Racism failed, and still fails, to derail civil rights activist’s mission

The Rev. Jesse Scott was a civil rights activist with a style all his own. He wasn't a screamer or a chest thumper. He was nothing like those bellicose Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Maybe that's why people from all political persuasions, some who agreed with him, some who didn't, respected Scott and mourned his death Monday at age 90.

When he was 84, he asked the Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial board to take a position to put more money into education to fund the front end rather than pay for prisons, mental hospitals and welfare at the back end. They weren't buying what he was selling, but they listened respectfully. In his 40 years in Las Vegas, Scott earned that respect.

Afterward, impressed by his tenacity, I wrote a column comparing him to Don Quixote, the fictional character who tried to defend the oppressed and right wrongs, but also tilted at windmills.

Scott told me then that all his life he's operated under the philosophy "we can do better if we have the desire. I'm not saying don't go to court, I'm not saying don't have a demonstration, but start by talking. Persuade people to do the things that are right and at the end, everybody profits."

As president of the NAACP and a Baptist minister, Scott was quick to call a news conference, whether it was about police brutality, affirmative action hiring, the failure of local governments to invest in poorer communities or perceived racism in the news media.

Yet after the race riots in 1992, following the acquittal of police officers in the Rodney King beating case, Scott was a voice of calm, not a voice of rage.

"I helped make this a better community, and we don't have the flare-ups and racial tension we could have had," he said in 2004. He was not bragging or exaggerating, just stating facts.

The resume he sent me in 2004 listed two achievements. Both involved opening doors for African-Americans to get jobs in the gaming industry in Las Vegas.

He cited the 1971 consent decree with 18 Las Vegas Strip hotels and four labor unions in which every fourth person hired would be black until a goal of 12.5 percent was reached in 23 job categories. It forced the hotels and unions to offer opportunities where none had been offered before.

Then as now, opponents of quotas hated the idea of being forced to pass over white applicants for a black applicant, but affirmative action hiring in the 1970s in the Las Vegas gaming industry wasn't going to happen without quotas.

The second achievement Scott named was the subsequent negotiation of two employment contracts with Caesars Palace and the MGM Grand that mandated the training of black employees to become hotel and casino managers. Today, MGM Mirage is known for its commitment to diversity throughout its resorts. But it did not go willingly in that direction early on.

In his later years, Scott's goal was improving education for minority students.

Tucked among the hateful statements left at the end of Tuesday's news story about his death was a comment from a woman whose son attended the elementary school named after Scott. She said her son and others cried after hearing of Scott's death. Rev. Scott deserved those tears.

He was a man with his own style of reason, whose memory cannot be belittled or denigrated by the spewers of race-based hate, no matter how hard they try.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.