Soul to Soul

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The following is special programming sponsored by Public Radio KUNV 91.5. The content of Soul to Soul does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz & More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

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This is Soul to Soul, universal ideas for a brighter tomorrow.

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♪♪

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I'm your host, Clay T. White. This show is a free-for-all of positive energy that includes book discussions, music, politics, looks, food, COVID-19, 19 oral interviews, books, and Las Vegas history. So today my show is a continuation of a brief walk through a segment of Las Vegas, that Las Vegas black experience. I talked about the 1950s last month, and today I'm going to continue with the 1960s and the early 1970s. So in 1959, I told you last month as we ended that our first black attorney moved to Nevada. His name was Charles Keller. So I want to talk about what happens after he gets here. about his taking the bar exam, passing it with a very high score. The Nevada Bar Association thought that his score had been too high, and he had to fight for the next five years in order to get that law license to be instated as an attorney here in the state of Nevada. So after that, we turn to the year of 1960, the beginning of a new decade. March 25, 1960, we get the integration of public accommodations through a document called the Moulin Rouge Agreement. The president of the local NAACP at the time, 1960, was that first black dentist that we talked about a few months ago. His name was James B. MacMillan. MacMillan received a letter from the National Office of the NAACP. That National Office was located in New York and has sent letters to all of the branches all over the country, trying to encourage the branches to up-level their activity toward integration. As you know, beginning of 1960, the entire country is still segregated. We have been privy to some of the battles going on in some of the cities to integrate public accommodations, lunch counters, all kinds of places. Here in Nevada, Las Vegas, and throughout the state, it was the same way. Integration had not taken place. Dr. MacMillan received that letter from the National Office at the beginning of the month of March of 1960. So in turn, after receiving that letter, he wrote an additional letter to the mayor of Las Vegas, Mayor Craigan, and said that if integration does not take place in the city of Las Vegas by March 25, 1960, that the black community was going to hold a protest on the Las Vegas Strip. So with that threat, negotiations began. Leaders of the black community and the mayor's office began to go back and forth negotiating. So of course, we know that in the background, because we're talking about integrating the hotel casinos so that blacks can now go in, have dinner, go to shows, can gamble. So, of course, we have to have other permissions other than just those from City Hall. So you know that the back of the house negotiations, those negotiations going on behind the scenes, you know that they have to include some of the owners. In Dr. McMillan's book, he wrote a book called Fighting Back. In that book he explains what happens during those two weeks of negotiations. So please read that, you'll get a lot out of it. So we go back and forth, and the decision is made that integration will take place March 25, 1960. During those two weeks, the African-American community have to protect Dr. McMillan. Some of the men in the community actually surround his house so that he is not harmed because of death threats that he receives during that period. The threat that blacks are going to march on the Las Vegas Strip on a Saturday night is much more than the city wants seen on national television. And we think that's one of the reasons that the outcome is positive for the black community. Positive now, I can use that word, at the time we thought integration was the way to go. Now we're not all so sure that that was the right tactic to use to achieve equality. But that's what happened. So on that Saturday night, instead of people going out to protest on the Las Vegas Strip, the NAACP sent couples all over the city to make sure that the hotel casinos are adhering to this agreement. Supposedly, everyone knows what has happened, and it goes from the top down. They are telling everybody in the casinos and the hotels that African Americans are welcomed there as customers. One couple goes into the Desert Inn, another goes into the Sands, another the Dunes, and they go to all of the casino hotels downtown, and supposedly all except just a few adhere to the policies, those new policies, on that Saturday night. The ones who don't adhere come in line within the next couple of weeks. The city is integrated. That Saturday morning, March 25th, we have a photograph here at UNLV that shows the meeting that takes place to hammer out all of the details. It is called the Moulin Rouge Agreement. That meeting takes place that Saturday morning in the Moulin Rouge Hotel Casino. And around the table we see all the leaders of the black community. We see Hank Greenspan, the owner of the Sun newspaper, the mayor of the city, the governor of the state, chief of police, and there are other people in the photograph that we cannot identify because of the angle that the picture was taken from. But we know the meeting takes place. What we also learned quickly is that this meeting was verbal only. Nothing was written. Therefore, a lot of people come into the library here at UNLV, and they want to see that Moulin Rouge agreement. They want to see what happened on that Saturday morning. Well, we have nothing to show them. It was indeed a verbal agreement. Now, supposedly, African Americans were not just supposed to be able to go into the casino and spend money. Supposedly, part of that agreement was also that African Americans were going to be able now to work jobs, It's not just those in the back of the house doing the laundry, cleaning the rooms, but blacks were going to be able to have the jobs like a cocktail waitress, dealers, bartenders, the jobs that we have learned about and heard about for years that creates the kind of income that allows a family to have some prosperity. Well, those jobs did not materialize. So we are not sure what happened and why they did not. Moving on through the 1960s. In 1964, we get the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 that authorizes the formation of local community action agencies, and this is all part of the war on poverty that comes out of the Johnson administration. by the federal government. So they are to establish all kinds of programs to help with education, health, employment, and just the general overall welfare of impoverished Americans, not just black Americans, but impoverished Americans throughout the country. Here in Clark County, the area that was most heavily impacted was that west side area where a lot of people of color lived. So that is the area where all of the agencies were housed and where the decisions were made, the board held its meetings over there. So we had all kinds of programs that had federal funding that provided jobs for teenagers during the summer, jobs for adults without an income, all kinds of training. So this made a great difference in the African-American community, and we can show you that it made a difference in other communities as well. Out of that also came the radio station, KCEP, that is the voice of the black community until today. That radio station is 50 years old this year. Even after all of this, we're talking about an integration of public accommodations, jobs that come in, all kinds of job training through the EOB, Economic Opportunity Board, still it wasn't enough. Poverty was not impacted that much, so prosperity did not reign as it was supposed to. There were other issues that impacted various communities. were cut back starting right after the EOB, like 1967. We see that people who were on welfare in this county, throughout the county, not just black women, we're talking about Latinx women, white women, other women who were not doing well financially. Rules began to change. There were cutbacks in benefits. They started programs like being able to go into a woman's house no matter what time of the day or night, making sure that there were no men on the premises. Those interfered with regular lives of people, interfered with privacy. People were upset about this. We saw more confrontation with the police during this era, and that caused a lot of unrest in the community. In 1969, we see a rebellion taking place. We call it a riot in most cases, but let's use revolution or rebellion. People were upset. People were not employed. Families were not taken care of, women who were on welfare were not supposed to work, even though the meager benefits coming into the house only took care of the children. So we find some women at that point working what we call under the table. they found jobs where they could get a little income for their household by working at places that would pay them in cash. At one of those jobs, and I won't give names of any of those employers, at those jobs, these women on welfare would talk as they worked. And we are talking again about women from all races would work together in harmony. And one day, one of the white women said And the African-American lady said, oh, that's not possible. But the conversation started. And that day, they learned that benefits were not equal across racial boundaries. So black women and African-Americans were not equal across racial boundaries. So black women, Latinx women, white women started getting together, talking about what they could do in order to have a better life for their children. And they didn't even know at the time that there was a national movement going on across the country doing the same thing. So our group became a part of a national welfare rights movement. People came in town to train groups of women here how to protest, what to protest about, how to lobby, how to negotiate for what they needed. I am just going to use one name today. I'm going to use the name of Ruby Duncan. Now, there were lots and lots of women in this organization. Her name is the one that's the well-known one because the women pushed her into the forefront of the movement. So I'll tell you just a tiny bit about Ruby. When Ruby was volunteered to start leading this group of women, she had just fallen at her job. She was working at the Sahara Hotel Casino. She worked in the pantry, fixing salads, sandwiches, making sure the condiments were what they were supposed to be and were they were supposed to be. One morning she went to work in the pantry and had a tray of food and the night before one of the cooks had spilled cooking oil and Ruby slipped down in the cooking oil that morning. Ruby never got the kinds of remedies from neither the culinary union nor the hotel that she probably should have gotten. And today she is still in a wheelchair because it has progressed over the years. But she was the leader of the welfare rights movement. And the reason I won't even give the other names is because I don't have all of the names listed here in front of me, and I would definitely forget someone, so I'm not going to call any other names today. I'll make sure the next time that I mention everybody's name. Once the national movement was over, the women here locally did not stop protesting, did not stop agitating, did not stop fighting for the rights of their children. They continued, and they moved into something called Operation Life. They set up a 501C3 and they continued to work. They were the ones who got the first library on D Street in the Westside community. They were able to get the WIC program and stayed here in the state of Nevada. So these women weren't doing things for themselves. They were doing things for the community and for their families. They were able to get additional job training, sewing, a small sewing factory. They were able to help to get housing for some of the elderly people in the community. So they worked for years and years and got a lot done in poor communities here in our county. But these women did not do everything all by themselves. They had the input of the community and they had attorneys working for them, with them, not for them, with them. These are not attorneys that they could afford to pay. These are attorneys working for different agencies that could devote time to them. People like B. Milan Brown and Jack Anderson and Frank Schreck. We know those names today, and you never think of them as working with this group of welfare mothers to make this a better place. But they did. So I will tell you just one incident to show you how sometimes attorneys are needed. You need legal advice all along. So the women, when they were strategized, they knew in advance the possibilities of what would happen to them. One day they took a group of children to eat in one of the large hotels here, one of the exclusive dining rooms in one of the large hotels, a whole busload of kids, and all of the most expensive items on the menu, not hamburgers and french fries, but they wanted them to order steak, lobster, and food that they never had a chance to eat. At the end of the meal, they, of course, knew that they couldn't pay for it, so they allowed the children to get back on the bus. Some of the mothers went with them. Ruby and a couple of the other women were arrested, and they went to jail. So during that period, we didn't have cell phones so we didn't know what was happening. We're talking about the late 60s early 70s. So as the women went to jail and it was reported that evening on the news, one of the women at the Women's League, the League of Women was watching television, saw Ruby and the other women, and sent her son Frank Shrek down to get Ruby out of jail. So that's how the city worked at the time. We all know about the welfare rights movement here because during its heyday there was a march on the Las Vegas Strip that closed down several hotels on a Saturday morning. There is a book about this whole movement. It is called Storming Caesar's Palace, written by Annalise Orlick. Please pick up the book. You will get lots and lots of background information on the African-American experience in Las Vegas, as well as learn so much about a welfare movement that some of us don't even know about. We think it was just something local. It was not. It was a national movement, and we had a major part in it because the smart women that led it understood politics. They understood how to lobby, and they grew and they learned through this process. And when we get to the end of it, we get a revolt here, a rebellion, a riot, not enough jobs. So even through all of this, there's still not enough jobs. In 1971, Charles Keller, that first attorney, that first attorney, determines that we need a consent decree is needed that will ensure jobs in the major industry here for us. When you talk about jobs that are not related to gaming, those jobs are never in the majority. Blacks worked at Basic Magnesium, Incorporated in the 40s. They worked at the Nevada test site in the 1950s. and other local jobs and companies, manufacturing and all kinds of other enterprises all along. But it is the gaming industry that gives stability to our whole local economy. If we're not working in the gaming industry, we don't have those jobs with all of the money that's always talked about. We talk about the tips that dealers earn. We don't get that kind of money in other enterprises. You don't get that in government work. You don't get that if you are a private person with a small business. So we needed jobs in the gaming industry. That first black attorney, Charles Keller, 1971, drew up, he and others, drew up a consent decree that mandated 12% of jobs in a whole plethora of categories for the African-American community. That consent decree, we have a photograph of it. We have a copy of the whole agreement in special collections in the library here at UNLV if you ever want to read it. You can probably also find it online these days. So the African-American community is named at that 12% rate. Later on, that becomes not just African-Americans, but it becomes a minority mandate. moving into all kinds of jobs in the gaming industry. I'm almost done for today, but I will end with one quick story of what happens after the consent decree, just to show you how powerful. We already had the first black cocktail waitresses at Caesars Palace in 1966 when Caesars may have been ahead of the game just a bit, but most 17 different casino hotels were named in that consent decree, along with five trade unions, the Nevada Resorts Association, all named because they had not done enough to ensure equity in jobs, financing for the black community. in jobs, financing for the black community. And now they're beginning to have to. So I'm gonna tell you a little story about a couple of women who go into a mid-level management positions after the consent decree. They both get jobs in promotions and publicity at the Desert Inn, Jackie Brantley and Faye Todd. Yes, that's how they got started. The consent decree allowed them access to apply for jobs at that level. They had competition from people all over the country applying for those jobs, but it made no difference. They got those jobs because they were so well qualified. Both of them were featured. So when we say oral history, yes, we get these stories from people throughout the community, and then we work to verify them so that you know what we tell you is true. So Jackie Brantley becomes head of both publicity and promotions. Once her bosses leave because they train her so well, and she does such a great job. And Faye Todd moves on and becomes the first entertainment director in Las Vegas at the Landmark Hotel. opportunities and jobs that were open to the black community because of that consent decree of 1971. Well, my time is up. It has been wonderful. Sometimes I cannot believe that I can talk for a half hour without taking a pause because our history here is so very, And we have so many great stories that have been verified. So we know it is not just oral history, it is our written history, it is our true history. So again, this is Soul to Soul. This show is a free-for-all of positive energy that includes books, music, politics, books, food, COVID-19, oral interviews, books, and Las Vegas history. Bye-bye for now. See you next month.

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sponsored by Public Radio KUNV 91.5. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Chazz & More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Transcribed with Cockatoo