Delegates Travel to L.A.’s Past : Black history: NAACP conventioneers help rededicate the historic Dunbar Hotel. It was once a cultural hub.

Fannie Singletary of Washington, D.C., bundled her husband and four children into the family car and traveled 3,000 miles to help plan for the future.

On Tuesday, however, she piled them onto a bus in Los Angeles for a 15-mile ride into the past.

Singletary was one of dozens of delegates to the annual convention of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People who traveled from the high-rises of downtown to abandoned storefronts of South-Central Los Angeles during a tour of “historical African-American Los Angeles.”

Along the way, the visitors stopped to help rededicate the historic Dunbar Hotel, renowned in the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s as the hub of Los Angeles black culture.

Strengthened to meet earthquake standards and refurbished in large part with city redevelopment funds at a cost of $4.2 million, the 62-year-old Central Avenue hotel has been reopened as a 73-unit apartment building for low-income elderly residents and a museum of black history.

In its heyday, the Dunbar Hotel was known as a West Coast mixture of the Waldorf-Astoria and the Cotton Club.

For years, it was the only major hotel in the city that welcomed blacks. Every prominent black visiting Los Angeles passed through its Art Deco lobby adorned with arched, Spanish arcade-like windows, tiled walls and a spectacular flagstone floor.

In 1928, the hotel housed delegates to the first NAACP convention to be held in Los Angeles.

Later, its nightclub was the stage for many of the great black performers of the day--Count Basie, Lionel Hampton, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Nat King Cole.

The Dunbar’s dazzle faded when Los Angeles’ other hotels opened their doors to blacks, and blacks began drifting away from Central Avenue as the city became more integrated. By the mid-1980s, the hotel was closed and the graceful building fell into disrepair.

Much of its glory has been restored, current NAACP delegates discovered Tuesday. After traveling through the more run-down section of the Central Avenue business district, those on the historical tour were surprised when their bus rolled to a stop outside the Dunbar.

Inside, they found Mayor Tom Bradley and black civic leaders waiting to rechristen the grand old hotel.

Bradley praised the work done to “breathe new life and vigor into this magnificent hotel” and predicted that the hotel may have the same effect in helping revive the surrounding neighborhood.

Bernard Johnson, a former owner of the hotel who has dreamed for nearly a quarter of a century of establishing a black museum at the Dunbar, pledged to convention delegates that a historical collection will be on display in a mezzanine museum area above the lobby the next time they visit the city.

Those who have seen the collection, which was displayed in the hotel in the 1970s as the “Museum in Black,” describe it as a thought-provoking lesson in the way things once were. Among the artifacts are Mammy dolls, a railroad sign reading “Colored Waiting Room,” a poster for “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and a music folder for “Remus Takes the Cake.”

After the speeches, the visitors climbed back onto the bus to see for themselves the way Los Angeles once was. Tour guides from the Our Authors Study Club explained how the city has changed--for the better and the worse.

The bus passed by the intersection of Central and Vernon avenues, an area that decades ago was the thriving “downtown area” to most blacks. Today, many stores in the area are boarded up and unemployed people loiter on the curbs.

The group traveled past funeral homes and an insurance company that served blacks when white-owned businesses refused to. They passed long-established churches that have never ceased serving the community and empty lots where community auditoriums or cornerstone businesses once thrived. They passed the new California Afro-American History Museum at Exposition Park.

In the downtown area, tour leader Genevieve Shepherd explained how black architect Paul R. Williams helped design several Civic Center buildings. She pointed out the Music Center, which was built with the help of a $500,000 gift from singer Cole and where actor Robert Guillaume now has the lead role in “Phantom of the Opera.”

The bus traveled through Skid Row, past Union Station and Olvera Street, where study club President Dolores Nehemiah explained that 26 black settlers were among a handpicked group of 44 people who founded what is now Los Angeles in 1781.

“From now on, when I think of Los Angeles, I’ll think of the people and the history that has occurred here,” said Mellondra Johnson, a Chicago delegate to the convention. “This isn’t just a place where they have earthquakes, movie stars and gangs.”

Added Fannie Singletary: “People can be just as proud looking at the past as they are at looking ahead to improving the lives of all Americans.”

New York delegate Ray Jarvis said the tour proved to him that Americans across the land share in a similar history.

“Chicago was founded by blacks, too,” he said. “And New York has problems with housing and employment, just like here.

“We’re all the same.”