Meet Clinton Wright, the Photographer Who Documented a Westside Vegas Nobody Else Was Capturing
A 90th birthday celebration at the Nevada State Museum doubled as a milestone for one of the most important photo archives of Black Las Vegas. Here is what is inside it, and why it almost got lost.
Key takeaways
- The Nevada State Museum Las Vegas marked photojournalist Clinton Wright's 90th birthday on July 11, 2026, with a public celebration of decades of Westside photography.
- Wright spent the 1960s and 70s shooting for the Las Vegas Voice, documenting Historic Westside life that almost no other camera in the city was pointed at.
- Six UNLV students spent two years digitizing his archive, nearly 2,500 objects and roughly 8,200 images, now searchable online through UNLV's Special Collections portal.
- His subjects range from a young Muhammad Ali visiting local schoolchildren to the weddings, churches, and everyday moments that made up Westside community life.
Figures compiled from Nevada State Museum and UNLV coverage of the Clinton Wright photo archive.
A birthday that doubled as a preservation milestone
On Saturday, July 11, 2026, the Nevada State Museum Las Vegas hosted 90 Years of Reflection with Photojournalist Clinton Wright, a public celebration built around his 90th birthday. The event tied directly into Rhythm and Resilience: Black Vegas, an exhibit that has been running at the museum since March 12 and continues through August 20, 2026, with free admission Monday through Saturday.
Filmmaker Emmett Gates used the occasion to premiere an early preview of a documentary chronicling Wright's life and work, a project that suggests this is not the last we will hear about his archive. For a site built around finding the pieces of Las Vegas that usually slip through the cracks of official history, a living photographer's own birthday party turning into a preservation event is exactly the kind of story worth stopping for.
The photographer who pointed his camera where others didn't
Through the 1960s and 70s, Wright shot for the Las Vegas Voice, a newspaper founded in 1963 that served the city's Black community at a time when mainstream local coverage largely ignored the Historic Westside. While much of Las Vegas's archived history from that era centers on the Strip and downtown casino floors, Wright's lens stayed on the neighborhood itself, the people who built it, and the ordinary days that never made a casino brochure.
His subjects range widely. There are candid frames of Sammy Davis Jr. captured away from a stage, and photographs of a young Muhammad Ali, still going by Cassius Clay at the time, spending time with local elementary school students. But most of the archive is quieter than that: weddings, church gatherings, and the daily rhythm of a community that built its own institutions on the Westside.
Two years, six students, and roughly 8,200 images
None of this would be easy to see today without a deliberate rescue effort. Six UNLV students spent two years working through Wright's personal collection, digitizing nearly 2,500 physical objects that add up to about 8,200 individual images. That work is now complete, and the results are fully available through UNLV's Special Collections and Archives Portal.
That matters beyond nostalgia. A fully searchable, freely accessible archive means genealogists tracing Westside family history, historians studying the era, and curious locals who just want to see what their neighborhood looked like decades ago all have a real way in, not a private collection sitting in a box somewhere, inaccessible to the people it actually documents.
- Roughly 2,500 physical objects digitized from Wright's personal collection
- About 8,200 individual images now searchable online
- Two years of student-led digitization work through UNLV
- Fully accessible via UNLV's Special Collections and Archives Portal
Why one archive changes how a whole era gets remembered
Vintage Vegas history tends to get told through the same handful of casino marquees and Rat Pack anecdotes. Wright's archive is a reminder that an entire, thriving community existed alongside that version of the city, one that rarely got its own camera crew, let alone its own newspaper photographer working the beat for two decades straight.
Rhythm and Resilience: Black Vegas runs through August 20, and the digitized archive itself is not going anywhere now that it lives online. Whether you make it to the museum in person or just want to browse the collection from home, it is worth spending an afternoon with images most of Las Vegas never got to see the first time around.
What is actually inside the Clinton Wright archive
The collection covers a lot more ground than any single museum wall could hold. Here is a sense of what is in it.
- Everyday Westside life: Weddings, church gatherings, and neighborhood scenes that rarely made it into official Vegas history.
- A young Muhammad Ali: Photographs of Ali, then still going by Cassius Clay, spending time with local schoolchildren.
- Sammy Davis Jr.: Candid frames of the entertainer captured away from the Strip stage.
- Two decades of Las Vegas Voice coverage: Work spanning the 1960s and 70s for one of the city's newspapers serving the Black community.
- A fully digitized, searchable archive: Nearly 2,500 objects now available through UNLV's Special Collections and Archives Portal.
- A documentary in progress: Filmmaker Emmett Gates premiered an early preview of a film about Wright's life and work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Clinton Wright?
A photojournalist who spent the 1960s and 70s shooting for the Las Vegas Voice, documenting everyday life on the Historic Westside during an era when few other cameras were pointed there.
Where can I see his photographs now?
The digitized collection, nearly 2,500 objects and about 8,200 images, is freely searchable online through UNLV's Special Collections and Archives Portal.
What is Rhythm and Resilience: Black Vegas?
It is an exhibit at the Nevada State Museum Las Vegas that opened March 12, 2026, and runs through August 20, with free admission Monday through Saturday.
Why does this matter for Las Vegas history overall?
It fills in a part of the city's story that the usual Strip-and-casino narrative leaves out, giving the Historic Westside community its own visual record, told from the inside.