Washington’s historic Black Broadway was the heart of African American life in Washington, D.C., from about 1900 to the 1950s. Duke Ellington, its most famous native son, grew up here, was inspired and trained here, and played his first music here. He was one example of leaders in law, medicine, the military, science, and the arts who were shaped by a community that valued education and supported achievement against great odds in a segregated society. Nearby Howard University was its guiding star. The Lincoln Theater across U Street, restored to its 1922 grandeur, was one of three first run movie theaters clustered there, and the Lincoln Colonnade behind it, since demolished, was a popular setting for balls, parties, and performances. Great entertainers played clubs on or near this boulevard, including Cab Calloway, Pearl Bailey, Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong, Billy Eckstine, and Jelly Roll Morton. Black-owned businesses, the offices of Black lawyers, doctors, and dentists, and the headquarters of Black social institutions clustered along U Street, many in buildings financed, designed, and built by and for African Americans, which was unusual at the time. All night and on weekends, U Street was a parade ground, a place to meet friends and share a close, small-time atmosphere, and at its core was an elegance epitomized by Duke Ellington himself.