TALES OF VEGAS PAST The Moulin Rouge is undergoing renovations in hopes of it returning to something close to its former glory. Photo by F. ANDREW TAYLOR

Thursday, February 20, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Tales of Vegas Past: Paris on the banks of the 'Mississippi of the West'

By Gregory Crosby

Hotel-casinos as illustrious as the Sands or the Dunes were around for 40 and 50 years before they were casually imploded, but the Moulin Rouge was open a mere six months and yet is still standing, somewhat forlornly but with its famed faãade intact, on Bonanza Road. The Moulin Rouge had the shortest life span of any Las Vegas resort but the biggest impact, for the simple reason that it became the first hotel to reach out from behind the "Concrete Curtain" of the city's racial divide.

The "Concrete Curtain" was the name African-Americans gave to the railroad underpass that separated their community, still known as the Westside (because it was once the original Vegas townsite, just west of the tracks, that was later superseded by the railroad's downtown townsite) from the rest of the city. But "Concrete Curtain" was a strictly local designation. Around the country, from the 1930s until the 1960s, Las Vegas had a more infamous moniker: "The Mississippi of the West."

Las Vegas was segregated to a degree hard to fathom today, first informally and then strictly so beginning with the World War II years. An influx of African-Americans to the city looking for war work coincided with the re-creation of Vegas as America's playground, and blacks were not to be part of that picture, on and off the Strip. The indignities suffered by entertainers, who were welcome to perform in lounges and showrooms but prohibited from gambling or staying at the very hotels they headlined, are well known, and merely mirror the everyday indignities of an African American population marginalized into a part of town without paved streets or other basic amenities (even black-owned businesses in the downtown area were forced to move to the Westside as the '40s wore on).

So the appearance of the Moulin Rouge, a Parisian-themed hotel situated far from Glitter Gulch and the Strip, was a godsend. More than just a black-owned hotel-casino, the Moulin Rouge was also fully integrated, a place that welcomed blacks and whites and anyone else for that matter. Opening in March 1955, the hotel quickly became the hippest place in town. All the black entertainers who played the Strip stayed there, and a tradition of late-night jams, held long after the last midnight shows on the Strip, became the hottest ticket in town. When Sammy Davis Jr. was barred from relaxing in Strip casinos, Frank Sinatra and the rest of the Rat Pack entourage came to the Moulin Rouge and hung out with him there.

The mix of whites and blacks was radical, vibrant and deeply threatening to the establishment. Showgirls who spent there off-hours at the Moulin Rouge and were spotted by Strip hotel spies found they were fired the next day (some claimed to have been fired on the spot as they were standing in the Moulin Rouge's parking lot). It's tempting to see this as the beginning of a pattern of intimidation that closed the hotel after only six months, but the reasons behind the property's failure are still obscured today. No one is quite sure why the Moulin Rouge, a rousing success, went dark. Some point not only to pressure from the Strip hotels (i.e., pressure from the mob) but to financial mismanagement by the owners or to the fact that 1955 saw a glut of new properties (five hotels opened that year, and some, such as the Royal Nevada, failed).

It's possible that the Moulin Rouge, for all its pioneering effort, would be just another memory today if not for the further role it played in the civil rights movement. It was there in March 1960 that a meeting was held between Las Vegas NAACP President Dr. James McMillan and representatives of the Strip hotels. McMillan had threatened the Strip and Glitter Gulch with a boycott and demonstration against their segregation polices. In order to head off the potential loss of burgeoning convention visitors, the Powers That Were decided to end the policy. The meeting was attended by Mayor Oran Gragson and Gov. Grant Sawyer and mediated by Las Vegas Sun publisher and editor Hank Greenspun. Contrary to popular belief, nothing was signed that day, but the basic deal was negotiated that consigned segregation on the Strip to the overflowing dustbin of history.

Thus, the Moulin Rouge survived, not as a business or resort but as a symbol. Placed on the National Register of Historic Places, it sits in a limbo of restoration efforts, perhaps never to regain its glory but certainly saved from the wrecking ball, thanks to its role as the place where the "Mississippi of the West" stopped its racist rolling.