The Peoples Of Las Vegas

One City, Many Faces

Jerry L Simich, Thomas C. Wright, Jerry L Simich, Thomas C. Wright

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780874176513
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Beneath the glitzy surface of the resorts and the seemingly cookie-cutter suburban sprawl of Las Vegas lies a vibrant and diverse ethnic life. People of varied origins make up the population of nearly two million and yet, until now, little mention of the city has been made in studies and discussion of ethnicity or immigration. The Peoples of Las Vegas: One City, Many Faces fills this void by presenting the work of seventeen scholars of history, political science, sociology, anthropology, law, urban studies, cultural studies, literature, social work, and ethnic studies to provide profiles of thirteen of the city's many ethnic groups. The book's introduction and opening chapters explore the historical and demographic context of these groups, as well as analyze the economic and social conditions that make Las Vegas so attractive to recent immigrants. Each group is the subject of the subsequent chapters, outlining migration motivations and processes, economic pursuits, cultural institutions and means of transmitting culture, involvement in the broader community, ties to homelands, and recent demographic trends.

CHAPTER 1

Immigration, Ethnicity, and the Rise of Las Vegas

EUGENE P. MOEHRING

Paris, Luxor, Bellagio, the Rio, the Sahara, and the Imperial Palace are more than familiar Las Vegas icons. Together, they comprise an architectural montage of foreign lands on four continents from which the United States has drawn millions of its citizens, and Las Vegas thousands of its tourists and residents. Throughout American history, the presence of foreign cultures has influenced national development. Beginning with the original British beachheads at Jamestown and Plymouth, ethnicity has played a continuing role in forging America into the multinational society it is today.

The ethnic composition of cities such as New York, San Francisco, and Las Vegas has been shaped by the patterns of immigration to America over the past two centuries. The first great influx of people occurred after Napoleon’s defeat cleared the oceans of hostile navies. This movement, the 1820–60 flood celebrated in every American schoolchild’s history book, consisted primarily of northern and western Europeans. The push factors dominated, as the great potato famine teamed with religious oppression and poverty to drive millions of Irish out of their homeland. In addition the failed liberal revolutions of 1848 banished thousands of political refugees from France and Germany, while poverty, primogeniture, lack of space, and other factors forced many Scandinavians and other western Europeans across the Atlantic. People from the British Isles dominated these antebellum waves. But after the Civil War and for the rest of the century, eastern and southern Europeans began to comprise a significant portion of this torrent, until Congress imposed quotas in the 1920s to stem the tide of non–Anglo-Saxon peoples. The port of entry for many of these groups was New York City, except in the West, where—in addition to Mexicans crossing the border—thousands of Chinese (and in later decades, Japanese, Filipinos, and others) entered the country through San Francisco and other coastal cities.¹

The antebellum newcomers flocked primarily to Boston, Philadelphia, and New York, where commerce and industry created many unskilled jobs. But after 1870, as Russia, Italy, and other governments in eastern and southern Europe began to ease their traditional restraints on emigration, millions of Italians, Greeks, and Slavs embarked for the United States. As America’s industrial center gradually shifted westward after 1860, many of these newcomers found work in Chicago, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and other manufacturing cities, which also served as portals to the region’s farms for those preferring a rural life. For most of the nineteenth century, however, immigrants avoided the South because of its relative lack of cities and factories, its hostile climate, and its reliance upon African American slaves and free blacks for cheap labor.

The twentieth century brought major changes. Both World War I and II encouraged black migrations to northern cities for better paying jobs in guns-and-butter industries. In addition, the Great Depression combined with pestilence, drought, and mechanization to drive thousands of Dust Bowl Joads westward, creating a labor shortage that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor. But the century’s major trend was the shift in sources of immigrants from Europe to Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Rim. The quota acts of 1921 and 1924, hastily passed by an anti-Socialist Congress following the Red Scare, sharply cut back on southern and eastern European nationalities and instead filled business’s spiraling need for cheap labor by allowing more Mexican and Caribbean peoples into the country.

After World War II and especially during the McCarthy Era, Congress began to reform many of the immigration laws that had favored northern and western Europeans. Nevertheless, between 1951 and 1965 53 percent of new arrivals to the United States were still European; only 6.6 percent were Asian. But the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, part of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, dramatically altered the historic flow of peoples. Between 1966 and 1980 less than 25 percent of all newcomers came from Europe, a major drop from traditional levels. North (Canada and Mexico) and Central America contributed 35 percent, and Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Middle East accounted for 30 percent. By the 1980s the trend was even more pronounced. Between 1981 and 1985 the European share plummeted to only 11.2 percent, barely above South America’s 6.6 percent. The Caribbean share, which had risen from 7 percent before 1965 to 18 percent in the 1970s, also fell a bit to 13 percent in the early 1980s. Even the North and Central American figure dropped to 18 percent, primarily because Asians constituted almost half (48 percent) of the total amount.²

A variety of events—including civil wars, revolutions, drought, pestilence, poverty, tribal conflict, political oppression, and religious persecution—pushed thousands of Asians, Hispanics, Africans, and other groups out of their countries. Many of these migrants settled in the Sunbelt states because of the South and West’s proximity to their homelands, the familiar warm climate, and the “presence of existing colonies of the same or related ethnic groups.” According to historian Elliott Barkan, the chain of towns stretching along the U.S. border from Florida to Southern California and over to Hawaii gradually formed “a regional axis for entry and settlement.” He argued that the “rippling effect” of the civil wars, revolutions, and droughts in the Third World “created many new opportunities along the Miami-Honolulu Axis.”³

Statistics indicate that cities such as Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles became significant ports of entry after 1965. A comparison of the average annual number of immigrants processed in selected ports of entry shows that between 1955 and 1965 New York processed 122,000, while the Miami-Honolulu Axis (comprising Miami, New Orleans, other Gulf Coast ports such as Biloxi and Mexican border points such as El Paso, Nogales, and El Centro as well as San Diego, Los Angeles, and Honolulu) processed 94,000. But in 1966–79, the totals were 130,000 and 163,000 respectively and in 1982–85, 128,000 and 237,000. At the same time, figures for the Pacific Coast (encompassing ports from Monterey to Alaska) during those years were also impressive at 24,000, 88,000, and 166,000.⁴

Since 1970 the composition of the Southwest’s city populations has reflected these demographic trends, supplemented by interregional and especially intraregional migration and high Hispanic and Asian birthrates within the United States. In El Paso, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Tucson, and San Diego, African American communities have grown substantially since 1960, but they have been outpaced by their Hispanic counterparts. In Phoenix, for example, the number of blacks rose from 25,000 in 1960 to over 48,000 in 1980, but their percentage of the total population in the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) actually fell from 3.8 percent to 3.2 percent, partially because the Hispanic portion rose from 13.2 percent (193,000 people) in 1980 to 26.5 percent ten years later. The same was true of Tucson, where the absolute number of blacks rose from 8,000 to 15,000 between 1960 and 1980, but their percentage fell (from 3.0 to 2.8 percent), partially because the Hispanics’ figure surged to 21 percent of the metropolitan population.⁵

The San Diego experience was similar. Once again, the black population soared from 39,000 (3.8 percent) to 104,000 (5.8 percent) during the same period, but by 1980 the Hispanic figure had already passed 275,000, or 14.8 percent of the metropolitan population. Farther east in Albuquerque, blacks were only 2.2 percent of the local population in 1980 compared with 36.1 percent for residents of Spanish origin (Hispanics). In El Paso the disparity was even greater (3.8 to 61 percent), with Hispanics representing a majority of the SMSA’s population. And the gap has been widening across the urban Southwest. In 1996 blacks still totaled only 3.7 percent of Tucson’s (Pima County’s) population, while the Hispanics approached 28 percent. Although the number of Asians and Pacific Islanders has not been as impressive in Tucson (2.3 percent) or Phoenix (where, for example, Chinese account for less than 1 percent), their totals in San Diego and other California cities more accurately reflect their recently high immigration rates. In the sprawling Los Angeles SMSA (which includes Orange County), between 1980 and 1997, the black share of the total population fell (from 17 to 8.3 percent) while figures for Hispanics (27.5 to 38.5 percent) and Asian Americans (6.6 to 11.1 percent) rose, and the same pattern held for San Diego.⁶

Since 1960 the changing composition of Las Vegas’s population has reflected these southwestern trends, because thousands of immigrants entering through the Miami-Honolulu Axis eventually made their way to the resort center in search of employment. Still, Las Vegas’s diversity is not a recent phenomenon; its roots lie deep in the city’s past.

When Las Vegas began its life in 1905, a transportation-based economy dominated the scene. Unlike the typical mining camp, railroad towns, with their forwarding merchants, warehouses, and freight yards, tended to attract more married men and women but fewer Chinese and a different mix of ethnic groups. A survey of Las Vegas’s first census in 1910 indicates that whites of European ancestry dominated a population that also included a native band of Southern Paiute Indians. But early Las Vegas was a town evenly split by first- and second-generation Americans. Although the vast majority of residents were American born, only 50.4 percent of adults claimed American-born parents.

In terms of ancestry, early Las Vegas reflected the nation’s European bias. As in many mining towns, the Irish were the largest group, with the Germans, Scots, and Scandinavians following in that order. The Welsh accounted for only four adults—in stark contrast to their significant numbers in milling communities across the region. To be sure, western Europeans topped the figures; there were only a few residents of Romanian, Austrian (mainly Croatians and Serbians from the Austro-Hungarian empire), and Polish ancestry. Even the Italians, who were plentiful in Nevada milling communities such as Eureka, claimed only nine countrymen in Las Vegas.⁷

The early railroad town attracted a relatively small Asian population. Despite their reputation as railroad builders, the Chinese were not drawn in large numbers to the construction of the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad or to the Las Vegas and Tonopah line in 1907. As a result, there were only four Chinese in town, and they engaged in laundry and culinary work. Nor was there a large Japanese contingent (only fourteen relatively young males), although this group did live near and work for the railroad. The town’s black population was also small and clustered on North Second Street in the saloon district. In 1910 Hispanics represented the largest minority in Las Vegas, just as they do today. Fifty-six Mexicans (no other Latin American nationals were present) comprised roughly .06 percent of the population. In contrast to Asians and blacks, Mexicans did not cluster residentially but lived all over town. In addition they ranged through all ages, tended to live in families, and engaged in a variety of occupations beyond railroad work.⁸

Like many railroad-division towns without valuable agricultural or mining hinterlands, Las Vegas grew slowly, hosting only 2,300 people in 1920. A bitter strike against the Union Pacific in 1922 (which resulted in the company’s moving its yards and repair facilities to Caliente) cost the city dozens of lucrative jobs as well as population. But the passage of the Boulder Canyon Act in 1928 and the start of dam construction helped boost the 1930 population to 5,100. Still, Americans of western European ancestry continued to dominate. Even though some blacks, Hispanics, and Asians came to town in response to the boom, by 1934 they held less than 1 percent of the more than 5,000 jobs on the project. Not surprisingly, the census taker counted only 150 African Americans in town in 1930, and just 28 more a decade later.⁹

Even after Nevada relegalized casino gambling in 1931, Las Vegas was still primarily a railroad town, servicing trains and transshipping cargoes. Only a few clubs catered to visitors and locals along Fremont Street and the Los Angeles Highway. The Meadows and Railroad Pass casinos served dam builders along the Boulder Highway, but following the end of construction in 1936 and the resulting exodus of workers, The Meadows club closed for lack of business.

It was World War II that enthroned gambling as the town’s major industry. Between 1941 and 1945, 55,000 military men attended classes at the Army Gunnery School (today Nellis Air Force Base) northeast of town, while thousands more soldiers and marines guarded Hoover Dam or trained for the invasion of Africa at the Desert Warfare Center south of today’s Laughlin. It was these weekend visitors, along with busloads of defense workers from Southern California and Basic Magnesium in Henderson, who thronged the city’s growing number of casinos.

The early 1940s also witnessed the birth of the Strip. The opening of Thomas Hull’s El Rancho Vegas in 1941 signaled a new era in which gambling migrated from its traditional confines in the small Downtown clubs serving the railroad station to the empty desert lands bordering the highway, where the green-felt world of poker and dice thrived in the glamorous atmosphere of a resort hotel. By 1948 the El Rancho, Last Frontier, Fabulous Flamingo, and Thunderbird casinos lured thousands of Angelenos to the budding Strip, where cheap desert lands provided the space required for parking, pools, showrooms, retail arcades, gourmet restaurants, luxurious hotels, and substantial casinos. By the end of the 1950s, the trend had only intensified with the Desert Inn, Sands, Sahara, Riviera, Dunes, Stardust, and other properties.

The rise of the Strip gradually altered the emerging metropolitan area’s demographics. While many local whites had hoped the war’s end would encourage African American defense workers to abandon the Valley, the development of a vibrant resort sector convinced them to stay. To curry favor with the growing swarm of white tourists in the late 1940s and early 1950s, resorts on the Strip and Downtown informally banned minorities from casinos, restaurants, and hotel rooms, while at the same time eagerly hiring them as custodians, room maids, and porters. The same was true of the city’s motels, which handled tourist overflow and the low-end market. Although most of these positions were unskilled, the pay was better than that of comparable jobs in the South. As a result, black residents increased from 3,174 in 1950 (6.6 percent of the total population) to 11,005 (8.7 percent) a decade later.¹⁰

The trend continued into the 1960s and early 1970s, as the construction of larger resorts created more jobs. The opening of Caesars Palace (1966), the Aladdin (1966), the International–Las Vegas Hilton (1969), and the first MGM Grand (1973), created over 10,000 new jobs. By 1970 the number of African Americans had risen to 24,760, or 9.1 percent of the SMSA’s total population—a modest percentage gain over the previous decade. Hispanic figures for this same period, however, were a harbinger of things to come. Although residents of Latin American origin had enjoyed a respectable presence in the city since its earliest days, as late as 1950 there were still only 236 Hispanics in the Las Vegas city proper, with another 342 scattered across North Las Vegas, Henderson, and unincorporated portions of Clark County. As historian Corinne Escobar has noted, Mexicans traditionally had avoided Nevada, which lay between the two great immigrant pathways out of Mexico: through Southern California to the Pacific Northwest and through Texas into Colorado and the Rocky Mountain states.¹¹

Even though nineteenth-century Nevada had consistently led the nation in the number of aliens per capita, European Americans and Chinese had accounted for most of them. Hispanics had never migrated to the state in great numbers, and neither Hispanics nor Asians came to Las Vegas in significant waves until the 1960s. Between 1960 and 1970, the number of Hispanics in Clark County rose from 578 to 9,937 (3.6 percent of the...