Lewis won’t give up on letter fight

Friday, June 6, 2003 | 9:34 a.m.

Community activist Marzette Lewis says that although the district attorney has determined that Las Vegas-Clark County Library District Executive Director Daniel Walters did not write her a letter filled with racial slurs, she's not giving up on that battle.

"Someone wrote it -- I didn't write it and send it to myself -- someone who doesn't like Dan Walters wrote it and sent it through the U.S. mail or he (Walters) had something to do with it," Lewis said today. "Either way, I'm not going to rest until I find out who's behind it."

Library Board attorney Gerald Welt reported at Thursday's meeting that District Attorney David Roger completed an investigation Wednesday into a Feb. 17 memo that Lewis said was authored by Walters. The memo included racial slurs.

Roger said in a letter to Welt that investigators concluded Walters did not author the memo.

The library board in February had asked the district attorney to investigate. At the time, Walters and the board's chairman, Ricki Barlow, said they believed the letter to be a forgery.

The memo had been mailed to board members, addressed to library district Human Resources Director Bud Pierce and copied to public information officer Pat Marvel.

The memo was dated Feb. 17, four days after a board meeting in which Lewis, president of the Westside Action Alliance Korps-Uplifting People, and about 14 others protested the district's proposal for a $50.6 million bond issue to build new libraries -- a bond issue that failed Tuesday.

Lewis, who is threatening to sue over the letter, and the other demonstrator are black.

On Thursday one voter spoke his mind over the 2-1 voter defeat of the bond to fund four new libraries.

Michael Cox, an accountant, said that bond failed to win Clark County voter support Tuesday partly because of anti-tax sentiment and partly because of community distrust of Walters.

"It was not a vote against the library, it is a vote against the executive director," Cox said.