Search Results

Don Cunningham, Jazz musician and Las Vegas resident was born in 1931 in St. Louis, Missouri. As a child he was heavily influenced by blues and jazz musicians such as BB King, Count Basie, and Ella Fitzgerald. Growing up in St. Louis Cunningham worked shining shoes and cleaning steps going to white neighborhoods working inside taverns. He received saxophone lessons from a family friend and joined the band attending a segregated high school.

Tony F. Sanchez III was born in the Las Vegas’ Women’s Hospital. It was 1966 and the plot of land the hospital sat on near Eastern and Sahara streets was considered rural. It was on the desert of the east Las Vegas that young Tony would grow up, graduate from Valley High School, and then graduate from University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Ruby Duncan was born in Tallulah, Louisiana on June 7, 1932. Her parents passed away when Duncan was three years old and she spent the remainder of her youth living with various relatives in and around Tallulah. Duncan started work at the Ivory Plantation at an early age, only going to school part-time. She quit school to work full-time as a waitress and later a barmaid. Duncan left Tallulah for Las Vegas, Nevada in 1952 to live with her aunt near Henderson, Nevada.

Chinese-American ballet dancer George R. Lee was born on February 10, 1935 in Hong Kong to Alexander and Stanislawa Li. Alexander Li was a Chinese acrobat and circus performer and Stanislawa Li was a Polish ballet dancer. The family moved to Shanghai, China in 1941 after Japan invaded Hong Kong during World War II.