The history began in 1923, when bootlegger and boxing promoter Owen "Owney" Madden took over the Club Deluxe at 646 Lenox Avenue in Harlem and renamed it the Cotton Club. Madden enforced a strict color line at his club. While the Cotton Club featured many of the greatest African American entertainers of the era, such as Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, The Nicholas Brothers, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, and Ethel Waters, it generally denied admission to blacks. In 1936, the managers decided that Harlem had become...