KVIG Informative

Bob Bailey spent the 1960s turning Las Vegas casino floors into job-training grounds for Black workers who had been locked out of them. Six decades later, Nevada’s gaming industry still answers for how far that access actually reaches.

William “Bob” Bailey was born Feb. 14, 1927, in Detroit and raised in Cleveland, where he sang in church choirs, according to a 1999 Nevada Legislature resolution honoring him. He graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta intending to become an international lawyer, then spent several years as a featured vocalist with the Count Basie Orchestra, the resolution states. Bailey settled in Las Vegas in 1955, according to an oral history interview held by UNLV Special Collections and Archives.

In Las Vegas, Bailey worked as co-producer and master of ceremonies at the Moulin Rouge, a casino open to all races in a segregated city, according to the Nevada Legislature resolution. He became chairman of the local Urban Renewal Advisory Commission in 1956, and Gov. Grant Sawyer appointed him in 1961 to a legislative commission studying discrimination against minorities in Nevada, the resolution states.

Bailey directed a federally encouraged Manpower Services program that trained minority workers for casino jobs traditionally reserved for white employees, according to the resolution. By recruiting casino executives and managers into the effort, the program opened more than 1,000 positions to minorities in under two years, the resolution states.

Donate

Donate

Bailey also hosted the Moulin Rouge’s sponsored television program, which continued on KLAS-Channel 8 under owner Hank Greenspun after the casino closed, according to the Nevada Legislature resolution. It was the first television show produced, acted in and directed by African-American talent and sponsored by African-American-owned businesses, the resolution states. Bailey went on to host a current-events talk show on KLAS and work as a newscaster and variety-show host on KTNV-Channel 13, and he wrote editorials for the Las Vegas Voice, according to the same record.

Bailey and his wife, Anna, opened the Sugar Hill club in West Las Vegas in 1964; it operated for about 25 years and employed more than 500 African Americans, the resolution states. In the mid-1960s, the couple bought the riot-damaged West Owens Shopping Center and converted part of it into the Pan-Afro Auditorium, according to the resolution. Bailey later established the Nevada Economic Development Company, which helped minority-owned businesses secure $300 million in loans and lines of credit over 19 years, the resolution states.

Donate

Donate

President George Bush appointed Bailey deputy director of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency in 1990, a post in which he oversaw the budgets and operations of roughly 200 national agencies over four years, according to the Nevada Equal Rights Commission’s published history of Bailey, which also credits him as the first commission chairman it appointed. Bailey returned to Nevada rather than remain in Washington after Bush left office and spent his later years certifying local minority-owned businesses for a Small Business Administration program, according to the Nevada Legislature resolution. Bailey died in 2014, according to the Nevada Equal Rights Commission.

The institutions Bailey built outlasted him: training pipelines that put Black workers behind blackjack tables, a business-loan program that moved $300 million into minority hands, a Westside nightclub that employed hundreds. Nevada’s gaming industry is still being asked, year after year, how far that access actually reaches.