Monday, March 22, 1999 | 11:02 a.m.
James B. McMillan had some bittersweet parting words for his old friends and fellow civil rights leaders David Hoggard and Woodrow Wilson as they left his bedside at Nathan Adelson Hospice last Wednesday.
"All right guys, I'll meet you in heaven," the longtime Las Vegas dentist said -- the only words about his grave condition that were spoken during that 1 1/2-hour-long visit during which they reminisced about old times.
On Saturday, following a brief battle with bone cancer, McMillan, a longtime Las Vegas dentist whose name is synonymous with the local civil rights movement and the desegregation of Las Vegas hotel-casinos, died. He was 82.
"He was our man of the hour," said Hoggard, who served as president of the NAACP before McMillan took the post in 1960. Wilson, a former Nevada assemblyman, preceded both of them in the job.
"He was the person who got the people together and he was good at dealing with the hierarchy to get things done," Hoggard said.
Services for McMillan, who lived in Las Vegas 46 years, will be 11 a.m. Saturday at Palm Mortuary Downtown, 1325 N. Main St. Ironically, it is the day after the 39th anniversary of the agreement that McMillan helped broker to desegregate Las Vegas hotels.
A moment of silence will be observed Friday at the Desegregation Day ceremony beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the New Town Tavern on Jackson Avenue.
"Certainly we will do more to eulogize Dr. McMillan, because he brought down the color barrier in Las Vegas," said Katherine Duncan-Briley, organizer of the event and spokeswoman for the African American Cultural Society.
"Dr. McMillan had the ability to talk with people from the leaders to the common man. And he could make people understand."
McMillan was the first black dentist in Las Vegas in 1953 and helped form the Human Rights Commission. In 1964, he became the first black Nevadan to run for the U.S. Senate. In 1971, McMillan became the first black appointed to the Nevada Board of Dental Examiners, where he served until 1979.
"I visited Mac in the hospice about a week ago and we talked about people, schools, kids and sports," said Mike O'Callaghan, executive editor of the Sun and former two-term governor who appointed McMillan to the dental examiners post.
"He had the mind of a professor and spirit of an athlete right up to the end," O'Callaghan said. "During life he excelled as a professional man and as a human being. Having him as a friend has been important to me."
O'Callaghan, Hoggard and Wilson all visited McMillan within a 24-hour period and all reported him to be lucid and well aware that he did not have much time left. A month earlier he broke his arm and was diagnosed as having bone cancer.
Last week, McMillan received phone calls from Sens. Richard Bryan and Harry Reid, both D-Nev., wishing him well.
"Dr. McMillan was a real pioneer and I believe a lot of what he accomplished is underappreciated," Bryan, who as a young lawyer met McMillan in 1963, said today. "At Las Vegas High we had our junior prom and senior ball at resorts and the African-American kids could not go to them.
"What he was able to do in a nonviolent way and without litigation was such a complete victory. That was a testimony to his leadership. And this was at a time before the civil rights movement got into full swing nationwide. He was on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement."
When McMillan arrived in Las Vegas, blacks were not welcome to the young gambling town that was referred to as the "Mississippi of the West."
Black entertainers were quickly escorted in and out of the hotels they performed in, not allowed to dine, gamble or mingle with the guests.
It was amid that troubled atmosphere in 1959, at a NAACP Freedom Front Dinner at the Las Vegas Convention Center, where McMillan heard and heeded the words that would define the rest of his life.
"We were meeting at the Convention Center, which was new at the time, because none of the hotels would let us hold our dinner there," Hoggard recalled. "Our speaker was NAACP Field Secretary Tarea Hall Pittman. The subject of her speech was 'Las Vegas, now is the time.' It really moved us."
McMillan, then incoming president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, began holding weekly and later nightly meetings at West Las Vegas churches, preparing for a peace march on the Strip.
When the mob bosses who ran the Strip at that time heard about it, they made plans to silence McMillan.
Courageous in the face of death threats, McMillan met with the mobsters and convinced them that he was not trying to cut in on their business but to increase their business by bringing them black customers.
McMillan spent the rest of his life creating equal opportunities for local blacks. He worked to register black voters and to bring black teachers to the schools.
From 1992 to 1996 he served on the Clark County School Board. A school in northwest Las Vegas -- James B. McMillan Elementary School at 7000 Walt Lott Drive -- is named in his honor.
"He did a lot of things," his wife, Marie, said. "He saw that things were not the way they should be and so he wanted to do something about it."
Born Jan. 14, 1917, in Mississippi, McMillan was the son of Milton McMillan and the former Rosalie Gay. He graduated from the University of Detroit, where he was the first black to play on the school's football team.
McMillan served with the Army Dental Corps during World War II in the China-Burma-India campaign. He graduated from Meharry Medical College School of Dentistry, the country's first black medical college, with his Doctor of Dental Surgery in 1944.
He ran a dental office in Detroit until 1953, when he came to Las Vegas to join friend Dr. Charles I. West, the first black doctor in the state.
That year, McMillan received his license to practice dentistry in Nevada but was called back to service for the Korean War, his wife said.
While he was away, his home in West Las Vegas was used to house black entertainers who performed at Strip hotels.
McMillan returned to Las Vegas two years later, shortly after the opening of the Moulin Rouge, Las Vegas' first integrated hotel-casino. McMillan would later refer to Moulin Rouge as "God's country."
McMillan ran for several public offices and was the first black to serve on the State Democratic Central Committee.
In 1962, he ran unsuccessfully for the Clark County Commission. In 1991, he ran unsuccessfully for City Council Ward 1.
He was 74 when he was elected to the Clark County School Board, District C.
Last year, McMillan's autobiography, "Fighting Back -- A Life in the Struggle for Civil Rights" was released.
In addition to his wife, McMillan is survived by four sons, James B.McMillan III, Chris Bramley and Jeffrey McMillan, all of Las Vegas, and Jack Daly of Washington state; a daughter, Jarmilla Arnold of Las Vegas; three grandchildren; and two great grandchildren.
Donations:In McMillan's memory to the Meharry Medical College School of Dentistry, 1005 Dr. D.B. Todd Jr. Blvd., Nashville, Tenn., 37208-3599.
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