Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty Paperback – July 1, 2006 by Annelise Orleck (Author)

In Storming Caesars Palace, historian Annelise Orleck tells the compelling story of how a group of Black welfare mothers in Las Vegas rejected dependency and organized their own path out of poverty. Born of desperation but fueled by dignity, women like Ruby Duncan, Mary Wesley, and Alversa Beals founded Operation Life, setting up clinics, daycare, housing, libraries, job training, and more.

These women challenged not only welfare bureaucracies but broader systems of race, class, and gender, asserting that those most affected by poverty are the best experts on how to combat it. This revised edition includes a new prologue and epilogue that situate their struggle in contemporary contexts of labor, race, and social justice