In 1920, heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson opened the Cotton Club under the name, Club Deluxe, on the corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue in the heart of the Harlem district. Owney Madden, a prominent bootlegger and gangster, took over the club
In 1920, heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson opened the Cotton Club under the name, Club Deluxe, on the corner of 142nd Street and Lenox Avenue in the heart of the Harlem district. Owney Madden, a prominent bootlegger and gangster, took over the club in 1923 while imprisoned in Sing Sing and changed its name to the Cotton Club. The club operated from 1923 to 1940, most notably during America's Prohibition Era. The club was a whites-only establishment even though it featured many of the best black entertainers and jazz musicians of the era including Lena Horne, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, Adelaide Hall, Count Basie, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, The Nicholas Brothers, Lottie Gee, Ella Fitzgerald, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, and Ethel Waters. The Cotton Club was a "whites only" foundation. The club imposed subtle color bar on the chorus girls whom the club presented in skimpy outfits: they had to be at least 5 feet 6 inches tall, light-skinned, and under 21 years of skin color of the male dancers was more varied.
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