Nat King Cole was an enormously popular crooner, earning $4,500 a week in Las Vegas in 1956. He headlined at the whites-only Thunderbird Hotel, where he wasn’t allowed to venture beyond the showroom and the cook’s resting area behind the kitchen. Cole’s road manager was given a room in the hotel because he was white, but the high-paid feature attraction had to find other accommodations. He regularly stayed in a rooming house on the West Side.
Frank Sinatra was a great fan of Cole’s. While performing at the Sands, Sinatra noticed that Cole almost always ate his dinner alone in his dressing room. Sinatra asked his valet, a black man named George, to find out why. George explained the facts to Frank. “Coloreds aren’t allowed in the dining room at the Sands.”
Sinatra was enraged. He told the maitre d’ and the waitresses that if it ever happened again, he’d see that everyone was fired.
The next night, Sinatra invited Cole to dinner, making his guest the first black man to sit down and eat in the the Garden Room at the Sands.