-We move now to a new documentary highlighting the Historic Westside of Las Vegas.

Across the Tracks-A Las Vegas Westside Story explores how the once racially segregated area of the city made for a unique setting during the Civil Rights Movement.

Its director, Emmett Gates, joins us now.

Welcome to Nevada Week.

(Emmett Gates) Thank you.

-So when did you start working on this, and what inspired it?

-Well, I grew up in Las Vegas.

We started working on this about a year ago.

And you know, I approached the Las Vegas Centennial Commission.

I said I got this idea.

Has anyone ever done an in-depth look at the history of black Las Vegas?

And it turns out while some people have made attempts, no one really went deep.

So I decided that's what we would do.

-What surprised you during this process?

Having grown up in Las Vegas, what did you not know that you found out?

-Oh, so much.

-Yeah.

-So much.

In fact, one of the things that we want as a team for this film is for every single person that watches it no longer-- or no matter how long they've been in Vegas, we want every person to walk away saying, I did not know that.

At least something.

So there was so much.

-But specifically, maybe just one big thing.

-I didn't know that Josephine Baker had such an impact.

-Tell me about her.

-Josephine Baker, you know, a performer, but much more than that.

She moves to France because of the racism and the Jim Crow things she had to deal with here.

And she gets there, and she's embraced by the people for her talent.

And then when the Nazis come into France, she continues her fight for human rights by helping the French Resistance, hiding out Jewish refugees in her mansion, you know, getting weapons to the French Resistance because she knew, just from her experiences in America, what that was.

And she comes back to America, a lot of people don't know this, she spoke on the same stage as Martin Luther King in 1963 at the March on Washington.

She, you know, she comes back here, and she comes to Vegas, specifically, and makes sure that her show, when she's performing, is not going to be segregated.

Because at that time, Vegas was segregated.

And she fought to make sure that whoever wanted to see her show could see it.

Her immediate move was to hail a taxi to Jackson Avenue on the west side.

The first mission was to visit each and every beauty salon and barber shop where she personally handed out tickets to the show.

The second mission was to contact local NAACP President Woodrow Wilson.

No, not that one.

This Woodrow Wilson.

The backing of the NAACP would guarantee a national spotlight on the discriminatory practices in Las Vegas if her contract wasn't honored.

Josephine was playing chess.

And that night when her guests were denied entry at the door... -So she hears what's happening and apparently sits down on the stage when she's supposed to be performing and says in the microphone that she will not perform until her demands are met.

-And how did you describe her in the documentary, because you are narrating this.

-Yeah.

-I believe it was Beyonce and-- -Yeah.

When she got to France, she was all of those things.

She was Taylor Swift.

She was Beyonce.

She was that person in France at that time.

And instead of letting it go to her head, she remembered where she came from and who she was and what being human meant.

And so I think-- I'm hoping that young people watching this will aspire to learn more about her.

-Yeah.

Let's see some T-shirts with Josephine Baker on them.

So Across the Tracks - A Las Vegas Westside Story, let's break down that title.

The first part, "Across the Tracks," for that we have a clip from the documentary.

Let's watch that.

-Ernie Cragin was a longtime Las Vegan who had worked for the railroad.

And in 1931, he was elected mayor.

If you were black and you owned a business on the east side of the railroad tracks, you don't get your license renewed unless you move.

-This was an attempt to force black people to settle in the areas that were already divested from.

-Banks are not going to lend you money to buy a house east of the tracks.

And Cragin helps drive the effort to make segregation official in Las Vegas.

-Did you know that going into this film?

-I did not.

-No.

-No, not those particulars.

Yeah.

-I mean, because there's different ways that segregation was enacted across the country, and that's Las Vegas' story.

But you did grow up here, and I asked you off-camera ahead of this, At what point did you learn about segregation, because you even lived on the west side at one time.

-I did.

And, of course, by the time-- I'm not gonna tell you my age, but as an infant in the 1970s when my mother came here to take advantage of the new opportunities for black people to work in the gaming industry, we grew up not knowing any of this, you know?

This was our world.

So when we would watch these black and white videos of, you know, just 10 years before, it was like ancient history as far as we were concerned.

But yeah.

These particular details, I got some of the best historians in Las Vegas.

Talking to them and learning this stuff, you know, Mike Green, Bob Stoldal, Claytee White, Tyler Perry, Dr. Tyler Perry from UNLV.

And yeah, they really kind of filled this all in for us.

-You did say your mother first, was the first one to inform you about this.

Do you remember how it made you feel as a child?

-Well, you know, she never, she never told me with anger.

She was just like, This is the way things were, you know, because by the time I enter elementary school in the late '70s, early '80s, she's coming from a different time.

So she's a little afraid of what, you know, what's going to happen when schools were integrated.

But, you know, me and my friends, we were kids.

We grew up.

We had fun.

And color, we didn't see color.

We didn't understand it, you know?

So, you know, when she started to tell me about these things, I was just like, that's weird.

That's crazy.

-It is weird.

-Yeah.

-So the second part of the title, "A Las Vegas Westside Story," any inspiration from the musical, the West Side Story?

-Of course.

Definitely a play on words.

I think it's important to note that in the early part of Las Vegas' history, there was none of that.

Blacks, whites, Latinos, everyone lived together in what is now the downtown area, and they would, you know, they had businesses, blacks owned businesses in what is now the downtown area.

It was only when we see Mayor Cragin come in.

And not just him, a lot of Southerners that were moving to the area.

Specifically, once the Hoover Dam is completed, you know, we move up to the, the ending of prohibition, the legalization of gambling.

You know, a lot of the money came from Southern oil money.

They were coming, and they brought a lot of their prejudices with them.

And Cragin, he made the move.

I mean, it wasn't just him.

There was plenty more that were behind it, but he made the move to say, Okay, you know what, we're not going to renew your business licenses.

We're not going to allow you to buy unless you do it on the west side of the tracks.

Right?

And when people hear West Las Vegas, of course, they're gonna think Summerlin today.

But at that time, it is what we now call the Historic Westside, which is just west of the tracks right behind Union Plaza, you know, that whole area there.

So yeah, that's where the west side was.

-You do a tremendous job of documenting the lows and also the highs of the Historic Westside, one of them being when the Moulin Rouge opened, the first racially integrated casino in the entire country.

And for this particular film, you're using computer generated images for that part.

Why, and what does it add?

-Well, as you know now, the site of the original Moulin Rouge is an empty lot now.

And I think just using a lot of archival photos, because there's no video footage.

Do you believe that?

Very little video footage of that original site.

So there's just black and white pictures.

And when young people watch this, they're like, Ah, that's just some ancient history.

So we wanted to bring it in full color.

We wanted to make it as realistic as possible so they could be there.

-Tell people how they can watch this.

-Okay, so we're opening at Galaxy Theatres at the Boulevard Mall on March 6.

We're trying to get more dates.

I've had difficulty getting other theaters to allow us, but yeah.

So March 6, 6 p.m., Boulevard Mall.

Tickets are available on slicktion.com exclusively.

-Thank you, Emmett Gates, so much for your time.