Jesse Scott

Jesse Scott came to Las Vegas in 1970, via Louisiana and Los Angeles, and over the next few decades became one Southern Nevada's most influential and effective civil rights advocates.

In addition to serving as executive director and later president of the local NAACP, Mr. Scott headed the Nevada Equal Rights Commission in the 1970s, focusing on improving minority hiring at Strip hotels.

He was instrumental in helping to calm racial tensions in Las Vegas after L.A.'s Rodney King verdict and later devoted some of his time to attacking the problem of minority underachievement in the public schools.

Mr. Scott, an associate minister at Second Baptist Church in West Las Vegas, was scheduled to deliver the opening prayer on the floor of the U.S. Senate in a few weeks.

Jesse Scott died early Monday. He was 90.

"We concentrated on all the good times we had with the Reverend Scott and how proud he was of all the kids here," Sharon Popolo, principal of Jesse D. Scott Elementary School in North Las Vegas, said about breaking the news to kids.

Jesse Scott spent his life taking principled stands on lightning-rod issues involving race and civil rights. He didn't back down, yet he managed to get his point across with civility, avoiding the name-calling and vitriol that so pollutes much of today's political discourse and racial dialogue.

Las Vegas has lost more than a civil rights pioneer. It has lost a fine gentleman whose tireless work here left many much better off than they otherwise might have been.