Storming Caesar's Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty Book Review

'Storming Caesar’s Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty’ is a book by Annelise Orleck. This book focuses on how a group of welfare mothers had successfully built and anti-poverty programs for their country. This is a compelling story about ‘Operation Life’ which was responsible for a series of firsts in Las Vegas like, the first library, the first ever medical center, the first daycare center for children, the first job training provider and the first housing meant for senior citizens.

Running Head: STORMING CAESER’S PALACE
STORMING CAESER’S PALACE
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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‘Storming Caesar’s Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty’
is a book by Annelise Orleck. This book focuses on how a group of welfare mothers had
successfully built and anti-poverty programs for their country. This is a compelling story
about ‘Operation Life’ which was responsible for a series of firsts in Las Vegas like, the first
library, the first ever medical center, the first daycare center for children, the first job training
provider and the first housing meant for senior citizens. In 1972 these woman believed that
only poor mothers were the country’s real experts when it came to poverty. This essay will be
reviewing this book all the while highlighting the evolution of Ruby Duncan and all her
work.
“Poor women must dream their highest dreams and never stop." This book is
surprisingly an easy read given the weight of the topic that has been discussed. It ropes in the
stories of the women who worked so hard to do enormous good for the welfare of the society
they lived in, the very society that needed people to take a stand for them and to help them
out of the painful situation they were in, It is both an ahistorical research and a very
journalistic piece given the amount of realistic research effort given to the book. It delves into
very specific moments of the very lives of the women activists. It narrates countless moments
when the activism was taken public. It records the changes that had occurred in legislation
and the reform processes within various company’s institutions. The impacts each change had
on the society as a whole is also recorded. She analyses and provides insight into the various
developments and the various consequences of each change. The political and social context
of these materials are also explained though this book. The book is a very broad sociological
analysis of those times. The movements had taken place in Nevada and is told from both a
personal and institutional point of view.
There is an apparent minimization of the voice of the author to make sure that the
narrative is very impersonal and formal in nature to make sure that the authenticity of the

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facts are not questioned to be biased. Her research had taken twelve years and Ruby Duncan
had provided her contacts of various people who had in actuality critiqued the work Orleck
was doing. It was evidently very important for Duncan to make sure the story is told
completely. Orleck’s personal politics come through along with the various political
perspective of both Ruby Duncan and her contemporaries like Rosie Seals and Albera Beals
and a group of other activists. Creating and making sure that a movement like this is
sustained is a lot of work, especially when it focuses on the extremely marginalized people
and how poverty they lived in was riddled with disease and violence. The operation life
activists wanted to focus on the ability of people to come together and help the scenario
together to make sure that positive results come faster. This operation was astonishingly
successful given the difficulties that had to be taken into consideration.
Orleck highlights the knowledge of these women and their abilities that was fruitful as
they created really intelligent policies and they effectively designed programs that were anti-
poverty and helped look after the health of these people. This exemplary model is an
exemplary way that helps in the construction of policies that are similar in nature. The book
reiterates the fact that the people in a particular situation are always well equipped with the
necessary knowledge that will help people exactly like them in a better way. It is impossible
for people outside that community to understand what it is like to be in a situation like the
one that they were in to be better equipped with policies they are convinced will help. The
stories are very detailed and set in a very chronological order. They are descriptive about the
highly emotionally ridden drive of these women who just wanted to make their lives and the
lives of countless others like them better. One must also credit the enormous ability of the
activists to have kept all the details in order for Orleck to access. They are extremely honest
and they very apparently went all out to have their stories told. Orleck has done a
commendable work in bringing all their stories together and carefully organizing all the

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information to make sure that it is easily readable, engrossing and filled with correct
information at correct times. Although this was a highly localized event, Orleck has
connected it to national politics and given it a a highly centralized view as well.
Ruby Duncan plays a very influential role in both the book in reality. She was the co-
founder of the Operation Life, Orleck talks about in her book. Born in 1932 in Tallulah,
Louisiana, she fought wholeheartedly for the welfare rights for the poor in Las Vegas,
Nevada. She was also the president of an organization called The Welfare Organization of
Clark County. She belonged to a family of poor, black, sharecroppers and she had spent most
of her early life laboring like her parents, in cotton fields, all throughout Mya to October and
she even attended a black school that was eight miles away from her home from November to
April. By the time she was four years old, her parents had passed away so she basically grew
up an orphan under her relatives in Tallulah. She started living with her Aunt in Las Vegas
from 1953 when she moved there from Louisiana. There she first worked as a housemaid and
then a maid in a hotel.
That is where she was fired because she had organized a protest with the other hotel
maids because of the low wages and sad working conditions. It was evident that she would
not stand submission especially when she was working so hard. After being fired, she used to
live on the Aid to dependent Children that was given to her and her children, this was given
to her by the state. She did land a job at the pantry at a hotel on the Las Vegas strip however
she suffered injuries because of the heavy work. After this she had contacted the state
department of the welfare for some training for a job. She did enter a federal training program
abut it had shut down without any explanation.
She became radicalized after meeting mothers at a program that were available to the
welfare mothers in the Las Vegas Westside which paid 25$ a week for a sewing class. It is in

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this class that she sat in the first row of the class and shared stories with other mothers and
talked about the problems that they suffered on a regular basis. It is though the opinions all of
them voiced and the bond they formed through their pain, that it set the foundation of the
Nevada welfare rights Organizations. This organization led the movement of the Welfare
rights in Las Vegas. Their political activism succeeded in bringing forward countless changes
in the state. The Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women Infants.
Various young attorneys also came together to give them advice. Various programs like
protests, eat-ins, speeches and marches to incite feelings and help the welfare organization.
She had even organized a march of 6000 people to show the state that the welfare
mothers were rather serious about the matter that had to be communicated. They wanted to
make the injustice public by almost shutting down the casinos for an hour. They had invited
various celebrities to come support them in their cause and this resulted in a serious cut in
business across most casinos and even Caesar’s palace. The march was proved successful and
it had successfully gained a lot of attention both locally and nationally. All the mothers that
were initially dropped from the welfare were soon added in and things got better for them.
Ion 1972, she had found operation life. She had even served as a Democratic delegate in 1980
for Nevada. She even received various degrees from various colleges and was even honored
during the women’s history month.
The community she had founded along with other women like her, which was called
Operation Life, deemed positive and profitable. It was a non-profit community which was
also a development organization. Which worked for the improvement of the living conditions
in the Westside of Las Vegas and tried to promote countless reforms for the welfare of the
people there. The other founders were also members of the Clark County Welfare Rights
Organization, the chapter belonging to the national Welfare Rights Organization. The people
involved in this operation along with Ruby Duncan were women like Essie Henderson, Mary

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Wesley, Rosie Seals, Alversa Beals and Emma Stampley. This organization was created on
Septermber, 1972. The first executive director of this program was Ruby Duncan from 1972
to 1990. Operation Life was responsible for the creation if the first library in the area. The
first day care was also set up by them and even a community pool within the Westside
neighborhood. The other things they were responsible for creating and had created were, a
medical clinic for children, a program that helped people find jobs, a prevention program for
drugs and violence along with many other service that were launched. About a hundred
people were employed, mostly they were other welfare mothers, by the year 1980. In that
year the program had also received grants from Las Vegas and the United States Department
of Housing to help them construct new housing facilities for the poor. It had ended in 1992.
Ruby Duncan was an iconic figure that had brought in a lot of changes to the history
with her organizational skills and ability to bring people together for a greater cause. Orleck
has done a brilliant job at bringing all these stories together and has helped people understand
the struggle that had gone down back then. Her brainchild, Operation Life was indeed a large
step taken towards a better future for the poor. This book and the effort of both the writers
and the women have made a mark on American Literature and has reserved a special place in
the hearts of people because of the gripping nature of the writing and the scintillating
presentation of facts. It is a must on the bookshelves of everyone who wants to know about
the struggle of these people and have an interest in the politics that shaped the country.

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References
Orleck, Annelise. Storming Caesars palace: How black mothers fought their own war on
poverty. Beacon Press, 2005.