Chronicles the efforts of welfare mothers in Las Vegas who went up against both state and federal laws to build one of the nation's most successful antipoverty programs in the 1970s.

From the cotton fields to the desert sands : living and leaving the delta life -- "The Mississippi of the west" : Jim Crow in Sin City -- "Bad luck and lousy people" : Black single mothers and the war on poverty -- "If it wasn't for you, I'd have shoes for my children" : welfare rights come to Las Vegas -- Storming Caesars Palace : poverty and power in Las Vegas -- Dragging Nevada kicking and screaming into the twentieth century -- "We can do it and do it better" : reshaping a community from the bottom up -- Can welfare mothers do community economic development? : the trials and triumphs of Operation Life -- Maybe we were fighting history : the legacy of Operation Life.