Florence McClure - Excerpts 1 & 2 Transcript
(Las Vegas, Nevada; August 22, 2001)

JG: Yeah, what was the question? Oh, I know, let's - what would you consider Jean Ford's legacy in the state of Nevada.

FM: Oh. Jean Ford, when that name - when I hear the name "Jean Ford" and uh, uh, I see her smiling face and, uh, with papers in her hand and ready to do the public's work because it needed to be done and truth had to come back to politics. There are so many things. (FMcclure1) The image of Jean in that legislature and speaking was tremendous, and I had seen her go from state president of League into the legislature and then be recognized at national convention of state legislators, and she was able to attend many classes that organization put on and, uh, she, uh, she received accolades from everybody in every field, it was not just the political, uh, because she was a woman whom we loved and, uh, admired and always told the truth.(FMcclure1)

JG: What - How did Jean get so many people to work with her?

FM: She would - I think a lot of it had to do - she set an example and if you looked at the example and, uh, I remember one day, uh, we had - it's before all of this photocopy machine, we had to use A.B. Dick - stencils - and I did a lot of the stencils for the different booklets and, uh, we were - had these tables set up and we had all of these papers and they had to be correlated. (FMcclure2) Now, today, you can go into an Office Max or something like that and tell 'em, " I need so many copies of this correlated," and it's done. In those days we had a bunch of women following each other around, putting all of these booklets together, and it's - Jean was there. She didn't consider her, ah, that she wasn't needed, she just got in there. She worked with you and didn't just put her rulings down on you. That is what stimulated people. They saw her working, ah, on something and not just sitting up on a podium. (FMcclure2) She was down there, and I remember we were doing - there was a big thing on welfare and we had, uh, uh, uh, some people were saying they were going to march, uh, down the Strip and we were trying to get things done without any radicalism or anything that would besmear the name of Las Vegas. We tried to get everything done that should be done without having a big television coverage that would go out across and maybe hurt the economy, uh, but, uh, and there were radical people. Now, I'm not thought of as a radical. We have had some that were League members that were radical on issues like welfare, ah, but they didn't do - they didn't use, uh, League's name when they did this, you see. They did it as a private citizen, ah, because you had to have study, consensus, and then your lobbying, and that is what was going on a lot, but, uh, we, uh, there - there were a number of issues but welfare was one, because a lot of people were hurting, and another problem, which other members may have spoken to you about, is, uh, they had an amicus curiae brief on the, uh, schools, uh, uh, because of the school deal, separate but equal, uh, and we still had unequal. There's never been a high school built over in the uh, um, what we always thought as the black community, but the one thing I remember that Jean asked Governor Mike O'Callahan is, "If the legislature passes this Open Housing Act, will you sign it and - or will you veto it?" And he said, "If the legislature passes it, I will sign it," so, uh, that is one of the things we worked on, and that school system, ah, and that happened during my term as state president, ah, but we had a long standing about the education and so forth, but that is one of the things, and Jean and some of the people that did become radical, things did not move for some people as fast as they wanted 'em to. Jean and I both knew that we could get it through without, uh, it would - it might take a little longer, but then there would not be all those factions out there if you - if you do it just a little slower and you let everybody have their say, but, uh, I can remember that was, uh, and of course the press was in on it, and, uh, all across the country there were problems at that point in time.