Thursday, April 20, 2000 | 10:33 a.m.
B. Bernice Moten, the first black elected to the Clark County School Board and an outspoken advocate for the rights of minorities and the poor, died Monday while vacationing in Waycross, Ga. She had turned 66 on Sunday.
Moten, who also went by the name Birdia Bernice Jenkins, died of apparent heart failure after breaking a leg while visiting a friend in the rural South Georgia community.
Ware County Coroner Atha Lucas on Wednesday confirmed Moten's death.
Services are pending. Palm Mortuary is handling the local arrangements.
Moten, a Clark County School District social science teacher from 1958 until 1970, was elected to the School Board in 1972 but resigned in 1976 -- just five months short of the end of her term -- to continue her education at the University of Pittsburgh on a Carnegie Foundation grant.
In the 1980s Moten returned to Nevada and served as an administrative assistant to then-Gov. Richard Bryan. Moten had been a Las Vegas resident since then.
"She was a pioneer educator and a highly regarded community activist," Bryan said. "Bernice was outspoken and committed to the unvarnished truth. She would never sugarcoat her opinions."
Former Gov. Mike O'Callaghan remembered Moten as "a very bright person with a good grasp of government."
"Her ability to argue without anger was her greatest asset," O'Callaghan, executive editor of the Sun, said.
As the only minority member of the School Board, Moten strongly voiced opposition to the school district's desegregation plan developed after U.S. District Judge Bruce Thompson of Reno ordered Clark County schools desegregated in 1972.
The plan was for white sixth graders to be bused into sixth grade centers in predominantly black West Las Vegas and for black first through fifth graders to be bused into predominantly white schools around the valley.
"We (West Las Vegas residents) never asked for this plan," Moten said at the time. "Busing is breaking up the sense of community in our children."
The Rev. Marion Bennett, a longtime friend of Moten, who at the time supported the district's desegregation plan, said that the fears expressed by Moten had merit.
"I have to admit she turned out to be right," Bennett said. "While some diversity was achieved through desegregation, the school district failed to follow up on programs to improve education for blacks and just shipped our kids out of West Las Vegas.
"Bernice was a totally committed schoolteacher, and she was dedicated to achieving a better quality of life for West Las Vegas."
Bennett said Moten recently visited her son, Fred Moten, in New York and then traveled to Georgia to spend time with Bennett's ex-wife, Gwen. Moten fell in Gwen's garage and broke a leg, Bennett said, noting that he was informed that Moten died following surgery at a Georgia hospital.
Moten was born April 16, 1934, according to Ware County coroner records. She came to Las Vegas at age 24 to teach at Madison Elementary School. At the time, blacks were allowed to teach only at predominantly black Southern Nevada schools.
After eight years at Madison, Moten taught at Matt Kelly Elementary and William Orr Junior High. She also taught part time at UNLV for two years.
Throughout the 1960s Moten raised money for scholarships for needy students.
In 1970 Moten was appointed equal education consultant to the state Department of Education, where she conducted teacher training sessions and worked to close the cultural gap between ethnic groups.
One reason Moten decided to run for the School Board in 1972 was that there was no high school and only one junior high in the black community, and that all but one of that area's elementary schools had been shut down.
Moten ran in District C, which included large populations of black residents in West Las Vegas and North Las Vegas.
She campaigned for new schools in the black community, the improved teaching of job skills in public schools and lower pupil-teacher ratios.
Moten collected 57 percent of the vote to defeat the Rev. Leo Johnson, Lamar McDaniel and Owen Woodrugg. In her May 1976 announcement that she was stepping down from the board, Moten said: "This is my 20th year in education. I'm tired of it now."
Moten was named Teacher-Mother of the Year in 1970 and received an award in leadership and commitment from the League of Women Voters in 1976.
Moten did human relations work for the Ministerial Alliance and the NAACP and was a member of the NAACP, League of Women Voters, the PTA and the Frontier Girl Scouts.
A list of survivors was not immediately available.
Ed Koch is a reporter for the Sun. He can be reached at (702) 259-4090 or by e-mail at [email protected]
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