The building then stood empty for nearly five decades. The casino went bankrupt within a year of its opening, allegedly due to investor embezzlement. Unfortunately, by the time of the NAACP gathering, the Rouge’s short-lived success was already in the past. of Nevada Oral History Program, 1997), 95-98.

McMillan, “Fighting Back: A Life in the Struggle for Civil Rights,” in Fighting Back: A Life in the Struggle for Civil Rights (Reno, NV: Univ. McMillan said he chose the empty Rouge as a meeting place because it was more “neutral” than anywhere else in the city.

Indeed, although the Rouge was owned by White investors and designed by White architects, the largely Black population of the Westside claimed it as their own. The Rouge embraced its anomalous location, and became part of the neighborhood. Aside from the top of the Stratosphere casino’s tower peeking out over nearby buildings, there is no other sign of the downtown Vegas Strip. While other casinos in Las Vegas compete with their neighbors for the flashiest sign or most dramatic façade, the Rouge’s backdrop, to this day, remains empty desert and open sky. The casino attracted both Black and White patrons, which proved to Vegas casino owners the financial legitimacy of desegregation, and it also created a community space for the Westside.ĭesigned by Zick and Sharp, a prolific firm responsible for some of Vegas’s most eccentric casinos, the Rouge’s look was less unusual than its site.

It was the only casino where Blacks could gamble or work front-of-house, and the daily 2:30 am show consistently booked star performers like Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. It opened in the Westside neighborhood in May of 1955 to great success. The Moulin Rouge was Vegas’s first desegregated casino. The meeting’s location symbolized the changes that activists wanted to see in Las Vegas. The Moulin Rouge was Vegas’s first desegregated casino, and the largely Black population of the Westside claimed it as their own. The former casino - usually locked and empty - was the setting for a pivotal meeting where McMillan and other members of the NAACP reached an agreement with Governor Grant Sawyer that averted the threatened demonstration. Black activists were demanding that the Las Vegas Strip be desegregated, and were threatening to march.

On March 26, 1960, James McMillan, president of the Las Vegas NAACP and the first Black dentist in Las Vegas, assembled tables and chairs in the then-defunct Moulin Rouge Casino. Zane Mechem December 2021 Two views of the Moulin Rouge, 1955.

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