Only one black man earned a spot with Sinatra's Rat Pack in Las Vegas.
Sammy Davis Junior.
Mister Show Business might have been the token black for the Silent Majority, but Mr. Show Business was well aware of his place in the white world after a stint in the Army.
"Overnight the world looked different. It wasn't one color any more. I could see the protection I'd gotten all my life from my father. I appreciated their loving hope that I'd never need to know about prejudice and hate, but they were wrong. It was as if I'd walked through a swinging door for eighteen years, a door which they had always secretly held open. My talent was the weapon, the power, the way for me to fight racism. It was the one way I might hope to affect a man's thinking."
While a headliner at The Frontier Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, Davis lived on the other side of the tracks and club owners subjected him to the same Jim Crow treatment prevailing throughout the Deep South and most of America. As his popularity rose, Davis refused to play any casinos practicing racial segregation, which was a brave act considering most of the joints were owned by the Mafia.
Even worse was his kidnapping by a mobster to prevent his dating the actress Kim Novak. He got the message, but raised the ante by breaking a long-standing white-black taboo by kissing Nancy Sinatra.
After JFK refused to invite him to the inaugural party, Davis switched parties and his support of Richard Nixon tarnished his stature in the black community, but he was the first black man to sleep in the White House as a guest.
I don't have a bad word to say about him.
He was all Show Business.
To see his talent, please go to the following URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFYiRTPsrqg
He did what he had to do to do his best for himself and his people.
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