What if Poor Women Ran the World?: Some Lessons from Las

Vegas and NYC

Ruby Duncan, Tallulah County Fair 1949

Emma Stampley, Vicksburg, Mississippi lumber mill 1966

Housing for black war workers Las Vegas 1942

Housing conditions West Las Vegas 1962

Housing in West Las Vegas early 1960s

Very few houses in West Las Vegas had indoor plumbing into the early 1960s.

Johnnie Tillmon addresses the 1968 March on Washington, stressing “Mother Power.” George Wiley and Ethel Kennedy stand behind her.

Washington, D.C.

Welfare mother Sylvia Hunt becomes one of 70 mothers and children who move into NYC Human Resources Administration office when the welfare hotel where they had been housed is declared unsafe and unsanitary

George Wiley, Jane Fonda, Dave Dellinger, Ruby Duncan and Rev. Ralph Abernathy announce a march on the Las Vegas Strip to draw attention to the damage caused families by 1971 welfare cuts

Welfare mothers from Nevada, California, Minnesota and other states march on the Strip to protest welfare cuts 1971

George Wiley, Johnnie Tillmon of National Welfare Rights Organizationjoin Ruby Duncan before the 1971Las Vegas march

Second March on the Strip, March 14, 1971

After the marches, the community forms Operation Life. With sweat equity, volunteer donations and federal grants they rehab an abandoned hotel and open the community’s first medical clinic.

Alversa Beals welcomes visitors to the new Operation Life clinic, the first medical facility on the West Side of Las Vegas

Public Health Service physicians examine children Operation Life clinic

Operation Life clinic nurse examines child

The Operation Life clinic health outreach team, 1973, and the station wagon they used to pick up children and bring them for health screenings.

Ruby Duncan and Coretta Scott King testify for the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Bill, U.S. Capitol, 1976

Operation Life becomes the only Title VII Community Development Corporation run by and for poor women of color

Roslyn Carter and Ruby Duncan confer on the President’s Commission on Families

A meeting of the Operation Life Executive Board, 1978

Waiting Room at the Operation Life clinic, 1978

In addition to health are, Operation Life won grants to build housing, open a library, renovate a swimming pool and weatherize and install solar panels on poor people’s homes,

The Operation Life coalition in 2005

The Operation Life coalition today