One of the lessons from the Memories of Migration Exhibit Design class was the value of short
form video to our project. The videos produced by the class focused on
providing historical context for contemporary events.
At the conclusion of the class, Las Vegas Citizens’Committee for Historic Preservation, our community partner, was very happy with the results of the
collaboration but disappointed that several historical stories important to
them were not covered. One of those stories was that of Jewish merchants.
Another was that of Chinese laborers.
The story of Jewish merchants who came West over the Santa
Fe Trail to seek their fortunes is well documented and preserved by
descendants, and many of the buildings they built and institutions they founded
in Las Vegas still serve as reminders of the contributions they made before
they uprooted and continued on their migration journeys. The Chinese laborers,
who came to build the railroad and stayed on for a while, however, left barely
a trace. Uncovering that story is going to be much more challenging.
To address the CCHP’s interest in documenting these stories,
we were able to provide a summer intern from our AmeriCorps Cultural Technology
Program, Shane Flores. Shane produced this new video, The Great Emporium: Charles Ilfeld and the Jewish Merchants of Las Vegas, New Mexico.
This semester Shane will be piecing together the story
of the Chinese laborers in a new video for a class he is taking. Shane is also in the process of
creating YouTube and Vimeo channels for all of the videos and pinning the four
videos we have so far for Las Vegas to Historypin.
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