Gowns sparkle as ebullient crowd gathers for Las Vegas Obama Ball

On a momentous day in history, a day of solemnity and joy, you want to be around other people who are feeling what you are feeling.

"I couldn't be in Washington, D.C., but this feeling is going all over the world," said 67-year-old Vera Matthews. "I can get that feeling right where I live in Las Vegas. I am here to rejoice."

Matthews was among the hundreds who put on their finest for Tuesday evening's Las Vegas Obama Ball, a fundraiser for the Las Vegas Black Historical Society celebrating President Barack Obama's inauguration.

The mood was ebullient and the gowns sparkled as the crowd trickled into the ballroom at downtown's Plaza hotel and casino.

The group of more than 400 gathered at tables with red and white cloths and red-white-and-blue balloon centerpieces was predominantly black, and many thought back to the civil rights movement and the dark era that preceded it, especially in Las Vegas, which remained segregated so long that it was nicknamed the "Mississippi of the West."

Jessica Perkins, a Las Vegan for nearly 40 years, came from the real Mississippi.

"I was there for that era in the South," said Perkins, 64. "I couldn't eat at the counter, I had to drink from the colored water fountain. We've come a very long way."

Perkins, a former Clark County School District teacher and administrator, spent the day glued to the television, hoping to catch a glimpse of Henderson's Green Valley High School marching band. (She did.) "This is just a glorious occasion," she said.

Eddie Jacobs, who owns a barbershop in the historically black neighborhood called West Las Vegas near downtown, said it was not just the black community that should be feeling proud of this moment.

"I'm not looking at it like just an African-American thing," said Jacobs, who was born and raised in Las Vegas. "I want more unity in the world. I wish color wasn't an issue. We can get through these things together."

Jacobs, 54, loved seeing Las Vegas in the spotlight over the course of the campaign. Between Nevada's Democratic caucuses early in 2008 and its swing-state status through November, Obama visited the state more than 20 times.

"Every time he came here, I would talk to the young people in the neighborhood and tell them the history," Jacobs said.

As a child, he and his family would come downtown for the Helldorado parade, but they weren't allowed in many of the establishments. "Even when I was a dealer at the Desert Inn, I couldn't go in the Las Vegas Club."

Jacobs' wife Sandra, 44, said the inauguration was bigger than Obama himself. "He said (in his inaugural speech) it is time for us to put childish things away," she said. "It's about all of us coming together, but we've got to all put work in the community, and we've got to be patient, because it's going to take many years."

Phil Flowers, the ball's organizer, was circulating in a distinctive, homemade bright-blue satin suit with red-white-and-blue beaded fringe and a spangly silver hat, a look he described as "patriotic urban cowboy." The historical society, he said, is hoping eventually to raise enough money to build a black history museum in Las Vegas.

"I'm from Washington, D.C. I cried this morning when I saw what was going on in my city," said Flowers, a singer who gave his age as "50-something." "I could have been there for the inauguration, but I wanted to bring this to Las Vegas."

Flowers' 9-year-old nephew, whom he considers a son, wore a black suit and tails, covered in reflective mirrors, of Flowers' design.

"I love Obama," said the boy, Phillip Padgett. "I'm going to be president someday just like him."

Flowers said his nephew now has another dream in his heart. "He can say, as a black person, I want to be president."

Among performances that included spirituals and children's dance troupes, spoken-word artist and playwright China Hudson performed a fiery composition that began, "They want to know if I voted for him because I was black, and I say yes. We were slaves because we were black. We were hung because we were black."

The defiant piece recounted the history of injustice in rhythmic terms. "We even had Crips and Bloods from Compton register to vote, because finally there was hope for this nation," Hudson said.

The poem ended: "I voted for the man because he's black ... and I voted for the man because he's colorblind."

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2919.