Joseph Marlo C. Guilas
September 23, 2013
Nevada and U.S. Constitution Mr. Rulon Huntsman
Abstract The Nevada constitution was framed by a convention of delegates chosen by the people. The convention met at Carson City on July 4, 1864, and adjourned on July 28 of the same year. On the 1st Wednesday of September 1864, the constitution was approved by the vote of the people of the Territory of Nevada, and on October 31, 1864, President Lincoln proclaimed that the State of Nevada was admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original states.
Nevada’s history of race relations in the 1950s and 1960s was compared by journalists and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to that of some southern American states, notably Mississippi. Although not as formalized in law Nevada still provided many examples of racism against minorities in housing, employment, and public accommodation. Early beginnings of the civil rights movement in Nevada can be traced at least as far back as 1959 when planning for the February 1960 Winter Olympic Games at Squaw Valley was underway. The U.S. Justice Department was concerned because of the impact racial discrimination in public accommodations might have on international visitors and was anxious that nothing should occur to mar or blot that event. Likewise, the California Attorney General was concerned because Olympic visitors would be visiting and staying in northern Nevada where people of color would be treated with bias.
Mining has been integral to Nevada’s history, from Native American use of its mineral wealth to fashion arrowheads, spear points, and tools to today’s modern industrial mining operations. Nevada’s silver deposits were the key to statehood; a driving force in the state’s economy in the mid-nineteenth century, they were a major reason for Nevada’s admission into the United States in