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StumblePublished Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 | 5:08 p.m.
Updated Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 | 5:11 p.m.
Desegregation arrived in Las Vegas shortly after my birth. A protest march planned for the spring of 1960 on the Las Vegas Strip threatened to shine a harsh spotlight on the fledgling Entertainment Capital of the World. Hank Greenspun brokered a deal that derailed the march and heralded desegregation. The Las Vegas of my youth, at least on my side of the tracks, was colorblind.
Nat King Cole, Sammy Davis Jr., Lena Horne and Eartha Kitt graced the stages of the best hotels and shared our meals in the finest restaurants. Sports figures such as Sonny Liston, Cassius Clay (at the time) and Wilt Chamberlain commanded hordes of autograph-seekers whenever they ventured out in public. Skin color was as irrelevant as hair color in my sheltered corner of the world.
Prejudice became part of my vocabulary when I was seven years old. We were in Miami Beach at the Fountainebleu. My father and his best friend, famed boxer Joe Louis, left to golf and returned in a matter of minutes. My mother asked what happened. "They wouldn't let Joe golf because he's black and me because I'm a Jew," my father complained and later sued. I was dumbstruck. My father could move mountains, it seemed to me, but couldn't golf? And Joe, revered by the masses yet turned away from a country club? I was homesick for Las Vegas and completely unaware that Nevada was far from immune from the small-minded ways of the Floridians who spurned my father and the Brown Bomber.
Tonight on Face to Face, as our nation celebrates a turning point, we take stock of how far Las Vegas and our nation have come in the quest for equality.
Today marks 20 years since we buried my father. I've been thinking all day about that golf course in Miami Beach, about much greater hardships endured by minorities through the years and about the slow, sometimes painful course of change and how it's all worth it.
We have come a long way and yet we still have a long way to go.
The door (thank god) has been opened...and it can't be closed again.A new beginning is here.I hope the feeling "everyone" felt on jan.20th stay with us always
When Clarence Thomas was being confirmed, I said to my father, as a test "I just don't like him because he is black." His reply was "I know just what you mean!".
Don't get me wrong. I loved my dad. But his prejudice was as matter of fact to him as it is foreign and absurd to me. He was simply from another time.
I'm glad those times are over. I like to think we have grown since then. I hope we really have.