Storming Caesars Palace

Film. Directed by Hazel Gurland-Pooler. 2023. 85 minutes.
Tells the story of how Las Vegas activist Ruby Duncan’s grassroots movement of moms fought for guaranteed income.

Time Periods: 1945–1960

If you want your life to get better, you got to fight for it. — Ruby Duncan, welfare rights activist

Storming Caesars Palace uplifts the story of Ruby Duncan and a band of mothers who launched a revolutionary Black feminist anti-poverty movement in the 1960s and 1970s.

Ruby Duncan faced the stigma and harassment of the administration’s lies about a broken, fraudulent system.

She ignited “Mother Power,” mobilizing a welfare rights group to march down the Las Vegas Strip demanding dignity, justice, democratic participation, and an adequate income in 1971.

Based on the book Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty by Annelise Orleck, the film challenges the pernicious lie of the “Welfare Queen,” and highlights the visionary leadership of low-income grassroots organizers whose courage, tenacity and dreams could not be quashed, against all odds.

Learn more in the essay From Mothers’ Pensions to Welfare Queens, Debunking Myths about Welfare by Lennlee Keep and in the Storming Caesars Palace Discussion Guide.

Watch a trailer for the documentary below.