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To me, Dark Elves were never intrinsically evil. The earliest reference to Dark Elves is, I believe, in Tolkien, in passing in the L.O.T.R., but in much greater detail in The Silmarillion. They were simply those elves who did not heed the call of the Valar, and never beheld the Light of Aman before the fall of the Two Trees.
Only in later literature, did authors read "evil" into this, where Tolkien origionally envisioned pitty. And I think the whole Dark Elf/Evil Drow thing was stoked by Gary Gygax's strong (to say the least) assertion that he hated L.O.T.R., and that AD&D had nothing to do with the trilogy. This was back in the late 1970's, and my read on it was that G.G. was trying to disavow any (obvious) influence that his game had from Tolkien's work. I think he was just bored by it, or didn't fully appreciate it; and in any event misread the significance of "Dark Elves", among other things.
But I rant.
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