Café Society

The story

Barney Josephson named his Greenwich Village nightclub to mock Clare Boothe Luce and the upscale world she called 'café society' — then advertised it as 'The Wrong Place for the Right People.' Open from 1938 to 1948 on Sheridan Square, it was the first racially integrated nightclub in the United States, built deliberately to showcase African American performers. Anton Refregier, a Russian immigrant, painted its murals. Josephson modeled it on the political cabarets he had seen in Europe, turning a borrowed phrase into something that bit back.