The QOD about the El Cortez reminded me of my early Las Vegas visits. Wasn't the El Cortez frequented by a primarily black clientele in the 50's and 60's? This prompts the follow-up question: Were there exclusionary rules regarding race in Las Vegas Strip hotels and when did it finally end?
While the El Cortez did host some of the first African American entertainers in downtown Las Vegas during the “Mississippi of the West” era (helping it earn a spot on the National Register of Historic Places), the notion of it welcoming Black customers in the 1950s seems more than a little incongruous and, as it turns out, is an urban legend.
University of Nevada-Las Vegas history professor Michael Green tells us, “The El Cortez was not, to my knowledge, letting in Black customers until the Moulin Rouge Agreement. Kell Houssels was the owner there and at the Tropicana, and his son told me that his dad was a Texan of the old school and went along when the time came, but wasn't going to lead the way.”
Besides, before the Agreement, it was forbidden by Jim Crow laws for African Americans to even gamble in the city’s resort casinos.
After desegregation in the early 1960s, Green continues, “The two downtown holdouts for a time were the Horseshoe and the Golden Gate. Benny Binion wasn't going to be ordered to do anything, notwithstanding that he had a Black chauffeur/bodyguard whom he was very close to, and the Golden Gate was owned by Italian-Americans from San Francisco, such as Italo Ghelfi, who weren't too liberal-minded. (The funny thing is that Ghelfi's stepson Mark Brandenburg is a good friend of mine and politically and intellectually very liberal).”
Overall, Las Vegas was segregated with a vengeance prior to the Moulin Rouge Agreement (so named after the defunct casino where it was negotiated), with African Americans being expected to stay "in their place" on the Westside, across the railroad tracks, where several hotels expressly served a Negro clientele. It wasn’t someplace you wanted to stay, as Westside was bereft of running water and sewage service, among other civic amenities.
Even the Strip hotels that deigned to feature Black performers made them use the service entrance when going in and out of the resort. They were the only African Americans allowed to be visible to the customers. Nat King Cole was notoriously forbidden to make eye contact with the white women in his audiences. Recalled Sammy Davis Jr., “In Vegas for 20 minutes, our skin had no color. Then the second we stepped off the stage, we were colored again … The other acts could gamble or sit in the lounge and have a drink, but we had to leave through the kitchen with the garbage.”
The official segregation of Las Vegas came to an end on March 25, 1960, the day before local NAACP President Dr. James McMillan promised to “shut down the Strip” by leading a mass protest march along Las Vegas Boulevard. At the last minute, casino owners —motivated by a fear of bad national publicity — sat down with McMillan, other civil rights leaders, and prominent local politicians in a summit brokered by newspaper publisher Hank Greenspun.
In a significant accord, the business and political establishments agreed to lift the area’s Jim Crow laws and cease segregation, with some holdouts, as noted above. However, a modus vivendi was reached that would prevail for decades, although some change was relatively glacial. The city ordinance restricting Black residents to the Westside would not be repealed until 1970.
Among the slow-burning catalysts that led to this shift was a sharp increase in Sin City’s African American population, fueled by emigration from other states to take up munitions-manufacturing work in World War II. This brought the hitherto scant African American populace up to 10 percent of Las Vegans. More Black Americans came in the '50s, drawn by employment opportunities in the burgeoning resort industry.
However, the Mob was no friend to civil rights. It used the veiled threat of violence to keep integration at bay as long as it could. When Harry Belafonte balked at the degrading terms of a contract with one mobbed-up casino, he was informed that the only way he would be leaving Las Vegas without performing was “in a box.” Fortunately for Belafonte, he had Mob ties of his own back in New York that swung things in his favor. Eventually. Most African Americans in Las Vegas did not have it so lucky.
To learn more about the evil years of segregation in Sin City, three books are recommended by Professor Green. The first is Dr. McMillan’s Fighting Back. The others are Bob Bailey’s memoir Looking Up!, along with Earnest Bracey’s history of the Moulin Rouge. They document an era that should never be forgotten.
PBS has an excellent program. -- go to vegaspbs.org -- @ left, click on "Shows" -- Scroll down to "Vegas PBS Shows", then African Americans: The Las Vegas Experience Or, begin with accompanying article, that contains the program: Documenting African American Experience in Las Vegas http://digital.library.unlv.edu/aae