Community Action against Racism in West Las Vegas: The F Street Wall and the Women Who Brought It Down

(Hardback)

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This book chronicles Robert J. McKee's active participation in a successful protest action, led primarily by black females in the historically African American community of West Las Vegas, Nevada, from 2008-2013. The residents protested the closure of a main street (F Street) in their community for the expansion of Interstate 15. The community felt the street closure was racially motivated, with the intent of further alienating and isolating this already marginalized community. The street closure was one of many instances in a protracted history of events that further exacerbated race relations in Las Vegas.

With only minimal support from the black church, courageous women mobilized their community from a neighborhood coalition into a successful community protest group, despite resistance from city officials and a racist backlash from some Las Vegas residents. The key players in this work were then-Mayor Oscar Goodman, State Senator and now U.S. Congressman Steven Horsford, and a host of local and state leaders.

The closing of F Street creates an environ for McKee to discuss the current problems of race relations, urban sociology, city planning, social action, ethnography, and institutionalized racism.

Author Bio

Robert J. McKee teaches sociology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the College of Southern Nevada. He has been awarded the Norman K. Denzin Qualitative Research Award (2010), the UNLV Public Sociologist of the Year Award (2012), and the UNLV College of Liberal Arts Dissertation of the Year Award (2012-2013).