Atlanta Daily World

Says City Solving Race Bias With More Segregation

LAS VEGAS Nevada (ANP) "This city is 'solving' its growing segregation problem by creating more segregation". An NAACP official told a capacity audience gathered at Second Baptist Church here last week.

Lester P. Bailey, West Coast field secretary, here for a series of public appearances sparking a drive for a Nevada civil rights code, referring to the rapidly growing Negro section declared:

"West of the railroad tracks, the city planners and the city fathers have designed the most complete package of racial segregation this side of the Mississippi."

Terming the Las Vegas Story a Tale of Two Cities," Bailey charged that in "lily-white Las Vegas" Negroes denied service in restaurants, hotels and places of recreation, except in the case of movie houses where he said, "there exists the odd segregatory practice of forcing Negroes to sit along the walls."

In citing what he called the "dire need" for a civil rights code in Nevada, Bailey asserted that a Negro "could traverse the entire state without finding a restaurant that would serve him or a hotel or motel where he could secure lodging."

According to Nevada NAACP officials, Assemblyman John Ryan of Clark County (Las Vegas) was to have introduced a "California-type" civil rights bill last Tuesday. Ryan is president of the county AFL Labor Council.