There’s the origin story about Dania Beach icon Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor & Restaurant that founder Monroe Udell liked to tell customers, and then there was the truth.

The popular-yet-untrue version is that Udell, a Connecticut native, named Jaxson’s after his father — in other words, Jack’s son. But the real reason is firmly rooted in the racist and segregationist laws of the 1950s: Neither Blacks nor Jews could own business licenses in Dania Beach, so Udell pretended to be gentile, naming his scoop shop not after his father, Harry, but after Jackson Street in nearby Hollywood because it sounded fittingly Southern.

It wasn’t in Udell’s nature to talk about the antisemitism he faced — and he especially kept quiet his practice of hiring Black employees in the Jim Crow South — including the soft-spoken ice cream man who made the banana splits and kitchen sinks at the soda fountain window for 38 years: George Hadley.

Hadley, who worked at Jaxson’s from 1958 until his death in 1996 at age 53, is now the focus of two Black History Month tributes.

First, the city of Dania Beach has declared Feb. 24 as Mr. George Hadley Day, saluting one of the first Black employees at Jaxson’s.

And Jaxson’s owner Linda Udell Zakheim has donated an original 1950s “Kitchen Sink,” the parlor’s signature dessert vessel (minus the 4 pounds of ice cream, flags and sparklers), for History Fort Lauderdale’s permanent exhibit “Roots of Resilience: The Journey of Black Broward,” which debuted Feb. 19. The show traces the county’s Black residents through historic artifacts, photos and oral histories, from slavery through Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement to present day.

“When you think of George, you think of Jaxson’s Kitchen Sink,” Jerry Hadley, George’s brother, tells the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It’s a great symbolic gesture to recognize him for the thing he did best, so it means a lot. It shows that he was worthy.”

And he was a vital member of the Jaxson’s family, if you ask Udell Zakheim, Monroe Udell’s daughter, who took over the ice-creamery after her father died in 2014. She remembers Hadley as a “stoic, friendly and generous” man whom Udell hired in the waning years of the Jim Crow era, when segregation banned hiring Black employees in white businesses.

Besides prepping Jaxson’s 50-plus flavors from bubble gum to Grape Nuts, Hadley made whipped cream and syrup toppings from scratch, she recalls. Before segregation laws lifted in 1966, Hadley initially worked in the Jaxson’s kitchen, hidden from view. But afterward, Hadley spent the next three decades running the soda fountain, preparing orders at lightning speed. Hadley was a friendly fixture of her childhood, she says.

And his Kitchen Sinks, those mini-mountains of ice cream crowned with sugary, patriotic goodness?

“Perfection,” Udell Zakheim recalls, especially his “expert whipped cream technique … He put these triangles of fluffiness on top — and that’s not easy with our cream dispenser.”

As an infant, George Hadley, his parents and 11 brothers and sisters moved from Titusville to Hollywood’s Liberia neighborhood in the 1940s when their father took a job with Florida’s East Coast Railroad. Jaxson’s hired him at age 15, when “Black folks were lucky to get a job anywhere,” recalls brother Jerry Hadley, now 75 and living in Dania Beach.

“The fact that [George] was working, if you ever needed money, you could ask him, and he would not hesitate to give you a couple of dollars or buy you school clothes,” his brother says. “He was a good person who ran track and played tennis at Attucks [High School].”

He says he never visited his older brother at Jaxson’s — and never visited the ice-cream parlor until 2023, when he retired to Dania Beach after a 56-year career as a New York City accountant.

“I moved away when the area was still segregated,” he says. “And I’m sure people had prejudice toward George at the soda fountain, but he always took it in stride. Jaxson’s always treated him so special, so it’s an honor for him to be celebrated.”

Raised in a working-class Connecticut neighborhood where he was bullied and beaten for being Jewish, Jaxson’s founder Monroe Udell felt compassion for other victims of discrimination, which is why he secretly hired Blacks during racial segregation, his daughter says. He “didn’t tell the city” his ethnicity, and even conjured a fake Jaxson’s origin story to “stay under the radar of being Jewish.”

“Dad didn’t want anyone knowing what his political views were, and he didn’t feel the need to make waves,” she says. “For him, it was all about ice cream.”

When she shared Jaxson’s true story and diverse hiring practices with local researcher Mary Russ-Milligan recently, the duo came up with a plan to donate a Kitchen Sink vessel to History Fort Lauderdale in Hadley’s memory.

Russ-Milligan, who helped create the “Roots of Resilience” exhibit, says Hadley was more than just a “very special employee who impacted Mr. Monroe’s life” — he helped the Liberia community around him.

“During segregation, George was in the back of Jaxson’s as a hidden figure, but once he was in the front, he could serve Black people,” Russ-Milligan says. “Black people couldn’t sit inside the restaurant, so the soda fountain gave him the opportunity to serve Blacks ice cream outside.”

Udell Zakheim says he and her father worked side by side to make the parlor’s signature desserts perfect.

“Dad mentored him as an employee, but they were also close friends,” Udell Zakheim says. “George was the face of the takeout window at a time when no one hired people of color. And he was the best.”

Jaxson’s Ice Cream Parlor & Restaurant is at 128 S. Federal Highway, Dania Beach. Visit jaxsonsicecream.com or call 954-923-4445.

IF YOU GO

WHAT: “Roots of Resilience: The Journey of Black Broward”

WHERE: History Fort Lauderdale, 231 SW Second Ave.

COST:

• Self-guided tour costs $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, $5 for students
• Guided tours are $15 for adults, $12 for seniors and $7 for students
• Entry is free for accompanied children age 6 and younger, and for active and senior military members

INFORMATION: 954-463-4431 or go to HistoryFortLauderdale.org