The South End native keeping Boston's Black history alive
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Dart Adams. Photo: Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Dart Adams grew up hearing about how Quincy Jones hung out in the South End and how Malcolm X recruited locals for the Nation of Islam back in the day.
- But there weren't any statues, plaques or other historic markers pointing to the legacy behind his neighborhood at the time.
Why it matters: Thousands of Bostonians drive past or walk the streets where Sammy Davis Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and other jazz legends performed — and they might not even know it.
What's happening: Adams, a journalist, historian and Boston native, has spent more than 15 years digging into Boston's Black history.
What they're saying: "When you're Black in Boston, you kind of feel like you're being gaslit," Adams tells Axios.
- "If all these famous people were here, if all this Black culture existed, then why does nobody else know it?"
Zoom in: Adams has made it his mission to make this history known.
- Here are some of the sites he's focused on:
Sammy Davis Jr's homes
Singer Sammy Davis Jr. lived at 66 West Rutland Square between 1939 and 1941 when he was a member of the Will Mastin Trio, per Adams and Boston Globe archives.
Post-1941, he moved around, living at 499, 505 and 510 Columbus Avenue, Adams says.
- Davis later reminisced about singing at the Silver Dollar Bar and Izzy Ort's, both near what used to be the Combat Zone, per Globe archives.
- Sammy Davis Jr. came back to perform with the Boston Pops in 1988.
Roseland-State Ballroom
Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cootie Williams and other musicians frequented the Roseland-State Ballroom, a jazz and swing venue across the street from the Christian Science Church.
- Malcolm X, who worked there as a shoeshiner, was introduced to jazz and met those jazz legends.
- He also met a woman he calls "Sophia," who became his lover and a crime partner. When they were convicted of burglary, she got probation, while Malcolm got 8 to 10 years in prison, per the "Mapping Malcolm's Boston" project by Kayla Renée Wheeler, the Africana Studies program director at Xavier University.
- The ballroom is long gone, replaced by a strip of apartments and restaurants.
NAACP Boston HQ
Boston has the NAACP's oldest chartered branch, founded in 1912.
- The building was firebombed on Dec. 10, 1975, a day after federal judge Arthur Garrity Jr. placed South Boston High School into federal receivership over its failure to desegregate.
- Today, the building is privately owned, and the NAACP's Boston branch is on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Roxbury.