Kentucky Avenue Renaissance Festival

Held on and around the site of the razed Club Harlem (today a parking lot), the weekend fair commemorates the R&B and jazz nightspots that once lined Kentucky Avenue and that attracted both black and white clientele in its heyday from the 1940s through 1960s.

The district (known as "Kentucky Avenue and the Curb") had been home to African-Americans in the racially-segregated city since the end of World War I.

[5][6] Four members of the Black Mafia entered the club during a show attended by an estimated 600 people and shot a rival operative point-blank at his table, ostensibly in retaliation for a drug deal.

[2] Reintroduced in 2011 after a ten-year hiatus, the renamed Historical Kentucky Avenue Renaissance Festival drew an estimated 1,000 attendees over the course of the day.

[10] In July 1996 the Casino Reinvestment Development Authority commissioned a mural honoring the former Kentucky Avenue entertainment district.

Painted on a brick wall near the corner of Kentucky and Baltic Avenues, the 10-by-64-foot (3.0 m × 19.5 m) mural depicts leading musicians who once performed in the area's nightclubs, such as singers Sammy Davis Jr., Billy Eckstine, and Ella Fitzgerald, and drummer Chris Columbo.