Pivotal Strip anniversary goes without spark, observance

Friday, March 24, 2000 | 10:30 a.m.

The 40th anniversary of desegregation of the Las Vegas Strip will pass Sunday with little or no observance.

Officials of the African-American Cultural Society Inc., however, announced Thursday that the milestone anniversary will be celebrated June 3 at the West Las Vegas Arts Center.

"We wanted to do something in late March at a Strip resort, but because we had no major sponsors, we couldn't do it," said Katherine Duncan, who organized last year's dinner and celebration marking the 39th anniversary of the March 26, 1960, agreement by big resorts to end discriminatory policies against blacks.

"Besides, we got a lot of calls from within the (black) community to keep this event in the community and not go to the Strip. So that's what we will do."

Last year's Strip desegregation observance was in late March at the New Town Tavern on Jackson Avenue in predominantly black West Las Vegas.

The upcoming event will honor entertainers of the past who fought to change a long-standing policy that held that blacks could not be guests at the hotels where they performed. They stayed instead in West Las Vegas boardinghouses.

Local black officials say the absence of a ceremony on the key anniversary date does not diminish the significance of the historic event.

"Even though there won't be a big celebration, blacks today are still thankful for the people who took up the fight for the just cause," said Trish Geran, a black historian, filmmaker, NAACP official and native Las Vegan.

Between 1930 and 1960, blacks in Las Vegas were subjected to restrictions that rivaled the worst conditions in the deep South. A story in the March 1954 edition of Ebony, titled "Negroes can't win in Las Vegas," told of the segregation practices.

State Sen. Joe Neal, D-Las Vegas, was a porter in Las Vegas hotels during the days of segregation, when the only jobs available to blacks were porter, cook and maid.

"The fact that we are about to see the 40th anniversary represents that segregation was wrong to begin with," said Neal, who has served in the Legislature since 1972.

"It shows that efforts have been made to bring people of all colors into the resorts -- to play at the gaming tables, eat in the restaurants and stay in the hotels. But we have not yet seen minority ownership of those hotels, which we hope to see in the future."

Neal said that while blacks were given hotel accommodations immediately after the agreement was reached, it was several years before they got good hotel and casino jobs. In some places, he said, blacks were not hired as card dealers until the 1970s.

About 6 percent of visitors to Las Vegas today are black, according to the LVCVA's 1999 visitor profile, down 1 percentage point from 1989.

Local tourism officials say they have for many years been attempting to bring to Las Vegas more blacks and other minorities from cities nationwide.

"When you consider that we have 34 million visitors a year, 6 percent is 2 million people -- that's a significant number in a significant market," LVCVA spokesman Rob Powers said. "With 120,000 hotel rooms to fill 365 days a year, we pursue every market segment. Ethnic marketing makes good business sense."