April 15, 2019
HIS 8078 – The Long Civil Rights Movement
Orleck, Annelise. Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. 368 pages.
Storming Caesars Palace is an engaging and compelling book that reveals the little-known history of welfare activism in Las Vegas, Nevada. Written by Annelise Orleck, Professor of History at Dartmouth College, the book encompasses African-American, Women’s, Civil Rights, and Welfare history by looking at grassroots activists and organizations that were created to fight for the needs of poverty-stricken African American families in the historically segregated Westside neighborhood. Storming Caesars Palace focuses specifically on Operation Life, an organization created by and for Westside mothers dealing with state and federal welfare programs. Operation Life was hugely successful at meeting their goals of providing assistance, food, housing, education, and job opportunities to the local population, who struggled for decades to move beyond poverty’s grip, before succumbing to ever-growing funding struggles.
In the years following World War II, many African Americans and their families left the oppressive South in order to escape Jim Crow segregation and violence, as well as a declining economic landscape. Las Vegas seemed an answer to their struggles, promising well paid employment and improved opportunities for their children. Segregated into sub-standard neighborhoods, African American families soon discovered they had left back-breaking work in the South’s cotton fields to face similar exhaustion and physically taxing work in the casinos and hotels on the Las Vegas strip. Excluded from all but the most labor intensive and publicly hidden positions, African Americans who were injured on the job or were left with no child care options soon found themselves forced to depend on welfare benefits to support themselves and their families. Conservative Nevada lawmakers and bureaucrats did everything within their power to limit these benefits and force individuals off the program. Those who were able to receive benefits that failed to cover their basic needs were humiliated even further by intrusive practices by their caseworkers.
Women who learned how to organize as members of the Hotel and Culinary Workers Union banded together to stand up for their welfare rights as citizens and mothers. The new National Welfare Rights Organization provided support and helped to swell their ranks. Sit-ins and civil disobedience actions garnered them national attention and forced the state to reverse many of their benefit cuts. Further activism fought for food stamps, medical care, job training programs, and education. The local welfare activists founded Operation Life in 1972, a nonprofit community development organization. These women were able to win millions in federal and private grant money to improve the standard of living in their own neighborhood, fight against continued attacks by politicians and conservative leaders, and engage in local electoral politics. Led by Ruby Duncan, Operation Life grew to become a model for grassroots organizations seeking to address the local needs of residents living in poverty. Duncan became an active and effective lobbyist in Washington, D.C., with influence that spread to the White House during the Carter Administration. Sadly, with the rise of Ronald Regan and 1980s conservatism, Operation Life suffered from the same attacks and cuts that welfare programs across the country faced by the national shift in support for entitlement programs. “Welfare Queen” rhetoric, calls for law and order, the War on Drugs, and public demand to roll back entitlement programs devastated Black communities nationwide. Operation Life struggled to continue their efforts but was ultimately forced to shutter after 25 years of providing life-saving services.
Orleck weaves biographical vignettes of the local women who not only faced poverty and were recipients of welfare programs, but ultimately created and led the campaign to improve conditions for families in their Westside neighborhood. The style is novel-like in its ability to entertain, challenge preconceived notions, and invoke interest in the reader. Government and organization archives compliment extensive personal interviews Orleck conducted with the women directly involved in Nevada’s antipoverty movement. Orleck wisely mutes her own opinion and interpretation in favor of these women, giving power to their voice and experiences. Storming Caesars Palace is a refreshing addition to the historiography of the Black Freedom Struggle during the Twentieth Century, highlighting the grassroots work of women and the unparalleled success they achieved. Although it fails to deeply address the issues facing urban America in the 1980s, scholars of African American history, women’s history, and economic class history will find Orleck’s work invaluable in understanding issues faced by everyday families at the time when the application of Civil Rights legislation and Johnson’s War on Poverty programs failed to adequately address their daily needs. Storming Caesars Palace reminds us that providing support to grassroot organizations can help to create and deliver innovative ways of combatting both racism and poverty in modern day America.
Kelly Murmello 