The Central Avenue Jazz Festival is a yearly annual free jazz festival that takes place the last weekend in the month of July in the Southern section of Los Angeles. Central Avenue, after which the area is named, was in the 1930s and 1940s a vibrant center for jazz. At this time the infamous covenant line along Washington Boulevard demarcated the areas where African Americans were allowed to live. Even the giants of jazz music, such as Duke Ellington were allowed to play in Hollywood and other areas, but they could not stay there. They often stayed at the now-historic Dunbar Hotel. The Dunbar Hotel featured a nightclub called the , where the jazz greats would play after hours. All around the hotel there were numerous other clubs featuring jazz and blues, which were the launching point for