We move now to Las Vegas' Historic West Side.

That's where African Americans lived during segregation, and it's where visitors to the Pearson Community Center can now see an awe inspiring interpretation of the neighborhood's legacy.

The Clark County Public Arts Office collaborated with muralist Mike Norice on the Pearson Pillar Mural Project.

Instead of a wall, the South Los Angeles-based artist painted pillars but only after extensive research and invaluable input from local historian Claytee White.

In a period of about nine months, Mike Norice transformed the pillars inside the Pearson Community Center into a visual timeline spanning more than a century.

Las Vegas' Historic West Side, the once racially segregated area of the city, is the subject of the Pearson Pillar Mural Project which Norice considers the biggest of his career.

(Mike Norice) The size, obviously, but the meaning of it, it meant so much to the community.

When I was painting throughout the last four or five months, so many people came up to me and said, Oh, who are you painting?

And I was like, Oh, this is Sarann Knight Preddy, or This is, you know, Ruby Duncan.

Oh, Who is that?

Oh, well, here, have a seat.

Let me tell you this person.

And these are people that are older than me.

-The education Norice shared he first learned from Claytee White, inaugural director of UNLV's Oral History Research Center.

(Claytee White) And he said, I'm from Los Angeles.

And I said, So how much of the history do you know?

He said, I don't know any.

And I said, Well, how did you get the job?

He said, I'm good.

I said, Okay, what can I do to help?

-It was like talking to my grandmother all again.

-Based in South Los Angeles, Norice founded Artfully United.

-I have a mural tour throughout Los Angeles, where I work a lot with the communities in the inner city.

-Its mission is to uplift those communities through murals with positive messages.

And in order to achieve that in Las Vegas, Norice not only worked with White but held a workshop to engage the community.

-The challenge was, are we going to have enough pillars for all of this history?

-In total, there are 21 pillars.

Each is 10 feet tall, and together, they portray the rich history of Las Vegas' West Side, starting in the 1800s.

In 1870 is when John Howell became the first African American land owner in Clark County.

-The first pillar and the last one, those are probably my favorites, because the first one is about John Howell.

Starting in North Carolina, he probably walked across the country to get here by 1870.

Slavery doesn't end until 1865.

So to get here, he probably came with wagon trains certain distances, but he probably walked across the country.

-Fast forward to 1949 and that's where you'll find one of Norice's favorite pillars titled The Black Architect.

It honors Paul R. Williams, who designed Berkeley Square, the first black housing development in Las Vegas.

-He was very, very influential to me because he was also an artist, and I'm always drawn to other artists.

And he designed the first middle-class community for black people, and he endured so much racism but accomplished so much.

-Paul R. Williams is the home designer for some of the elite in Southern California.

And in order to have those clients, he's an African American, he can't sit beside them like he would a black client, so he has to learn to sit across their desk from them and to draw a house, draft that house quickly upside down.

So that was the world that African Americans lived in, and we still do today.

Systemic racism today is as horrible as it has ever been.

I'm not talking about hanging people in Mississippi and Alabama.

I'm not talking about that part of it.

I'm talking about the everyday microaggressions that African Americans experience: that our lifespan is shorter than your lifespan because of it, that our medical care is not the same, that I don't get the same rate when I get a loan as you do.

-I grew up impoverished.

We were homeless when I was six, and I always turned to my art.

And I always knew that I would do some type of career in art.

Growing up, me, personally, I did not see many black men that were artists, you know, that were really accomplished artists, I should say.

But it's not by coincidence that you see a lot of younger black kids that want to be rappers or want to play basketball or play football, because that's what is highlighted and what is promoted in the media that is, this is success.

It's just due to systemic racism.

They do not want to highlight the different career paths that we have taken.

You know, we're astronauts, we're doctors, we are lawyers, we are dentists, we are architects.

That's the reason why I put him right here and made sure when kids come straight in, they see him.

-Norice hopes all the heroes he painted will inspire visitors here, while White has another priority.

-I hope that this spurs us to understand how important it is to learn our history.

Right now, African American history is being destroyed in this country.

We're erasing it from history books.

We're erasing it from museums.

That should not happen.

-And had White had her way initially, the very last pillar in this mural, now one of her favorites, would not have happened.

-I have no idea how the last pillar became what it is.

The last pillar really points to the future.

I wanted to talk more about Jackson Street and use that to point toward the future because you know that Jackson Street is being revitalized, and some of that West Side area is really being revitalized in such a wonderful way.

-But Norice depicted a different future.

-I made sure that the last pillar is kind of giving an estimate of what the future will look like.

And showing black and brown unity in the next 20 or 30 years, it may be a majority Latino community, which is fine, but I wanted to pay homage to their heritage and their culture to show like, hey, even though it's not dominant today, I do see where it's going, and I want to just give you the respect on the last pillar.

-It's an artistic decision that White says she respects.

-He was astute enough, after learning all of this history, falling in love with people here in the Center, he was astute enough to know that we need to look toward the future.

-Did he run it by you?

-No.

And it was okay, because I would not have agreed.

[laughter] I did not have the foresight that he had.

Yes.

-Now you agree?

-I agree completely, yes.

-A short documentary about the process of painting the pillars is in the works.

For that, the Clark County Public Arts Office is working with Las Vegas-based Arecibo Films led by Zachary Fried.