“If this is so, I cannot see why it should be necessary for a TV station to confine its academic programing to a policy of exclusive, sole negro representation.”
Maheu sympathized, but warned that it might be dangerous to cancel the offensive show. “I, perhaps, am as vehement on this type of subtle propaganda as you are,” he wrote in reply, “but I think we must be expedient in not buying unnecessary problems at this time. Sheriff [Ralph] Lamb and D.A. [George] Franklin have confided to me that we could potentially have a real ‘hot summer’ in Las Vegas this year. My humble recommendation, Howard, would be that we let this particular program run out its time, so that we do not give the black community any opportunity whatsoever to concentrate on us to any degree.”
Hughes was not satisfied. He wanted no trouble, but he didn’t want “Black Heritage” either. And he had a plan:
“Bob, I am wondering if a solution might lie in ceasing all academic programing for the summer months.
“After all, school is closed for the summer, and if the scholastic programing were abandoned, then maybe there would be less criticism for the abandonment of this particular program than if it were replaced by a white-oriented program.”
While the two men continued, in a flurry of memos, to plot the demise of the TV show, Hughes received word of unexpected support: “Both the national and local NAACP has objected to the Black Heritage program. KLAS would like to cancel the show if they can get your approval.”
That changed everything. Now Hughes was in no hurry to see the show go. It continued, in fact, until CBS pulled it off the air two months later.
The reprieve for “Black Heritage” did not apply, however, to other KLAS programs. Even the “Big News” was segregated. When racial tensions flared in local schools, the station went so far as to refuse its parent network film of the disorders for national coverage.
“It is the policy of KLAS to carry matters relating to the Afro problem which are favorable to Las Vegas and to play down that which is unfavorable,” the station manager assured his unseen boss. “In this connection, there is a colored deaf mute who is one of the basketball stars at the University of Nevada. This boy is one of very high character and does not engage to any extent in the integration rabble rousing which is occurring. Therefore, his accomplishments are of nationwide interest to those who see the true reason for the integration problems and certainly would be beneficial to Las Vegas.”
Hughes was unimpressed. Even this “credit-to-his-race” was unacceptable. “We do not want any programs involving negroes,” came the reply from the penthouse. “If we have any other such programs, HRH wants to know of them.”
Television was safe—for the moment at least—but Hughes was ever alert to new threats. Like Arthur Ashe.
The black tennis star had been invited to play in a tournament at the Desert Inn. Actually asked to come. And Maheu had secretly arranged it. It was the Davis Cup championship, a prize attraction, a real plum for Las Vegas. The night before the tournament began, however, Hughes discovered the plot and demanded that the match be canceled. He didn’t want Ashe playing on his courts, fearing that he would lure “hordes of negroes” to his hideout.
Maheu tried to soothe him. “Howard, I am positive we have nothing to worry about. Tennis is not a game that appeals to his people and I am willing to wager that there will be less than a handful of them in the audience. The proportion will be considerably less than we have in our showrooms when some of them are performing here.”
Ashe was accepted—reluctantly—but not Muhammad Ali. There was talk of staging a championship bout in Las Vegas. It was the Great White Hope all over again. Jack Johnson might have sneaked into town under cover of the Tony Awards telecast, but Hughes was not about to put up with his brash, draft-dodging reincarnation, Ali. As usual, he sent Maheu into the ring.
“Howard,” Maheu wrote, “you do not have to spend any time trying to convince me how right you are in your feelings pertaining to Clay. If it is possible, perhaps I feel more deeply about these matters than you.”
Maheu scored in the first round: “I moved on the Clay-Frazier fight and scuttled it to a fair-thee-well insofar as Las Vegas and Nevada are concerned. I personally believe it is incredible that there are those who even entertain the idea of having this no good bastard gain any amount of publicity at the expense of the State.”
Hughes was not content simply to block the fight. He wanted Ali—then facing charges for refusing to fight in Vietnam—put in jail. “We shall do everything in our power,” promised Maheu, “to assure that he ends up there.”
The minstrel show was turning sour.
It would have been funny. Or merely pathetic. An addled old man sealed off from the world, desperately manning the barricades against Ashe and Ali, against propaganda in the morning and phantoms in the night.
But Hughes represented something very real and very ugly in America. Submerged fears. Hidden racism. Feelings no longer respectable to express but still pervasive. All across the country, ordinary people also cringed at shadows in the night. They too wanted blacks kept down or, at least, out of sight. George Wallace brought bigotry out of the closet, and they cheered him. Richard Nixon campaigned with code words like “law-and-order” and “crime in the streets,” and they elected him.
And, all the while, America was burning.
It had started in Watts in 1965—the year before Hughes arrived in Las Vegas—and now it swept through city after city. Riots. Arson. Looting. Summer terror.
Then, at six P.M. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. One moment he stood on the balcony of a Memphis motel, chatting with friends in the courtyard below. The next moment he was dead.
Black America took to the streets. White America watched the war on television.
And Howard Hughes saw all his fears come to life on the TV screen. It was the ultimate horror. Blacks were out of control. First in Washington, then in Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Chicago, finally in more than one hundred cities grief turned to outrage and outrage to violence, a swelling firestorm of unprecedented fury that lasted a full week and claimed forty-six lives.
The images were overwhelming. Soldiers defending a nation from itself occupied charred ghettos, battling blacks on streets strewn with broken glass and stained with blood. Troops in full combat gear took up positions on the White House lawn. A machine-gun emplacement guarded the Capitol steps.
Alone in his penthouse, Hughes too rushed to reinforce the barricades. With not a mention of the martyred civil rights leader, with not a note of sorrow, with not a sober second thought, he poured out a diatribe of racist angst on his bedside legal pad:
“I have just finished watching CBS News on TV. The riots, looting, etc. in Washington, Chicago and other cities was terrible. I wonder how close we are to something like that here?”
Memories of Houston 1917 mixed with frontline footage of America 1968, bringing on nightmare visions of a Las Vegas torn by racial turmoil. It only stiffened his resistance to change.
“I know that is your responsibility and also your specialty,” Hughes continued, taking some comfort in Maheu’s FBI background, “but I also know there is tremendous pressure on the strip owners to adopt a more liberal attitude toward integration, open housing, and employment of more negroes.
“Now, Bob, I have never made my views known on this subject. And I certainly would not say these things in public. However, I can summarize my attitude about employing more negroes very simply—I think it is a wonderful idea for somebody else, somewhere else. I know this is not a very praise-worthy point of view, but I feel the negroes have already made enough progress to last the next 100 years, and there is such a thing as overdoing it.