LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — This Black History Month, Channel 13 is honoring a woman who has long championed the rights of low-income families in Nevada.
From leading marches on the Las Vegas Strip, to starting an innovative nonprofit in the Historic Westside, Ruby Duncan is a changemaker whose legacy has left a lasting impact.
Like many African Americans in the South in the 1950s, Ruby Duncan moved to Las Vegas with the hopes of building a better life.
"I come from the backwoods of Tallulah, Louisiana, out of the cotton fields, straight into Las Vegas," Duncan said. She said her uncle lived here, and told her it was a place where she could come make decent wages — at least more than the opportunities given to African Americans in the Jim Crow South.
Little did she know then, the bright lights and bustling casinos of Las Vegas Boulevard would soon become a backdrop for a movement that would change the lives of families all over Nevada. It all started one day in 1965, when Duncan was working in the Sahara Resort and Casino as a short order cook.
"As I went to walk up, all this grease was there and I landed in all that fried grease and oil and whatnot. I cracked both knees, I cracked my spine, my hip. I had to have hip replacement, both knee replacements, four back surgeries and a shoulder. It was a life no one would want," Duncan said.
She moved to Las Vegas to work, but no longer could.
"I did not want to be on welfare. I hated it," Duncan said.
But Duncan had no other recourse. She soon found herself on welfare and met other mothers who, like her, were struggling to feed their children.
"We went to talking to each other about the welfare department, who getting what and how much, and I said, 'Well, I just get only $190 a month.' 'Oh my God,' everybody said. It's so terrible, and to deal with seven children? To buy all the food? At that time, there was no food stamps," she said.
Claytee White, the director of the Oral History Research Center at UNLV, offered more historical perspective on their plight and the state of welfare at the time. She said there were disparities between what white mothers and Black mothers would receive on welfare, not to mention the governmental policies that made the situation tougher for families of color.
"They had these archaic policies that we have forgotten all about. A social worker could knock on your door at any time day or night and could inspect your house, and if she thought she saw the evidence of a man in your house, then she could cut you off of welfare instantly," White said.
Racist tropes and social attitudes toward welfare, especially when it came to Black mothers, were especially damaging then, too.
"They used to call us lazy. It's not that," Duncan said. "You want to make your life better. You want to make sure your children lives is better."
In the face of these inequities, Duncan and other mothers began gathering, organizing, and agitating. They formed the Clark County Welfare Rights Organization and began appealing to leaders, regularly attending legislative sessions in Carson City. It was a community of women who really looked out for each other, Duncan said.
"We would always talk to the politicians and they didn't have low-income people in their thought nowhere, and so we always said, 'OK, they got to hear us,'" Duncan said.
"After the legislature didn't listen, we decided to make them listen."
Duncan said they decided to take their fight to where all the money and power was: the Las Vegas Strip. So, on March 6, 1971, Duncan and other families marched down Las Vegas Boulevard to make their voices heard.
"We had at least 2,000 people on the Strip that day, and the place we decided to stop was Caesars Palace," Duncan said.
Duncan was flanked by thousands of people of all different backgrounds, as well as national figures like actress Jane Fonda and Dr. George Wiley, the leader of the national welfare rights movement at the time.
They marched again one week later on March 13, 1971.
"The next Saturday, we were back on the Strip again. We were going in the Sands Hotel, but the Sands locked the doors. So we sit in the middle of the street and blocked all the traffic," Duncan reminisced.
White said these women were incredibly smart for knowing how to leverage the media to bring attention to their cause. The marches made headlines nationwide.
"The women in Las Vegas were ahead of the game in a lot of ways. They were able to be a little more flashy than anyone else. Not only did they do the things that women did all over the country, lobbying their assembly, but they also had a backdrop no one else had — they had the Strip," White said.
"They were amazing, they were magnificent, they were intelligent. And they did it with critical thinking skills and they brought everything to the forefront."
Through the marches and other demonstrations like restaurant sit-ins, they were successful in bringing about change. Nevada would finally began accepting food stamps. Duncan was also instrumental in bringing a Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, program to Southern Nevada, providing supplemental nutritional aid to families in need.
They didn't stop there. Duncan would also go on to start a nonprofit called Operation Life, which brought the Historic Westside its first library, as well as a health clinic and employment and housing aid, among other resources.
White said Operation Life made a big difference in the Historic Westside at a time when resources for the African American community were especially scarce.
"This is not just welfare that people of color were denied, but good medical treatment, quality education, quality housing, banking, all of that has been denied in Black communities," White said.
To this day, you can still see evidence of Duncan's impact here in Southern Nevada.An elementary school was named after her in North Las Vegas, and astreet in the southwest valley at the UnCommons now bears her name. She's also received honorary degrees from UNLV and UNR, among countless other accolades applauding her achievements.
"Her impact is major, and naming a school for her was the right thing to do," White said.
Duncan stills lives here in Southern Nevada, and while health problems have impacted her mobility in recent years, her kind and uplifting spirit remains unchanged. Duncan is still passionate about the causes she championed decades ago and says many of the issues that families faced back then still exist today.
She urges people to exercise the right to vote and to stand up against injustices just as she's done her whole life.
