Pop would ask his father, “Why are we staying here?” His father, relentlessly shielding young Sammy from racial adversity, would simply tell Pop the same ole line, “Oh hell, son, they’re just jealous of our act.”
Pop would later recount in a 1989 interview on Terry Wogan’s BBC show that “in the ’50s, every black star that worked Vegas, that helped build it up, who would pack a joint—I’m talking Lena Horne, Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine, the Mills Brothers—were not allowed to eat there, could not walk through the front door of the casino, gamble, nothing. You would perform, get out of the casino by the side door, and head to the ghetto.”
Claude Trenier said, “I remember an incident at the Riviera. Billy Eckstine went in there—he and his manager—at the craps table, and the guy says, ‘You can’t play. We don’t serve niggers here.’ Billy Eckstine socked him right in his jaw. Oh, we ran into that quite a bit . . . we had to go out and sit out by the swimming pool until our next appearance. They didn’t have dressing rooms or nothing for us. When we lived here, we had to go on the west side—to the colored boarding house.”
Many years later, once Pop’s eyes were opened to the real sign of the times, he refused to entertain at places that practiced racial discrimination. He made certain it was in his contract that the trio would be allowed room, board, full use of the facilities, and would permit colored people in his audience. But he always had mixed emotions about that.
“By integration we lost a great deal and we gained a great deal,” Pop told Terry Wogan. “When everything started to integrate, in terms of acceptance . . . we lost the ghetto, which was all our culture. There was the colored barbershop, and I say ‘colored’ because that was the terminology used in those days. The ‘colored’ rooming house where we all stayed, there was community. We all suffered the same indignities; it brought us, as black performers, closer together. We shared experiences and we hung out. As soon as it started to open up, and everyone could stay at the hotel they were working in, we very rarely saw each other anymore. And it’s a shame we lost that; it’s too bad we couldn’t have maintained a little balance.”
Unfortunately, during World War II, my father no longer had my grandfather and Uncle Will to protect and shelter him from the racial injustice in the army. In 1943, my father joined the Infantry Basic Training Center at Fort Francis E. Warren in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
My father was a gun enthusiast and an avid movie nut. He pictured himself as an aerial gunner in the Air Corps, a little guy in a cockpit with his scarf blowing in the wind, shooting at the enemy like in some old Hollywood movie. But Pop never had any schooling, so when he took his exams for the Air Corps, it was clear that he couldn’t write and could barely read. He could not join the only black unit, the Tuskegee Airmen, as they had graduated with the highest honors.
Dad was sent to the Infantry Basic Training Center. The infantry of his dreams it was not. But at least he didn’t have to read and write. My father was a patriot and agreed to defend his country. What he did not expect was to defend himself against enemies within his own military unit—bigots in his own barracks. It turned out to be an awakening he would never forget.
“What are you up to, Pregasaurus?” Pop woke from his power nap.
“Just watching you nap, Pop. Brain cells churning . . . ,” I said.
“What’s on your mind, Trace Face?”
In the army Dad learned to use his talent as a weapon against racial prejudice.
Frank Sinatra may have been King of the Bobbysoxers in the 1940s, but Dad made some young female fans of his own.
“I was thinking about the time you were in the army,” I explained.
“Been there, done that!” Pop said.
“Stories, Pop, I want to hear the stories . . . again!” I begged. I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth, not just read about it in his interviews and books.
“Awwww, grab me another Strawberry Crush and maybe I’ll indulge you but keep in mind, viewer discretion is advised!”
I smiled and went inside to the bar. The nurse handed me pills for my father to take with his Strawberry Crush. I placed his drink and pills next to his chaise lounge out by his sacred garden and pool. He swallowed the pills as I sat next to him.
“Your turn,” I said to my father.
“Well, Trace Face, I was seventeen when I joined the army, all of five foot six inches and one hundred twenty pounds. All the soldiers were twice my size. A little lost, I politely ask a white PFC sitting on the barracks’ steps where Building Two Hundred Two was located. He sized me up and down, reluctantly told me it is two buildings down followed by ‘And I’m not your buddy, you black bastard!’”