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During the segregated early-20th Century, the Dunbar Hotel offered some of the best accommodations in Los Angeles for African-American travelers, and one was of the earliest catering to them in Los Angeles, CA; financed by Dr. John Alexander Sommerville, the first African-American dentist to graduate from the Dentistry School of the University of Southern California, the Dunbar Hotel also gained fame as the site of the first Conference of the National Association of Colored People (NAACP) in June 1928; its time as the Hotel Sommerville was short, due to the coming of the Depression, and Sommerville was forced to sell the hotel to Lucius Lomax, Jr., in 1929; the hotel was renamed for the poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar soon after; in February 1931, the Dunbar Hotel received a cabaret license, amid protest from some in the neighborhood, and the hotel subsequently became an important venue for the Central Avenue jazz scene of the 1930s and 1940s.

PCAD id: 2717