Memories - childhood

1968 was a year of contradictions for all citizens, but especially a teenager, living in Las Vegas. For all intensive purposes segregation had ended. Performers like Sammy Davis, Jr., were no longer required to drive, or be driven, across town to stay in a hotel on the “West Side” of town after performing on the “Strip”. Now after they finished performing, Mr. Davis, and other “Black” performers, could ride the elevator upstairs to one of the suites provided by the hotel where they were performing.

Schools, which had previously appeared to be segregated only by geography were now fully integrated. Students were being bused all over the valley to insure that each Junior and Senior High School had a student body that somewhat reflected the city’s population.

For some these were drastic changes. For those who had lived in the city since the late 1940's, the idea of integration was quite alarming. There were neighborhoods where more and more minorities were moving in, but those were largely “lower” middle class areas, certainly not the true middle class neighborhoods of “Huntridge” or “Paradise”. And in the upper class neighborhoods like “Rancho Circle”, such an event was unthinkable.

Still, anything was possible. In a city where the southern most point was a casino which looked like a large extravagant Mexican hacienda and the northern most point was an Air Force Base which was home to the “Strategic Air Command” there wasn’t much that the city fathers could not imagine. Or so they thought.

In other parts of the nation cities were in turmoil. News reports of riots were quite alarming. Especially since they were reported as being somehow related to race. Las Vegas quickly found out it was not immune to the rising racial tensions.

I was in junior high school. It was fairly evenly mixed school. When the school year ended in June there had been only a few fights and other incidents. When we returned in the fall it was a very different situation. Over the summer there were rumors of different problems around town. Not all of them were rumors, my father was working for the fire department at the time and more than once I overheard him telling my mother or some of his friends that there had been incidents when they answered calls on the “West Side”. Still I was some what removed.

I remember returning to school in the fall of 1968 and the drastic differences. Within the first week there were several fights between large groups of boys, white against black. I never knew who started these fights, I tried to keep my head down. As the weeks went by we began hearing an ominous whisper from black students, “the Panthers are coming and they’re going to burn this town!” I made the mistake of repeating this statement to my mother one day before my father got home. My mother’s yelling was nothing compared to the beating my dad gave me later. No one in my house wanted to hear such things.

While it was early in the school year each day the tensions grew. By the end of September our school day began with a bell ringing and the teachers and staff lining boys up, by race, in separate hallways and watching as we marched to our home rooms. Inevitably fists would fly and the “victim” would be carried along with those crowded in around him. By the end of the fall semester fights, along racial lines, had become so common that you didn’t bother to stop and watch unless one of the combatants was someone you knew. I’d like to hope this all came to a peaceful and productive end, but, my father in his wisdom moved my sister and I from my racially diverse, and divided, school across town to a school with so few minority students that they weren’t counted or acknowledged.