And while I'm down there getting this I just made sure that I got as much goodies as I know I would need. On my way back up I didn't know that the fry cooks that fried the eggs and the bacon and the steak, I didn't know that they had made a mistake and waste a five-gallon bucket of oil. They didn't put nothing up or say don't nobody come by. So I'm walking with these two big platters of goodies I hit the floor and the door. My head, my hip, I broke my tailbone. I messed up my back. I was in and out of the hospital for a year. So how long had you worked there when that accident happened? I had been there for I know a good whole year or two. So didn't the Sahara do something about that? No. No. See, what happened is the state was supposed to take you over from there. I couldn't stay at work because I was in so much pain. Instead of me going to the hospital I went straight home. So the next day I couldn't hardly get out of bed; I finally got out of bed and went to the emergency room and they kept me. The doctors did all kinds of tests. They wouldn't do surgery, 3

11 they said, because you're just a little too heavy. Well, I've been heavy all my life, ever since I can remember from a teenager up. They just kept treating me and then they decided to find out if I really had destroyed some nerves. And I did because they drew the fluid out of my spine and put some dye in. The dye would show. And then they put the fluid back in. That was miserable. Ooh. I'm sweating. So there was no way that I could go back to work at that moment. So about a year later I went back. The chef told me, he said, Well, Ruby, it's been a year, but there's an opening over at the New Frontier, because the New Frontier had just opened up. He says, I ll call over and see if you can get a job over there. Well, he did and so I got the job. And I guess I must have worked for about a week and I passed out in the refrigerator. Someone came in and then they wanted to call the ambulance. And I am just such a I don't know what kind of person. I tell them no, I want to go home, because I wanted to go where my children were. And I went home. I found myself had to get up the next morning, go back to the emergency room. And from then in I was under the doctor's care. The state started helping taking care of me. And all of a sudden they just stopped. They said I was well enough to go back to work. Well, the doctor, Dr. Zibbitt at that time What is his name again? Zibbitt. Dr. Zibbitt told them, I don't think if she can really make it, but if she can, I'll leave that up to her. So I wanted to get back to work because of my children and I went back to work. It was one thing I was tired of being on welfare. I went back to work and I guess I must have worked for about three more days and I just couldn't make it. So Dr. Zibbitt told me, he says, You can't do it. And so he wrote the hotel a letter and told them. So which year was that? 4

12 I fell in 1966 and I worked all the way through, I think, to '68. I'm not sure. So during 68 it was a back-and-forth type thing with the hotel and with the new job. Now, tell me what your relationship were you a member of the union? Uh-huh. Tell me how that works. Well, Culinary didn't do anything. I don't understand that. No, no. I guess maybe because I didn't ask. I don't know. But they didn't do anything to help me. Culinary didn't do anything to help. The hotels, naturally, they weren t going to do anything because they didn't want to be a part of it. But that's what really happened. But you were a union member Yes, in good standing. Oh, no, they would not let you go by without paying your dues every month. You must pay them dues. That was a must. And so I was a great dues-paying member even after I had injured myself because I didn't know if I was going back to work or not. So now that I know about that, let's go back to your early life. Tell me where you grew up, what kind of work your guardian, your mother, your father, your guardian did for a living and then how you left there to come here. Well, number one, as far back as I can remember, back to about three years old, I never knew my mother or my father. It's hard to talk about. But anyway, I lived from family to family. One aunt would take me this month, the other aunt would take me next month, and an uncle would take me the next month. And so that went on until I was I guess about seven and a half. One of my aunties decided to take me. But where I grew up at was the backwoods of Tallulah, Louisiana, back in the country in the back fields, cotton fields, cornfields of Louisiana on the 5

13 Ivory Plantation and that's the kind of living. Now, for school, I went to school from I would say late October all the way up to about the third week in February. Then I had to come out of school and help chop cotton. Then after chopping cotton, the cotton grows up, you've got to help pick it. And after I guess about the third week of October, you just about picked all the cotton. It was scattered bolls of cotton. And so then they would let me go back to school. I finally made it from first grade through the seventh. And then from the seventh grade you would have to leave the country and go to town in order to go on to school through from the eighth grade, ninth grade on. So I stayed with my auntie that lived in town from grade eighth all the way through to grade ninth. Before I went to the last year of school, which was the ninth grade, I was so happy that I had made it to the ninth grade. My auntie used to work for the farm owner. She was what we used to call at the big house; she did the cooking the breakfast, the lunch and the dinner. At night she would have to walk from the big house home and that was about a mile, half a mile anyway. Her godmother and her husband would say, Well, Ruby, you better run down and come back with Mamie. And my uncle would always say, Now, don't walk on the same side of the highway that boy going to be on. Well, because the boy had come and asked they had this thing about may I come and court Ruby or may I come and court whoever? And they didn't like no boy. Now explain to me what courting meant as you were growing up. Courting meant that I was then about the age of fifteen or sixteen. Courting means that he wanted to be my boyfriend. So would he come to the house, sit down and see you in the afternoons? Well, that's what he would do. And if he did, if they would have let him, we would sit on the 6

14 porch. So therefore, I couldn't go no place with him. They didn't want him around period and they would always tell me, Whatever you do, if you see that boy coming down the road, you cross over on the other side of the road; don't walk on the same side. I said, yes, ma'am; yes, sir. So I was I guess about the age of seventeen. I just had made seventeen. On my way to come back with her that night I ran because I would always run and sing at the same time because I was wanting everybody to hear me so if anything would happen, because it was dark. So when I would get there she would always say, Girl, you're just huffing and blowing; what's wrong? And I d say, Well, I ran all the way here. She said, Oh, all right. So we would come home. But that particular evening I was coming down the highway and he ran out of the cotton because the cotton was taller than we were and he grabbed me. He raped me. And when he raped me I was so frightened, I was so scared, and I didn't know how to tell her when I got there because I had this peculiar look and whatnot. And she said, What's wrong, what's wrong? I said, Ooh, I was just running and running and running. And that's how I had to put it. And she said, Okay, all right. So we were coming home and when we got home I just went straight to bed and I just went under the covers and started crying. Well, her godmother and I slept in the same room and her godmother heard me crying. She said, Baby, what's wrong? She was an old frail lady, little frail woman. And I said, Oh, my head hurts and my stomach hurts. I was just making something up because I was just frightened. She said, Okay, well, I think that I have some aspirin. I said, Oh, Godmother, I'm going to be all right; don't worry yourself. So she said okay. I said, I'm sleepy anyway. So then I started putting my hand over my mouth and I 7

15 wouldn't let her hear me cry. I didn't know I was really pregnant. So I went on to school. And all of a sudden this particular dress was a little tight. My auntie that was in town that I was living with, she said to me this was sometime after the first of that year she said, Come here, baby. And I said, What happened? She said, Come here. And she says, Have you seen your period this month? And I said, Oh. Oh. I don't know. I don't think so. She said, Because you look a little round. And that's how I came to know that I was pregnant. Then that's when she asked me had I been playing around with any boys. And I told her no. And then I said, You know what, Auntie? I went to get Aunt Mamie one night and Alan jumped out of the cotton field. And I told her he raped me and I passed out. When I come to I was lying on his lap and he was like kind of slapping my face to wake me up. That scared me to death and I just jumped up and started running. I was just frightened from then in. So then she knew I was pregnant. I wouldn't go back home anymore. I used to go back like every weekend. I stopped going back home. What I mean back home was back to the plantation because I would catch the bus every Friday evening. They would have social parties, like on a Friday evening a lot of kids would get together. I didn't have time for that. I wanted to go back to the plantation and do what I had to do at home. So I stopped then going back to Ivory Plantation. She says, well, just go to school and she would help me. She didn't fuss at me, but she wrote my auntie and let her know, yeah, Ruby's pregnant. They got together and my auntie would send her a little money to make sure that I would go to the doctor and made sure that the doctor examined me. The doctor said, yeah, she's pregnant all right. So one evening I stopped in and I asked the doctor, Is there any way that I cannot be pregnant that I don't have to have this baby? And she said, No, honey, you must have the 8

16 baby; there's no such thing as you can't have the baby. I didn't know any better and my auntie, she wouldn't push it because she didn't want me to feel like she was fussing at me. And so I says okay. So I stayed there with her. My auntie was working. She constantly would send her money to take care of me until it was time for the baby to be born. She had paid the clinic. We had a little clinic in Tallulah and that's where the baby was born. They kind of put me to sleep; I don't remember. So at this point did you have to stop school? When did you have to stop school? Yes, at that point I had to quit school. I had to drop out completely because I needed to take care of that baby. One of my aunties was working at a drugstore downtown every Saturday night. One side of the drugstore was drugstore. They wasn't doing prescription, but it would be like ordinary across-the-counter medication and all those things. And on the other side it was like liquor, not fixing drinks but by the bottle, and beer and wine. They had tables there where you had to wait on the tables if they wanted a bottle of beer, a big bottle. They had these big bottles of beer, some little bottles. And they would buy like bottles of hard liquor. I was a bartender. I become a bartender. I was a bartender there for about two years making eight dollars and fifty cents per week and that was to take care of that baby and myself. My uncle was living out here in Vegas and he was wanting all his sisters and brothers to come to Las Vegas. He said that you guys are making slave wages; so therefore, if you come to Las Vegas, whatever wages you are making now you would get two or three times that much. And so that's what happened. All of them come out first. And she took the baby; my auntie took the baby. She says, well, I'm going to take this baby because you don't know how to take care of the baby. So she brought the baby with her. That's the first baby. So she brought the baby with her. I was still working at the drugstore. So when she come back to visit, all of them come back 9

17 to visit, she says, Ruby, you need to come to Las Vegas. She says, Ruby, you need to come to Las Vegas so you can work and make enough to take care of you and the baby. So I said, Okay, but I don't know anything to do out there. She said, Don't worry about it; you'll learn. So after they left she mailed me back some money. She said, Catch the train or the bus and come on. I caught that bus and here I come. But in the meantime, it was good for me because when I got out here and got started to working and everything, then I met a very nice gentleman and we got married. And there goes a whole bunch of young people. Okay, good. Now, tell me about the young man. You knew who he was. Did the family ever do anything about that young man? No, no. They didn't want nothing to do with him. They thought he was the worst boy on the plantation. I mean he never did anything. The whole idea is that they just didn't want me to have a boyfriend because most girls on the plantation would come up pregnant and the young men would walk away from them and didn't help them and the parent didn't help them. So they didn't want me to have a boyfriend. And I didn't fuss about that because I wasn't interested in him anyway. Were you interested in the fact that he was the father? I guess they made me interested in that part, of understanding he was the father and he should do something about this baby. Well, he knew the baby was his. So he would come down. We lived like down on the fairground, as they call it. And so he would come down through the fairground every once in a while and he'd stop. Ruby, can I see the baby? I said, What baby? Your baby. I said, Huh-uh, no, huh-uh, no. You need to leave. And that's the way I would do it; I would tell him, You need to leave. So he and his friend would always go away. 10

18 Because that was a crime why didn't the family maybe all black families were like this why didn't they have that person arrested at that time? Oh, no such thing as having anybody arrested or anything about rape. That was country stuff and then that was Southern stuff. No Southern people knew anything about making sure that that young man would have to take care of the baby or he should serve time. See, if I had been white that would have been a different story. But see, I was just an ordinary fieldworker and black. I wouldn't say it was a racist thing, but it was just a common thing among black people. And black people wouldn't have did it anyway; they wouldn't have followed through. Matter of fact, they wasn't educated enough to make sure that this young man would do something about what he had done. So we're in Las Vegas now. Now which year do you come to Las Vegas? So you're how old? Seventy-four and a half. No, no. That's how old you are now. Oh, how old I was when I come here. See, I wasn't even going to ask your age, but now go ahead. Yes. When I came here I was eighteen. So see, he was a baby then. Yes. So you have been here for fifty-six years? Uh-huh. Isn't that something? Yes. So I want to know everything about Las Vegas. First tell me what did it look like when you 11

19 got off the you came on the train to Las Vegas? I come on the bus. What did it look like when you got to the bus station? Oh, my god, it was beautiful and green around the bus station and train station. But once you got outside of Las Vegas, once the cab driver and I told him, I said, They told me to come to Whitney. And he says, Okay, I know where you want to go. There is a group of black people live outside of Whitney. So he brought me straight to my auntie and them. But if I tell you there was nothing but dirt, sand, weeds, tumbleweeds there was nothing beyond Fremont. The end of Fremont before the Showboat was built there was nothing beyond that. So tell me today where was your family? Where did the cab driver take you? I'll tell you where they were. What's the name of the Sam Where the university plays football? Yes. Sam Boyd Stadium. Well, across the highway from Sam Boyd Stadium going toward shall I say the electrical plant, that's where we were. We were staying in an old rundown motel. My uncle had an old oil truck that he had cleaned up. He would go to Henderson and get it full of water and bring it back so we could have water during the week to wash and cook and whatnot. That's where we lived for at least a couple of years. I was the first one left. I said, Now, I'm tired of this. It was just like Tallulah. Uh-huh, yeah. Yeah, it was. So when you left there where did you go? I come to Las Vegas. That's definitely when I got married. We were living down on A and Van Buren, A Street and Van Buren in a little apartment in the back of I think that no. They ve 12

20 done taken that for the freeway. So anyway, that's where I first moved. Those two years that you lived with the family in the old motel, did you work? Yes. I did housecleaning. The first job I got was my uncle come to me and he said, Hey, Ruby, you know how to clean up a house, don't you? I say, Yeah, I know how to clean up a house. He said, Okay, there's a friend of mine say there's a gentleman that works at the Frontier and he does comedy and his wife needs someone to help her. I said okay. So he gave me the address, how to get there, and says, Now, what day you think you want to go? And I told him. He said, Okay, because they want to know when that person is coming. So I went and they accepted me. They were so good. At that time they were living you know where Sunrise Street is now? No. Or do you know? I doubt if you do. Sunrise Street is not too long of a street, but it runs into Eastern. Oh, okay. Eastern and what? Just Eastern and Sunrise before you get to Fremont. There was a group of beautiful villa homes there, but now it looks like everything else does. Did that call that the Huntridge area? Not quite. It was a little bit further down from Huntridge. That was a new area. The Huntridge area was very built up and beautiful. So I worked there with them I guess for about a year and they decided to move over in the area across from White Cross Drugstore on what you would say (Southfield) and Oakey. So across from the White Cross Drugstore off of Oakey, that's where the upper class was moving then. (That's where Mr. [E. Parry] Thomas that built the Valley Bank and he was the big bank owner for a while, he was there. That's a funny thing; his son became my doctor that did two of my back surgeries. That's kind of funny, isn't it? to just remember him as a kid.) 13

21 That's where they moved in. I helped them move in and take care of the babies. They had four babies. And that's where I worked with them I guess for about three years. That then is when I stayed home and started taking care of my own children. But during that three-year period how did you get back and forth? On the bus. It took you forever to get a bus. The bus ran like every eight hours. [laughing] And the bus ran all the way out where you were living? Yes. Oh, yes. It was good coming up and down Boulder Highway because it would go from Henderson to Las Vegas. See, it was good then like every hour or every hour and a half. Oh, you had good transportation. But when you got to West Las Vegas I think it ran like once in the morning time and once in the evening time. [laughing] So now, over on Van Buren there was a house built by the Christensens do you remember the house that's made out of stone? I know about that one. Were you anyplace near that house when you moved over there? Yes, pretty close. So what did that house mean to that Westside area at that time? At that time? It was just a beautiful house and a beautiful home. You never seen too many people in and out of that house at that time as I remember it. It just was like people lived there and whoever lived there was just like two people. Now, it could have been more. I don't know. But that's all I know. It was a beautiful house. From that time period, the time that you moved over to the Westside towards about probably Come to think of it, it was somewhere around the first of 54 or something like that. 14

22 What was it like on the Westside? Oh, my god, it had no streets. Or was that 53? It had no streets, dirt roads, no pavement, no gutters, no nothing, just dirt streets. What did most of the houses look like? Pitiful. Some of them were practically tents, rundown. It was just sad. But the houses they had, the apartments they had, I mean they kept them up the best they know how and the best they could. But people began to start building homes and building their little homes. Then all of a sudden someone come through and first they built up Cadillac Arms. Tell me about Cadillac Arms. What did it look like? Cadillac Arms was so beautiful. It was such a beautiful development. That's where most of the people that really wanted to get out of the rut I would call it would move in. Where was it located? I'd say it was located on the corner of Frederick and wait a minute now. Let me get it straight. On the corner of Frederick and D. It was between Frederick and Owens. Now, were these single-family houses or were they apartments? No. They were apartments, but they were built where they had three bedrooms. Two bedrooms and then on the other end was a third bedroom. So two families could share one complex there. So each building had a two-bedroom apartment and a three-bedroom apartment? Uh-huh. That was the entire building? Yes. So they were small buildings. Oh, good size. Had nice sized bedrooms and a bathroom. 15

23 So it was like a duplex. That's exactly what it was, sort of a duplex, but small, not all in one. So you had a chance to say, well, I live at that address and next door was another duplex and just on and on. Then across the street from there they had built homes. People had built up some beautiful homes. Was that Berkley Square? Berkley Square. And Berkley Square, shall we say it was on Owens and D Street because that's between Owens and Alexander. Later on in the game they built another set of homes. Marjorie Elliott was the one that sold those. They were like three bedrooms, but they were so small, like little matchboxes, but they were nice. People bought them because they wanted their own space. Some of them really kept them up so decently. Then after she built those then she built another set of homes, which that set of homes was where my husband and I bought a home, in the back of Cadillac Arms, directly in the back. That was on Frederick. Between Frederick and Lake Mead there was a whole group of homes back there, beautiful homes. They're still beautiful back there, some of them. And people had places that they could own and say, hey, my home is over there. Oh, they were so happy. Did you know a lot of people from Tallulah? Oh, my god, quite a few at that time. Oh, my goodness everybody was from Tallulah it seemed like. I would say between Tallulah, Louisiana; Little Rock, Arkansas; Jackson What about Fordyce? Fordyce, definitely Fordyce, Arkansas. There's a little town in Mississippi; Greenville is one of them. And there is quite of few of them in Mississippi. And then quite a few people moved into West Vegas. Now, that area thank you so much for that description. That was great. Do you 16

24 remember any Mexican Americans, whites being there also? The only Mexican Americans that I remember that were living in West Vegas I forgot to say that after we moved in West Vegas we moved up on Washington. I never will forget that address, 618 Washington Street. So after Van Buren you moved to Washington? Yes. There was one Mexican-American group that lived right below us on Washington just about to H Street and that was Judge [John] Mendoza. He grew up there. Judge John Mendoza. Yeah. I remember him and his family living there. So that's the only Mexican group that I knew. There were a few Chinese groups that was there, but they were living in the Bonanza area, and there were whites living in the Bonanza area. Now, speaking of Bonanza do you remember when Benny Binion's family lived on Bonanza? Well, kind of. Why do you say kind of? I remember there was a group of people lived in this brick house, but who they were I didn't know and all of a sudden it was nailed up. But they kept it up and they had their horses and all this stuff around it. Did you ever hear the stories about why the family left that location? No, I didn't. No, I did not. So the neighborhood is pretty mixed. Yes. When your children started to school over there, tell me about school and where they went 17

25 to school. Okay. The first school that my oldest son went to school, down where 88.1 (KCEP radio station). That's where Ms. (Mabel) Hoggard was. So the Westside School. Yes, the Westside School. The next school that he and the rest of them went to was Kit Carson [Elementary School]. And then from there they had grown up and started going to sort of a middle school and one over in North Las Vegas. I can't think of that name, but it was like a middle school that was above first grades and second grades and whatnot. Then they (attended) Clark High School. So were any of your children in school in the 1970s? Yes, some of them were, yes. How did the integration situation work for you and your family? It was a little frustrating. But if you sort of told your children how to behave, they got along okay. I was one that stayed on top of mine. I remember I had one mischievous one. He lives back South. What is his name? Ronnie. Ronnie was one of those that was a little mischievous. All of a sudden when he started going to Clark High School, because I agreed and David had moved up and they were going to the university, at UNLV then, he decided that one day he wasn't going to let them go in one of the doors. So the principal called me. What's his name? I can't think of his name. But in the meantime, when he called me, I said, I'll be right there. So I drove up. He didn't see me when I drove up. I parked where he couldn't see me. I 18

26 walked around where he couldn't see me. All of a sudden when he knew anything, this person had him. See, at that time people were chastising their children. They made sure that their children acted like young people should act. They might not have wanted you to be as rough as I was that day, but he had given me quite enough of acting dumb. And as much as I had been talking to them, everybody else could be all right. But you always have one, now. Everybody always has one. And so that day I guess I was a little bit rough on him. I can't think of the principal's name. So he says, Ruby. He came over and he put his arms around me. He says, Come on, you and I and Ronnie are going in and talk. So I made sure; I had him by the throat. When we got in the kids were laughing at him and that's exactly what I wanted to happen. I wanted them to laugh at him so he would know how to act from then in. When we went in and sat down, we talked and the principal wanted to know what was the problem. He said, I don't know why I acted like that because my momma told me not to act like that. He said, But I didn't know she was coming out here. So he promised he would never act that way anymore. So he said, Well, Ms. Duncan, can he go home the rest of the day? Is it okay with you? I said, If it's okay with you. So he said okay. He said, All right, Ronnie, you can go home and come back tomorrow. And I took him home and I sat down and I talked to him. I wanted to know, I said, What is the problem? He began to tell me. He said, Momma, I was just acting up. He said, I don't know what my problem was; I had none. I was just acting bad. I said, You just acted awful. He said, But I promise you I will not act that So I told him, I said, Okay, I'm going to go to school with you every day; therefore, I know you won't act like that anymore. He said, Momma, please don't. He said, Please don't go to school with me. I said, Well, I have to because you don't know how to act. He says, 19

27 Momma, I promise you I won't act that way anymore. And I said, No, I'm going to school with you ; I'm going in and out of every class with you. I had him frightened. I intended to make him feel that way because I know if I didn't really talk with him and let him understand that that was really ugly and he should not act that way so after I had talked to him I guess about a half a day, he must have cleaned up the house and he did everything. I didn't have to tell him to do anything. He helped me cook. Oh, he was a great cook. He helped me cook. And so he said, Momma, you're not going with me, are you? I said, Yeah, I am going with you. So later on before we went to bed that night he was sitting in the bedroom watching TV with us. I had my husband to go out. I said, I'm not going, but I'm going to frighten him. And so he said, Daddy, momma's going to school He said, I don't have anything to do with that. Well, Dad. I don't have anything to do with what your mother says. So anyway, later on I said, Well, I tell you what; you and I are going in the living room and have a good talk. So we sit and talked and he still just say he just was acting up. I said, Okay, I tell you what; I am going drive you to school every morning and I'm going in with you. I'm going to take you to the principal and I will come back every evening and pick you up from the principal. I had called the principal and asked him if it was okay. He told me yes. He said, Good, Ms. Duncan, good. So I did that for a week. So after I did that for a week then I come in and I ask the principal, How did he act today? He said, Oh, he was wonderful. So from then in I had no problem, because that was his last year. Being his last year I was not about to let him not graduate, no way, because my parent, all of my older people did not have a chance to learn how to read and write. None of them had an education. Some of them didn't know hardly how to sign their name. And I was about the only one that did know how to do some reading and 20

28 writing. So therefore, I wasn't about to let him do that. He graduated. Oh, tears just flowed when he graduated. Great. Give me the names of all the children. You've already told me Ivory. Yes, I-V-O-R-Y. Okay. And David? Uh-huh. Ronnie? No. Georgia. Georgia. Ronnie. Kenneth. How many is that? Five. Sondra, S-O-N-D-R-A. And Roy. Seven, wonderful. You've told me a little about the school. Tell me about entertainment. You're living on the Westside in the fifties, early sixties. What did you do for entertainment? Tell me first what adults did and then about the children. Well, as much as I know that adults did is we would go from the Cotton Club to the Louisiana Club to the Brown Derby to the Elks. There was another one there. Sarann (Preddy) I know can tell you about that one. But that we all went to. All I know that it was a good time we were having on Jackson Street. Jackson Street was jumping. From the Brown Derby all around the corner we were jumping. We had a good time. The food at the Brown Derby was so delicious. The Cotton Club, it was like an upper club. It was just wonderful, beautiful to go in there. You felt like you had to be looking your very best. That's where Bob Bailey was singing and others were singing that he would bring over. He was our best entertainer. He was so great. So that was the good part. And at the Town Tavern we had our jumping, hopping up and down dancing, and doing what we want to do. The Louisiana Club was the same way. All of them had 21

29 gambling going on. We just had a good time. I was so sorry that all of that left. After integration who thought that we would just be left with no entertainment? Now, do you remember the Moulin Rouge? Oh, yes. I remember when I first came here, right after I first come, Channel 8 began to develop. The Moulin Rouge had just opened up. It was It was just great. Everything was going on. I guess I was like the stay-at-home person; I never did go out. I don't believe it. I never did believe in going out. I was like a bashful person [laughing], believe it or not. I never did much talking. I was just that person, just didn't never want to go. My husband would go down there, but not me. I would just stay put. You would just stay home with the children and your husband would go out? Yes. I just didn't care about going. Wow. Now, what kind of entertainment, fun-type things did the children do after school or weekends? Well, after school, mine would come home and they had homework to do. On weekends they could go to Doolittle. They would have a little something going on at Doolittle. On Sundays they would have to go to church. Where was the family church? We would go to this is a shame, but it was the one Bishop [James] Rogers is at now. Okay. I'll have to find that. Where Bishop Rogers is today? Yeah. Well anyway, it was Pastor Adams's deal then. So we would go there. Other than that it was like a simple life. I then began to work in the evening. I decided I'd work in the evening because Ivory had gotten old enough that I could make sure that the others would do what he 22

30 said. I mean he could be the one that would take care of them. So I went to work to make sure they had whatever they wanted. Talk about Doolittle Park. Doolittle at that time was just plain. It had some programs going on. Not a whole bunch of anything. But it did have some recreation for the children, reading programs, different little things going on, not a lot. Was there a swimming pool at that time? Yes, there was a swimming pool. At least the kids learned how to swim, thank god, because I never did. As a young married couple did you join any organizations in the community? I was always a PTA person. I was always a person that I joined the group to help bring in free breakfasts and lunches. I want to get to the 1970s in just a few minutes. When you gave me the names of your children, you gave me the oldest through the youngest; is that correct? Yes. Do you remember another housing area called Bonanza Village? That's the one where all the whites were living. They were living in Bonanza Village. That's where all the whites were moving. Nobody I knew maybe a couple of Chinese families; I don't know. All I knew was whites were living there because I always said I wished I had a home there. At that time my husband and I had divorced and we were moving on our different ways. But if we were together at that time and I would have said that he would have made sure that he made it possible to go there. Did you ever think that you would see that area become all black? 23

31 Never, in my lifetime. At that time never in my lifetime would I have ever thought that would ever happen. They're beautiful today. It's a beautiful place to be. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Let's talk a little about the beginning of the 1970s when you had to go on welfare. You've already told us what happened in the hotel. So tell me how you became active. Because I was on welfare. I hated being on welfare. I came out of the country and I always believed in working and being independent. To be on welfare and have to answer to someone and have people watching to see if a man comes to your house, when you fill out your papers to answer to social workers, to tell them that, yes, my friend gave me twenty-five dollars to help me out to do this, to buy a pair of shoes or a pair of pants. They would take that away from you. And then investigators would investigate your home. They would bust in, knock on your door at midnight and bust in. They were all up in your closet, all under your bed, everywhere and you wondered what the world is going on. Your children are being frightened. They never did me that way, but they did so many of my friends that way. We talked about that and that's why (I became involved). All of a sudden that's why a lot of women began pulling together and saying this has got to stop because they frightened my children to death last night. That's how a group of women just and we started out of our living rooms organizing. On Sunday evenings, having nothing to do, we'd walk from house to house and ask different ones how did they like how welfare was treating them and would you like to come to a meeting at thus-and-so's house or this address or that address or whatever. And it just kept growing bigger and bigger. So tell me the first time you were approached to attend a meeting. 24

32 I was approached on the telephone by my friend, a girlfriend of mine. She said, Ruby, why you don't come to the Welfare Mothers' meeting? I said, Girl, y'all crazy; do you understand some white folks ain't going to let y'all have their money. She said, What you mean white folks ain't going to let us have their money? I said, You're asking for more money. She said, Ruby, let me tell you something. We are taxpayers regardless if we are welfare recipients or not. We pay taxes on our clothing, our shoes, our children's clothing and shoes, whatever we buy, our food. We all are taxpayers. So don't come here to me with that. Her name was Otestine Walker. Bless her heart, she must have gave me the riot act. And after she told me that I said, Well, when is the next meeting? She said, Yeah, you come, because see, you're for real and I know that. I said okay, so I did. I went to the next meeting and I sat and I listened. It was weekly meetings. I listened to what they were saying. They had all this information from Washington. They said, We need a president that ain't sickly. I said to myself, wow, they need a president? We need a president or a chairperson or something. So I said, okay, to myself, I wonder what in the world they're talking about? And all of a sudden somebody out of the blue said, I nominate Ruby Duncan. I said, Huh-uh, no, no, no, no; I don't know how to be no chairperson; I don't know how to be a president. They said, Well, you'll learn; don't none of us know, but we're going to learn. And they said, You're going to be it. And so that's how. But to back up from there, what really made me really become that person is after I had fell and hurt myself and the state didn't help what I mean, at that time it was NIC it was Nevada Insurance Commission. After they didn't help me, then I knew I had to do something. So I just got active by that and I called the Sun newspaper. Now, I didn't know what I was doing. 25