Services set for pioneer Las Vegas educator Moten

Monday, April 24, 2000 | 9:13 a.m.

Services for B. Bernice Moten, the first black elected to the Clark County School Board, will be 11 a.m. Friday at St. James the Apostle Catholic Church, 820 N. H St.

Moten, a Las Vegas resident of 42 years, died April 16 on her 66th birthday of heart failure after breaking a leg while visiting a friend in Waycross, Ga., her family said.

Born April 16, 1934, in Kingsland, Ark., Moten was the only child of paper mill laborer Charlie Jenkins and his wife, Marie.

Moten, a social science teacher in Clark County schools from 1958 to 1970, began teaching in Nevada at Madison Elementary School when blacks were allowed to teach only at predominantly black West Las Vegas schools. After eight years at Madison, Moten taught at Matt Kelly Elementary, William Orr Junior High and UNLV.

Moten was elected to the Clark County School Board in 1972 but resigned in 1976 to continue her education at the University of Pittsburgh on a Carnegie Foundation grant. She earned a master's degree in public administration in 1978.

While serving as the only minority on the School Board, Moten was an advocate for desegregation, which had been mandated by a federal judge but opposed the school district's desegregation plan, which she argued was little more than shipping blacks out of West Las Vegas. She said busing would break up the sense of community.

In the 1980s Moten served as an administrative assistant to then-Gov. Richard Bryan.

She is survived by a son, Frederick C. Moten of New York City, and her mother, Marie Jenkins of Kingsland.