HISTORIC BLACK VEGAS: Taking a creative approach to history

BY CLAYTEE D. WHITE

This piece is different from any that I’ve written. I have been invited to submit a short paper depicting creative writing for an upcoming symposium. As you know, all of my writing is purely historical and it will remain that way but for this article, I will add my ideas (based on facts) of what I think happened around conference tables and kitchen tables during the Welfare Rights Movement in Las Vegas, Nevada. The women involved are Ruby Duncan, Mary Wesley, Alversa Beals, Emma Stampley, and Essie Henderson. Please know that many other women participated, but these were the few that I interviewed. 

Soon after Jack Anderson and B. Mahlon Brown departed, the women turned to a new business idea that they could not discuss in front of the attorneys. Jack and Mahlon had been by their side for only a few months and had proved to be allies with each endeavor as they protested for food stamps, WIC, and human decency. 

The head of state welfare, George Miller, said “Never!” to food stamps. He felt that the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) would always be just a dream. Women were still subject to having their homes searched at any hour of the night or day — and if evidence of a man’s presence was found, the $25 per month for each child was immediately stopped and the rental subsidy was ended. 

These women worked under the table, watching each other’s children so everyone could get in a few hours of work in a linen factory. These businesses would pay good workers in cash and not report the earnings to the state or the IRS. It was in one of these places, where the work of cleaning hotel linen was a saving grace, that the local women receiving welfare benefits began to talk about their personal experiences. One day, Black women learned from white women, trying to survive and they were, that White children were receiving more money per month. Black women began to meet in houses throughout Marble Manor and talk about this system that they lived under. They began to read. They learned all the policies that operated this vast system. They learned about a movement called the National Welfare Rights Organization and they joined it. 

Mary wanted to do something dramatic. Ruby, Alversa, Emma, and Essie agreed. “But does it have to be illegal?” All of them were thinking the same but didn’t want to show fear. They all breathed because Emma had asked the question aloud. Ruby wanted to go ahead with the plan to kidnap the head of the Clark County welfare office, “Yes, I’m scared but we have to do something. Mary is right.” Essie held back a bit, “but we could go to jail for such a long time and none of us have ever been in jail, let alone prison.” And Essie agreed that, “They had to do something dramatic so they decided to go ahead with the kidnapping. 

They scoped out the offices for a while and learned that Vince Fallon, who ran the operation for Clark County, stayed in the office each evening after his staff departed. They chose a Friday. The women walked into his office on that Friday evening at about closing time and sat down, refusing to leave and refusing to allow him to leave. They told him that they had come to spend the week-end with him. 

He was frightened. Their colleagues waiting outside, formed a picket line and they stationed someone at the payphone to call the news media. They would also call their attorney friends, Jack and Mahlon, if the need arose. After a short time, the women allowed Fallon to call the police. He wanted the officers to take the women down the back stairway but the women demanded to be taken out the front, the way they had come in. This all took place timely enough for television cameras to arrive. Watching all of this action on television was the president of the League of Women Voters, Frank Schreck’s mother. She told her son, just out of law school, to go get Ruby out of jail. He obeyed but barely knew how to make that happen. But it worked. Before Mary and Ruby could get a bit of rest, they were released from jail. 

The women sat around a battered conference room table in the old hotel that once was the Carver House but had become the Cove. Built only a few decades prior to this meeting in the latter 1970s, the structure was suffering from years of neglect just as the women were. Poor women had been abandoned by the government on all levels and forsaken by the middle class and the elite in their own communities. Ruby, Mary, Alversa, Emma, and Essie had experienced enough and they had decided years ago to fight back. Today’s meeting was to celebrate another victory. 

These women had breathed new life into the Cove Hotel and the building became their sanctuary seemingly embracing their dream while having hope for its own resurrection. Their very essence was teeming with possibilities and they exhaled their expectations into the fabric, the bricks and mortar of the lobby, showroom, and office space. Sometimes the heat worked, the A/C, never. But these women had worked in the fields of Tallulah, Louisiana; Fordyce, Arkansas, and tiny hamlets throughout Mississippi. They had worked in the humidity of the summer’s heat, in the rain, and even when the fall turned to winter. Here, on Jackson Street of the Westside as they worked, they had a roof over their heads, tables and chairs, and bathrooms that worked most of the time. 

Today was a special day of joy as they talked and laughed about being audited by the federal government and had come out of the ordeal smelling like a rose. 

“Alversa was bad! Those federal auditors had to return that nickel to us.” 

Mary agreed with Ruby and added, “They expected the books to be off by hundreds if not thousands of dollars because we barely have high school diplomas.” 

Even Emma, the quietest of the group, added, “Alversa, you’re a math genius!” And Essie quickly said, “Girl, if I could work those figures like you do, I would work for NASA.” 

The gaiety continued over Emma’s coffee and Mary’s sock-it-to-me cake. 

These women who had led the Clark County Welfare Rights Movement and attached it to the National Welfare Rights Movement didn’t stop striving when the nation-wide movement petered out. They formed their own 501^©3 called Operation Life and began applying for federal funds for all kinds of community improvement efforts. They formed a medical clinic for children, operated a day-care center, opened a job-training office, and built a senior citizens housing complex. And when they took the time to catch a collected breath, they opened the first library for Black children at the corner of Jackson and D streets. 

This was a day of reminiscing as Mahlon and Jack entered the room. They joined in immediately and took the conversation back to the beginning when the assembled women had not been truthful with them. They laughed about the kidnaping of Vince Fallon that had gone right. Mahlon reminded his colleagues that, “their activism had given his life new purpose.” Jack agreed. “I never knew why I was called to attend Howard University and you all taught me. I am honored to be in your presence every day.”