Attucks Hotel

We've circled back to the beginning of the story we opened with. This corner, 15th and Catharine, was the Attucks Hotel — and it's where the 1947 federal case actually started. Remember the Earle Theatre, the applause, the week with Louis Armstrong? When those shows ended, this is the hotel where she was staying, because in 1947 a Black woman, even a famous one, couldn't simply check into any hotel she liked. The Attucks was a Green Book hotel — listed in the guide that mapped safe lodging for Black travelers — and it took the people the grand downtown hotels turned away. Over the years its register held Ella Fitzgerald, the dancer Bojangles Robinson, the ballplayers Satchel Paige and Hank Aaron.

And it's where the narcotics agents came. In the middle of May 1947, days after the Earle run, they raided her room here looking to build a narcotics case. But by the time they arrived, Billie Holiday was already gone — she'd left for New York, one step ahead. It didn't save her. The case they assembled from this raid is the one that pulled her back to the federal courthouse two weeks later, and cost her the cabaret card that reshaped the rest of her life.

Stand here and hold the two halves together: this is where the trap was set, and 9th and Market is where it closed. The building is a charter school now — children in classrooms above the spot where the government came for Lady Day.

That's the last stop on foot. Our walking core ends a few blocks west, at a very deliberate final note. Head west toward Martin Street — Marian Anderson Way — about five blocks. The walk finishes there.