Let each be fully convinced in his own mind.
–Romans 14:5 (NKJV)–
Bill Clinton organized hippie communist
type anti-American rallies in college.
–(1:19:24)–
Along with Bathhouse Row, one of downtown Hot Springs’ most noted landmarks is the Arlington Hotel, a favored retreat for Al Capone.
Hot Springs eventually became a national gambling mecca, led by Owney Madden and his Hotel Arkansas casino. The period 1927-1947 was its wagering pinnacle, with no fewer than ten major casinos and numerous smaller houses running wide open, the largest such operation in the United States at the time. Hotels advertised the availability of prostitutes, and off-track booking was available for virtually any horse race in North America.
Local law enforcement was controlled by a political machine run by long-serving mayor Leo McLaughlin. The McLaughlin organization purchased hundreds of poll tax receipts, many in the names of deceased or fictitious persons, which would sometimes be voted in different precincts. A former sheriff, who attempted to have the state’s anti-gambling laws enforced and to secure honest elections, was murdered in 1937. No one was ever charged with his killing. Machine domination of city and county government was abruptly ended in 1946 with the election of a “Government Improvement” slate of returning World War II veterans led by Marine Lt. Col. Sid McMath, who was elected prosecuting attorney. A 1947 grand jury indicted several owners and promoters, as well as McLaughlin, for public servant bribery. Although the former mayor and most of the others were acquitted, the machine’s power was broken and gambling came to a halt, as McMath led a statewide “GI Revolt” into the governor’s office in 1948. Illegal casino gambling resumed, however, with the election of Orval Faubus as governor in 1954. Buoyed into 12 years in office by his popular defiance of federal court desegregation orders, Faubus turned a blind eye to gambling in Hot Springs. Variety explained the status of the casinos in 1959 as follows: “How do these places operate when gambling and mixed drinks are supposedly against the law? Simple. Every week the management appears in local court, pays its fine according to the amount of business done and goes back to open up.”
Gambling was finally closed down in 1967 by two Republican officeholders, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller and Circuit Judge Henry M. Britt. Rockefeller sent in a company of state troopers to shutter the casinos and burn their gaming equipment. Until other forms of gambling became legal in Arkansas four decades later, Oaklawn Park, a thoroughbred horse racing track south of downtown, was the only legal gambling establishment in Hot Springs and one of only two in the state of Arkansas; the other was the Southland Greyhound Park dog track in West Memphis. Both Oaklawn and Southland remain in operation.
–WIKIPEDIA ON HOT SPRINGS, ARKANSAS–
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