Las Vegas Sun

December 4, 2009

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Editorial: Southern Nevada loses civil rights champion

Tuesday, March 23, 1999 | 12:05 p.m.

The term "pioneer" gets thrown around too casually nowadays. But James McMillan, who died Saturday from cancer, truly was a civil rights pioneer in Nevada. McMillan, who in 1953 became the first black dentist in Las Vegas, also led the battle to desegregate casinos in Las Vegas.

As the Sun's Ed Koch reported Sunday, blacks were subjected to conditions so bad during the 1950s that Las Vegas was dubbed the "Mississippi of the West." McMillan and others, though, weren't willing to tolerate this dehumanizing situation. In 1960, a civil rights march was planned to take place on the Strip to protest the continued segregation being practiced by hotel-casinos. But the march was called off after the casinos agreed to let blacks stay as guests at their hotels in a deal brokered by McMillan, then-Gov. Grant Sawyer, and the publisher of the Sun, the late Hank Greenspun.

The struggle for civil rights in this nation was not easy -- and Nevada was no exception. All Nevadans should be grateful that McMillan's courage never waned and that he always fought on behalf of the principle that equal opportunity should be extended to every individual.

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