“They Forget, We’re People Too”: Revisiting the 1969 Uprising in West Las Vegas is a lecture by Tyler D. Parry, Associate Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies. As uprisings against poverty, unemployment, and police brutality swept through the United States in the last half of the 1960s, protestors within Las Vegas’ majority-Black Westside initiated a similar campaign against police brutality after officers arrested two young Black men on Oct. 5, 1969. Residents watched the officers kick down the doors to their home and mace the family members preventing their entry. A crowd formed throughout the area as more people came to observe the skirmish.
Groups of Black youth quickly organized against the police state and initiated a response that consumed the area for three days. The uprising became so intense that police established curfews and set up blockades to obstruct protesters from entering the tourist-rich Downtown. Though violent clashes with police occurred in previous decades, the 1969 uprising was a singular event for the growing city, as it set a tone for subsequent conflicts between the Black community and police officers throughout the valley.
