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Part of an interview with Ruby Amie-Pilot on August 7, 2012. In this clip Amie-Pilot talks about plans to picket Floyd Patterson fight at the Las Vegas Convention Center, because blacks not allowed to attend.
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Ruby Amie-Pilot oral history interview, 2012 August 07. OH-02430. [Audio recording] Oral History Research Center, Special Collections and Archives, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Las Vegas, Nev
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How many people would be at a meeting? Oh, it would be 25 or 30 people at least. We would try to get as many as we could to the meetings and then we would come back to the community to rally support because everybody didn't have a car to drive out there. And I truly believe a lot of our meetings we had to try to keep them low key because of the strategizing you're doing because of being sabotaged in some of your things. Because one incident, when we were planning to picket the fight of Floyd Patterson at the Las Vegas Convention Center, which was just a rotunda at that time; we were planning to picket that event because blacks was not allowed. This would have been one way of getting national attention because here you have all of these tourists coming in here and they really were not aware of the prejudice that went on. I think they even got the idea that the blacks that worked within the hotels probably lived there because they knew nothing about the Westside. So this was one of those times that we felt that we could let the world know because this is going to be broadcast all over, this heavyweight fight. So we had our plans, making picket signs and everything. But somehow the word got out. So the powers-to-be called us to a meeting and asked if we would not do it and they made promises about things that would be opened up to us and everything. So we did not picket that fight that night. And I know that there were a few people allowed in that could afford the price. They did not offer to give you a free ticket to go in, but they would offer that you could go to these events. Oh, so some black people from the community did attend. I don't want to misrepresent that, but I do think that some of the representatives were able to go. And who were the powers to be? The mafia ran the town at that time. You had the hotel owners, which I could name. Wilbur Clark fronted the Desert Inn. Jack Entratter fronted the Sands hotel. Major Riddle fronted the Dunes hotel. Just on down the line these names were connected with the hotels, but they were actually run by the mafia.