Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who last month apologized for privately praising President Barack Obama's lack of a "Negro dialect," posted a Black History Month essay on his Web site Monday in which he takes credit for racial integration in Las Vegas.
One problem: Some local black leaders and historians don't remember him having had a significant role in that effort and the senator himself made no reference to it in his 2008 memoir.
http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/s ... s/19341444
Reid is struggling in his bid to win reelection this coming fall...Joe Neal, a former Democratic state senator who was a key figure in the civil rights movement in Nevada, was baffled by the claim. For one thing, Reid was only 20 when a famous 1960 meeting between casino owners, progressive government officials and NAACP leaders resulted in an accord to integrate Las Vegas casinos for customers.
Eugene Moehring, whose chapter on racial integration in his 2000 book "Resort City in the Sunbelt" makes no mention of Reid, said he's willing to assume Reid, as an O'Callaghan protégé, may have been involved in some capacity because O'Callaghan was a staunch advocate of equal rights. Yet of Reid, Moehring said, "No, he was not a big official doing big things."
Rainier Spencer, who founded the Afro-American Studies program and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, went further: "It's sort of like Al Gore inventing the Internet. Politicians say strange things."
