August 4, 2025 • 30 mins
“He helped people. He loaned people. He wasn't to be trifled with”
Charlie Fitzgerald built multiple businesses across Myrtle Beach – the hotel, the club, the cab company, the high-stakes poker game – and loaned money to white folks in town to bend the rules in his favor. How long would this last before Charlie became a target?
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Pushkin a quick warning. Some of the language and imagery
used to describe this period of time maybe upsetting. Please
take care while listening. Every time I visited Myrtle Beach,
I went to Miss Pat's house, the woman who lived
(00:38):
in Myrtle Beach her whole life, And every time I
talked to her, I learned something new.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Oh, Miss Pat. He said that Charlie was a very
classy man.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yes he was.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
But what else do you remember about him?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
But white?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
You mean white passing?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Uh huh?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
He was? So he was really light skinned.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Yeah, my grandma was too. You white too, Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I'd seen the two photos.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'd call Charlie light skinned, But to say he passed,
that's a stretch to me.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
It's obvious he was black.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Still, almost everyone I talked to mentioned this point about
Charlie's skin. It obviously mattered, But how much. People on
the Hill told me again and again how Charlie conspicuously
broke the rules. They told me that when Charlie went
to the movie theater he sat in the white section.
Everyone noticed, but no one bothered him. They told me
(01:39):
he ate in white restaurants. One person said, Charlie walked
around the waterfront bare chested, when black people who were
there to work couldn't even wear shorts at the height
of summer. He would almost blend in with the tanned
white bodies. I don't know if that part is true,
but it's part of the lore. When everyone on the
hill was treading water, it's almost like he could walk
(02:02):
above it. Still, why Charlie, Why could he skirt the
rule that everyone else had to follow.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
I'm Mariem Gisee.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
This is Charlie's place, Episode three, Power Seeds to Power.
Herbert Riley says, you don't forget a smell, and the
smell he can't forget is gas coming from the trunk
of his family's old buick.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
You know, it was dangerous traveling in those days.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
In the nineteen fifties. Whenever Herbert's family went on long trips,
his parents filled jugs of gas and packed them in
the trunk because you couldn't be sure where it would
be safe to stop.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I learned early that everybody didn't treat everybody nice, and
you had to know where you were going, and you
had to be prepared.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I wanted to hear Herbert Riley's story because he's sort
of an expert on Charlie Fitzgerald and Charlie's place. But
along the way I learned about Herbert's experience growing up,
and it really help me understand the context Charlie was
living in. Herbert's family knew that on the road in
South Carolina it was extremely dangerous to stop just anywhere.
(03:21):
Violence against black people was a split second instinct for
many white folk. You could get tortured, murdered, attacked by
a lynch mob, and vanish. The only hope at avoiding
being in the wrong place at the wrong time was
the Green Book, a kind of triple a guide that
listed hotels, restaurants, and gas stations that had the reputation
(03:42):
of being friendly to black people. In the Jim crowra South,
it increased your odds of surviving the trip.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
It was more like a shield. Believe me. It saved lasts,
particularly in the South.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Herbert remembers those road trips as a little kid because
it wasn't always clear when they come across the next
safe place to stop. Herbert's mom filled the car with food, eggs,
ham sandwiches, tricky sandwiches.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Fried chicken.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
For Herbert, it was fun because it was like a picnic.
Most of the time, he stared out the window, counting cars.
Occasionally he caught glimpses of danger on the road. Scenes
he could tell were a threat without fully understanding why.
He didn't know about the horror of lynchings, yet his
parents had shielded him from that. He remembers the old
(04:36):
buick driving through Myrtle Beach. As they got closer to
the water, a huge crowd appeared ahead. It was a
Kluecut's clan parade, blocking their path. The men wouldn't let
Herbert's family through. Herbert's dad stopped the car, He got
out and walked over to speak with them. Herbert and
his mother watched from the car. He prefaces the story
(05:00):
with an explanation that his mom was fair skinned. She
could almost pass as white. Maybe he mentioned it because
it worked in their favor that day. It's hard to
say why he made that point clear. Herbert's dad got
back in the car and they drove on.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I remember how Mama was after that. She was shaky.
They'd saying things that I hadn't seen. You know.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Herbert was starting to learn the power dynamics of the
South in the nineteen fifties, starting to see the subtle
and dangerous dance of finding power and using it to survive.
When it came to being black and having power in
Myrtle Beach, the road was riddled with land mines. Black
folks came up with all kinds of creative ways to
navigate it, Charlie Fitzgerald more than anyone. But in the
(05:50):
case of Charlie Fitzgerald, his power eventually became a threat.
I wish I could have met Herbert, but he died
in twenty nineteen. His interview was conducted by Candacy Taylor,
who exhaustively documented green Book sites throughout the country and
her book Overground Railroad. Anytime can Dacy learned of a
(06:12):
green Book site, she'd go there to see what she
could find, and her quest brought her to Myrtle Beach
to Charlie's Place. Charlie's Place was listed in the Green
Book as early as nineteen fifty, although it had been
in operation over a decade by then, And that's how
can Dacy met Herbert. Herbert made it his mission to
preserve the memory of Charlie's Place. We spoke with Herbert's widow,
(06:35):
and from the sounds of it, his research almost seemed
like an obsession. He could feel its importance.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
I have actually seen him just stay up all night
just writing papers so that he could attend a meeting
the next day, to actually know what he's talking about,
to be affluent with the knowledge, you know. I'd be
like herb, just get some rest, you know. But he
was just remarkable when it came to Charlie's place. He
had a real passion for it.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I've been fighting for a long time. Everything's got a
term on it, and let's just support life. You have
to accept it. So I got a little fight left,
but I can't do what I used to do.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Where this drive came from, I don't know. Herbert was
only four years old when Charlie died, so many of
the stories he tells about Charlie don't come from his
own recollection. There aren't a lot of people still alive
who have that firsthand knowledge. Yet here Herbert was, in
this recorded interview, telling us from beyond the grave what
(07:40):
he had gathered. His obsessive work gave me more pieces
to the puzzle, because that's what this project was, a puzzle.
People shared stories through the foggy veil of personal memory
and they didn't always agree. I pieced together the memories
to learn what I could from those who were alive
and those who were dead. But how many ghosts would
(08:03):
I need to talk to before this story would be complete?
The story of Herbert's family gave me a picture of
the power dynamics Charlie Fitzgerald was up against in Myrtle Beach.
For much of Herbert's life, his parents lived in two places,
his mom in North Carolina and his dad over a
(08:24):
four hour drive south in Myrtle Beach. They hadn't divorced,
they hadn't separated. It was simply because his mother was
disgusted with South Carolina, and she.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Said, Uh, I'm never going back that. You didn't know
what they did to your cousin. I said, what did
they do?
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Herbert's cousin was a well known reverend in South Carolina.
He advocated for equal education for black children, but using
his power in that way angered some people in the community.
His house mysteriously burned down, he received death threats, and
finally a group of white men drove him out of
South Carolina.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
They took him to the border and took a shotgun
went boom, boom, boo, run, Nigga run, don't you ever
come back? I remember that to the day I die. Yeah,
this is what we lived through. And my family really
lived through a lot of stuff because they were involved
in a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So Herbert's reverend cousin would never come back and he
would die homesick.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
It makes sense.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Herbert's mom didn't like South Carolina, but Herbert's father made
the place work for him, even under the narrow constraints
of the time, and so Herbert grew up in Myrtle Beach.
He knew there were two worlds in Myrtle Beach. First,
there was the Hill. The hill was where black people
lived and had fun. They ran their own restaurants and shops, clubs,
(09:48):
and a barber shop. It's where Charlie's Place was. If
you stood on the hill and face the ocean and
started to walk, you eventually hit Ocean Boulevard, the last
street before the ocean, just you and sand and then
thousands of miles of water. Ocean Boulevard was the main
attraction for white tourists on vacation, and it was full
(10:09):
of Grand Ocean Front Hotel, the.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Original tourist trade in Myrtle beach. The hook was this
Antebellum type lifestyle. If you look at pictures of the
old large hotels like the Ocean for us of Patricia,
you'll see these columns like you see and gone with Winter,
and black people were all the chefs. Black people were
(10:33):
all the waiters. Black people talked the rich down here
etiquette because you had to be that way. You had
to know how to carry yourself any place to be
working in some of this. You working in white dinner jackets,
sometimes white gloves. You know, the stuff that we see
and we kind of get offended in a way when
we see it. But then when you realize the elegance,
(10:55):
the dignity that these men and women had to.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Carry themselves, and that's attention that a lot of people
in Myrtle Beach felt. Of course, it's offensive and I'd
say more than that, deeply disturbing seeing these rich white
tourists being served by black people in buildings that remind
you of gone with the wind. But Herbert also understands
that workers felt a certain dignity too. They moved with
(11:20):
the elegance and white gloves. This wealthy world required. There
was pride in that, a power in that, and this
is how Herbert's dad made Myrtle Beach work for him.
He was a maitre d at one of the grand
hotels on Ocean Boulevard.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
A matre d made more money than doctors at that time.
A good matre d dad did have a bed full
of money on Sundays and he split it with all
the waiters. He'd take apart, but he split it with
all the waiters. Say we wasn't enough, He'd give that
to them. And because of that he won great respect.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
As a major d.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Herbert's dad ran the dining room at the Patricia Inn.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
The Patricia Dinoman was famous. They say, every millionaire in
the South ate there. Richard Nixon ate there. Stroma themon
used to be there all the time, all the segregation
that used to eat there.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
I'm Thurman was a governor of South Carolina, one of
the most famous cheerleaders for segregation of all time. These
were people that controlled everyone's quality of life, and the
people they seemed most eager to control were black people.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
But they couldn't control everything.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
They couldn't get a good seat day. They didn't give
it to him. You know, that's what power is about.
If you're not rich. It's who you know, not what
you know. You know, if strom Thurmant wanted to sit
beside the winda at Patricia, he had to go to
my father and he wasn't coming in there unless he
had his coat in town. And he wasn't like no
(12:48):
food when he got in there.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Nobody was finding your place in this white tourism economy
was one of the few choices if you wanted to thrive,
and I heard stories of thriving in spite of the racism.
People who worked during the tourist season at these hotels
went on to become doctors. One of the people who
worked at the Patricia Inn later became the first black
Chief Justice of South Carolina Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
They didn't allow obstacles to get in their way. They
didn't cop out. They had to deal with a situation
that be thankful that we don't have on our shoulders.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
But still the power was lopsided extremely So.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Can I tell you a quick story. There's a beautiful
lady there named Clee Robertson, and she was what they
called the coffee girl. You know, she served coffee. And
one of the Caucasians made a very lude remark which
I'm not going to say to her, and she was insulted,
(13:45):
and she walked away from him, and he said, can't
you hear me? I tell you I want to say,
you said and so and so. You you know, how
much will it cost? You know? She told my father.
And the guy came to my day when he saw
Clee talking to him and asked him something to the
(14:06):
point like, Rley, what's wrong, I'm trying to give that
a little nigg girl some money, saying he knew daddy
hand was upside his head. Daddy knocked him down. Dad
was fired after thirty nine years, and his honor meant
more to him than a few dollars. And the owner
was basically a good guy. But that's just the time
(14:29):
we lived in, you know. But that's a true story.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
A vacation is a getaway and escape from work from
cold weather, general hustle and bustle. But the way Herbert
paints it and Myrtle Beach, the people came to return
to something that they didn't want to let go of.
In the heat of the South Carolina sun and on
one swept White's Only beaches, they clung to these parts
of the past these very ugly parts.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
What used to fascinate me the white folks. They come
down here and get as dark as they possibly could.
Sometimes they get burned like a re turned red. You know,
anybody's colored. White folks were colored by the way they
turned off kind of goes. Some did strange things to them.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I went to Myrtle Beach many times over the course
of reporting this story, but I never once had time
to go for a swim. I'd get as far as
the boulevard and I'd stand there and look at the
water and let the breeze hit my face before running
to my next interview. Of course, I could have gone
in that water if I wanted to, and I wanted to.
(15:59):
It was so inviting, This momentary longing I felt, must
be nothing compared to what the people on the hill
would have experienced. To walk by that water day in
and day out on their way to work, pass white tourists,
and know you weren't allowed to swim in that water,
to touch it, I can't imagine. But I eventually learned
(16:20):
of a place up the coast where black people could
experience the bomb of a seaside summer, a place they
could touch the water it was called Atlantic Beach. Its
nickname was the Black Pearl. The way locals talked about it,
it almost sounded like a mirage.
Speaker 6 (16:38):
So think of a carnival with a ferris wheel, the twister,
the carousel. You've got an ocean front, you've got dining,
and think of that with people who look like you,
from wall to wall to wall, with sandy toes where
they've been in the beach. It is a feeling that
(17:01):
says you belong.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
This is home.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Atlantic Beach was more than a dozen miles from Carver Street,
but this home, this oasis was worth the trip when
you could catch a ride because it was run by
black people for black people. There were big orange ropes
that extended out into the ocean. They sectioned off Atlantic
Beach from the neighboring white beaches. But inside the ropes
(17:28):
you could ignore all of that.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
You know, you get tired of working for the other guy,
and so you was happy to see a number of
black people in business. Give your pride, sense of ownership, happiness,
freedom and peace, and you'd love to see your black
people having fun. You know, everybody deserve a vacation lest
(17:51):
you might get sad.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
How Atlantic Beach came to exist is its own wild story.
It was a collective effort. Black people in the area
pulled their money together. Some who had started working in
kitchens in Myrtle Beach. They chipped in and bought land
on the shop, and I learned that Sarah and Charlie
Fitzgerald were two of its biggest investors.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
And Atlantic Beast was jumping before integration. They say his
money did that.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I knew the FitzGeralds were rich. They had multiple businesses.
There was the hotel and the club, and that high
stakes poker game in the back. They also had a
cab company. I just didn't know how rich.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
A lot of the white businesses downtown Charlie had money
in them. Some of them he owned and had white
people front him. Like white people usually to do a
black voot. He helped people. He loan people who wanted
to be paid back. He wasn't to be trifled with,
and he had to have this strong demeanor more.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Than eating in white restaurants, more than sitting in the
white section of the movie theater. This detail shocked me
when I learned that Charlie loaned white people in town money.
This changed my perception of those lines and the ways
in which Charlie made them bend in his favor. He
seemed to be moving according to a roadmap of his
own making. But if Charlie intended to stake a claim
(19:16):
in Myrtle Beach, it didn't hurt to have a little
muscle to back him up. Herbert says, Charlie always had
guys around him, his enforcers, and long after Charlie died,
they kept watch over his wife Sarah.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Guys like Kidnapper goings chop him in way. All these
guys had nicknames. You know, these people were nobody to
mess with. Pull Chap put you in the ground. And
Rubin was strong as ox. Kidnapper was a lover, but
he knew how to get things done.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You know, there was something else from Herbert's conversation with
can Daisy Taylor that stuck out to me about Charlie.
Speaker 8 (19:55):
You know, I hate to compare him to like Omar
from the Wire, but he's got that kind of swagger
and the you know he was, he was on the
fringes of you know, he was a bootlegger.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yes, do you know Thomson, the Greek kid who loved
to dance, said Charlie was a bootlegger too, and even
though this was after prohibition, there were still a lot
of ways to bootleg, to manufacture and sell liquor illegally,
mostly tactics for evading taxes.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
I don't know if that was.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
What Charlie was up to, but Herbert says he had
a special arrangement with the police chief to sell liquer
his way. The police chief was a guy named Carlisle Newton.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Carlile was supposed to be Charlie's buddy. Charlie was paying Carlile,
so Charlie is still his liquor.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
You know what's more powerful than bribing the white police
chief and getting away with it. And no matter what
it was, Charlie was great at recognizing a need, and
that brings us to Whispering Pines itself. Back to Charlie's place.
(21:02):
Charlie wanted to give black people who came to work
in Myrtle Beach a place to hang out, a place
to have a good time after work.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
So that's why Arly built.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
His club, a nice club, not some rinky dink hole
in the wall where you'd be safe, where you could
take anybody. Even in those days too many people told
me that not to be true. You could take anybody
you care, as long as you carried yourself in a civilized,
upright fashion and minded you own business and didn't harass
(21:32):
women and things, which was normal at that time. You
were treated with dignity and you could have a good time.
But he took advantage of the fact that there was
a market down here because there was no place else
to go.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
So Charlie had given them a place to go. But
there was another need a place to stay because all
season there were famous black musicians coming to town.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
I mentioned the Ocean for Us Hotel a while ago.
That was the first million dollar hotel in the South.
It was built in the twenties. And because of that,
you have the elite of the elite staying at the
Ocean for Us. Now, they had some white entertainment, but
they wanted the best entertainment, so they'd have a Basie,
or they'd have Ellington, or they'd have the Mills brothers,
who were like the Temptations when I was growing up.
(22:21):
Groups like that, you know, and they couldn't stay there
and they couldn't socialize there.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Because they were black. Herbert said he knew of one exception,
Sam and Dave, the original singers of the song soul Man.
They were the only black artists that he had heard
of at the time who stayed at the Ocean Forest Hotel,
but with a caveat. They had to use a special
hidden elevator to come and go, so the white patrons
(22:50):
wouldn't know they slept there. These kinds of limitations on
black artists weren't unique to Myrtle Beach. This was all
over the South. There were only a handful of places
where black performers could stay during Jim Crow and stay safely.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
So some of them would go up to Atlantic Beach.
Maybe Duke would go up to Atlantic Beach because get
him an ocean front room. But many of them wanted
to stay down here, So Charlie built the hotel.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Charlie built an end next to his nightclub. Now performers
could stay just to walk away from their gigs instead
of twelve or fifteen miles.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
They'd be playing. After they finished playing the Ocean for us,
they do what we call nowadays midnight special.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
They do a second performance.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
They do a midnight special at Charlie's place. The word
got out to the wealthy elite that were coming down
from the north and the South said, oh, man, guess
I guess it's playing over Charlie's place, so and so
so the Dukellington's over there.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Charlie built it for black people, but it drew in
white people from all over to Everyone wanted to go
to Charlie's place.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Mills, Brothers, Ray, Charles, although Ray was playing back up
for this other guy in those days, so they'd want
to come, and they come over. Any old person in
this community, any old person, they will remember this. I
can barely remember it because I was a child at
the heyday of this stuff. But from one end of
the Carver Street to the other end, and the Carver
(24:25):
Street was a dirt road, then you'd have cadillacts and
packards on Saturday night, Friday night, men, white men in tuxedos,
white women with jewels and gallons will come out there.
Ain't know, Black folks. I don't care how down and
out we've been. We got a hands on a couple
of dollars. We're not about letting somebody out dresses. So
(24:47):
the black women will come out dressed like that. And
you can look at pictures in those days and you
can see my father and all his friends many times
in tuxes, white tuxes. They were sharp, they carried themself
good old spice was out there to be wearing their
old spice, and they had a good time.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Herbert's description match is what a lot of people said
about Charlie's Place in his heyday. People who saw it
firsthand brought to mind similar images, but no one described
it as vividly and enthusiastically as Herbert and his mind.
It is so alive and on a pedestal. A lot
(25:27):
of people talked about Charlie's Place this way. It reminded
me of something we say in French nip book, which
is like a time you're romanticized back in the day.
But in Herbert's case, he's nostalgic for a place he
never really knew. And one of the romantic lines I
heard about this time in Myrtle Beach was segregation by
day and integration at night. Jim Crow era theaters and
(25:49):
clubs were divided inside. It was usually done with a
rope or a balcony. The rope sectioned off black people
from the main action, where white people were able to
move about more freely. Charlie's Place intended to keep the
lines drawn according to the rules. He had a balcony,
but his balcony was for white people. Charlie flipped it.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Section up in the balcony area like they used to
put black folk in balcony in theaters. When I was
a kid, you didn't have to go through that, but
we did. And he'd have a section for them that
was for them, but they wanted to get down on
the floor because that's where the party was. He flipped
it on. The whites are the ones who really integrated
(26:31):
the place now, because Charlie had a segregated section for them,
but they wanted to get down where the action was.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
The music was so good and the dancing is so
intoxicating that eventually the lines began to blur. This was
an important moment when the white people came down from
the balcony and stepped on the dance floor. It would
be the legacy of Charlie's Place, a symbol of unity,
a surprising image to associate with the Jim Crow era
South segregation by day, integration by night, but it would
(27:02):
come at a cost. Years after Charlie died, after his
father's Heyday at Patricia and Herbert would join the tradition
of black waiters working on the boulevard. He was working
as a bell hop at the Ocean Forest Hotel. Like
the smell of gas coming from the trunk of his
family's buick. There would be another thing that he would
never forget.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
There's one character I'll never forget. His name is Carlile Newton.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Carlile Newton was a police chief in Myrtle Beach from
nineteen forty eight to nineteen seventy four, the same police
chief that people speculated Charlie knew well and paid off
to bootleg. And every Wednesday, according to Herbert, Carlyle came
by the hotel. He'd leave with the Minila envelope. A
lot of the staff noticed that they knew that Carlile,
(27:46):
the police chief, was there to pick up his payoff.
One day, Herbert was on a shift and saw Carlyle
come by just like every other Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
I can remember that vividly. He'd come by every Wednesday,
and he leaved with the Manila envelope.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Herbert says, somebody he was with said something along the
lines of there he is going to get his money.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Carlyle overheard that think he even hurts.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
He came back by. We were standing beside a brick wall.
This fella took me. I guess he's gonna make an
example out of somebody. Slam me against the wall, pulled
out his weapon, big gun, look like a dirty, hairy
pistol or something, you know, jammed it into my stomach
and said, nigga, if you ever tell anybody you saw
me do anything, I'll blow your goddamn brains out. That
(28:35):
sticks in, That sticks in your mind for the rest
of your life.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
This just makes me marvel at how Charlie Fitzgerald made
a man like that, a man willing to shove a
gun in a boy's stomach work for him. How long
would this last before Charlie became a target. Eventually, they
(29:02):
won't want this black man to have this much power
from the moment white people stepped foot on charlie stands,
for it would set something in motion and there would
be a limit.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Power seeds to power. That's it, and Charlie was an
example of power. They had to crush you.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Next time on Charlie's.
Speaker 9 (29:48):
Place, he comes under fire, he comes under attack. And
that was a story because everyone knew Charlie, and if
Charlie's intimidated and threatened at this moment, then we would
know clearly what that terror.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Meant for other people.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Charlie's Place is a production of Atlas Obscura and Coco
Punch in partnership with Pushkin Industries and presented by Visit
Myrtle Beach. It's written and produced by Emily Foreman. Our
story editor is Erica Lance. Our team at Atlas Obscura
is Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Johanna Mayer, Linda Lobel, and
Emily Yates. You can follow us on Instagram at Atlas Obscura.
(30:33):
Please head to Charlie's placeshow dot com for more information
about the locations mentioned in the series and how you
can visit yourself.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
I'm marim Gise. Thanks for listening.
Pushkin a quick warning. Some of the language and imagery
used to describe this period of time maybe upsetting. Please
take care while listening. Every time I visited Myrtle Beach,
I went to Miss Pat's house, the woman who lived
(00:38):
in Myrtle Beach her whole life, And every time I
talked to her, I learned something new.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Oh, Miss Pat. He said that Charlie was a very
classy man.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yes he was.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
But what else do you remember about him?
Speaker 4 (00:52):
But white?
Speaker 2 (00:56):
You mean white passing?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Uh huh?
Speaker 2 (00:58):
He was? So he was really light skinned.
Speaker 3 (01:01):
Yeah, my grandma was too. You white too, Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
I'd seen the two photos.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I'd call Charlie light skinned, But to say he passed,
that's a stretch to me.
Speaker 4 (01:12):
It's obvious he was black.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Still, almost everyone I talked to mentioned this point about
Charlie's skin. It obviously mattered, But how much. People on
the Hill told me again and again how Charlie conspicuously
broke the rules. They told me that when Charlie went
to the movie theater he sat in the white section.
Everyone noticed, but no one bothered him. They told me
(01:39):
he ate in white restaurants. One person said, Charlie walked
around the waterfront bare chested, when black people who were
there to work couldn't even wear shorts at the height
of summer. He would almost blend in with the tanned
white bodies. I don't know if that part is true,
but it's part of the lore. When everyone on the
hill was treading water, it's almost like he could walk
(02:02):
above it. Still, why Charlie, Why could he skirt the
rule that everyone else had to follow.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
I'm Mariem Gisee.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
This is Charlie's place, Episode three, Power Seeds to Power.
Herbert Riley says, you don't forget a smell, and the
smell he can't forget is gas coming from the trunk
of his family's old buick.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
You know, it was dangerous traveling in those days.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
In the nineteen fifties. Whenever Herbert's family went on long trips,
his parents filled jugs of gas and packed them in
the trunk because you couldn't be sure where it would
be safe to stop.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I learned early that everybody didn't treat everybody nice, and
you had to know where you were going, and you
had to be prepared.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
I wanted to hear Herbert Riley's story because he's sort
of an expert on Charlie Fitzgerald and Charlie's place. But
along the way I learned about Herbert's experience growing up,
and it really help me understand the context Charlie was
living in. Herbert's family knew that on the road in
South Carolina it was extremely dangerous to stop just anywhere.
(03:21):
Violence against black people was a split second instinct for
many white folk. You could get tortured, murdered, attacked by
a lynch mob, and vanish. The only hope at avoiding
being in the wrong place at the wrong time was
the Green Book, a kind of triple a guide that
listed hotels, restaurants, and gas stations that had the reputation
(03:42):
of being friendly to black people. In the Jim crowra South,
it increased your odds of surviving the trip.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
It was more like a shield. Believe me. It saved lasts,
particularly in the South.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Herbert remembers those road trips as a little kid because
it wasn't always clear when they come across the next
safe place to stop. Herbert's mom filled the car with food, eggs,
ham sandwiches, tricky sandwiches.
Speaker 4 (04:11):
Fried chicken.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
For Herbert, it was fun because it was like a picnic.
Most of the time, he stared out the window, counting cars.
Occasionally he caught glimpses of danger on the road. Scenes
he could tell were a threat without fully understanding why.
He didn't know about the horror of lynchings, yet his
parents had shielded him from that. He remembers the old
(04:36):
buick driving through Myrtle Beach. As they got closer to
the water, a huge crowd appeared ahead. It was a
Kluecut's clan parade, blocking their path. The men wouldn't let
Herbert's family through. Herbert's dad stopped the car, He got
out and walked over to speak with them. Herbert and
his mother watched from the car. He prefaces the story
(05:00):
with an explanation that his mom was fair skinned. She
could almost pass as white. Maybe he mentioned it because
it worked in their favor that day. It's hard to
say why he made that point clear. Herbert's dad got
back in the car and they drove on.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I remember how Mama was after that. She was shaky.
They'd saying things that I hadn't seen. You know.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Herbert was starting to learn the power dynamics of the
South in the nineteen fifties, starting to see the subtle
and dangerous dance of finding power and using it to survive.
When it came to being black and having power in
Myrtle Beach, the road was riddled with land mines. Black
folks came up with all kinds of creative ways to
navigate it, Charlie Fitzgerald more than anyone. But in the
(05:50):
case of Charlie Fitzgerald, his power eventually became a threat.
I wish I could have met Herbert, but he died
in twenty nineteen. His interview was conducted by Candacy Taylor,
who exhaustively documented green Book sites throughout the country and
her book Overground Railroad. Anytime can Dacy learned of a
(06:12):
green Book site, she'd go there to see what she
could find, and her quest brought her to Myrtle Beach
to Charlie's Place. Charlie's Place was listed in the Green
Book as early as nineteen fifty, although it had been
in operation over a decade by then, And that's how
can Dacy met Herbert. Herbert made it his mission to
preserve the memory of Charlie's Place. We spoke with Herbert's widow,
(06:35):
and from the sounds of it, his research almost seemed
like an obsession. He could feel its importance.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
I have actually seen him just stay up all night
just writing papers so that he could attend a meeting
the next day, to actually know what he's talking about,
to be affluent with the knowledge, you know. I'd be
like herb, just get some rest, you know. But he
was just remarkable when it came to Charlie's place. He
had a real passion for it.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
I've been fighting for a long time. Everything's got a
term on it, and let's just support life. You have
to accept it. So I got a little fight left,
but I can't do what I used to do.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Where this drive came from, I don't know. Herbert was
only four years old when Charlie died, so many of
the stories he tells about Charlie don't come from his
own recollection. There aren't a lot of people still alive
who have that firsthand knowledge. Yet here Herbert was, in
this recorded interview, telling us from beyond the grave what
(07:40):
he had gathered. His obsessive work gave me more pieces
to the puzzle, because that's what this project was, a puzzle.
People shared stories through the foggy veil of personal memory
and they didn't always agree. I pieced together the memories
to learn what I could from those who were alive
and those who were dead. But how many ghosts would
(08:03):
I need to talk to before this story would be complete?
The story of Herbert's family gave me a picture of
the power dynamics Charlie Fitzgerald was up against in Myrtle Beach.
For much of Herbert's life, his parents lived in two places,
his mom in North Carolina and his dad over a
(08:24):
four hour drive south in Myrtle Beach. They hadn't divorced,
they hadn't separated. It was simply because his mother was
disgusted with South Carolina, and she.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Said, Uh, I'm never going back that. You didn't know
what they did to your cousin. I said, what did
they do?
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Herbert's cousin was a well known reverend in South Carolina.
He advocated for equal education for black children, but using
his power in that way angered some people in the community.
His house mysteriously burned down, he received death threats, and
finally a group of white men drove him out of
South Carolina.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
They took him to the border and took a shotgun
went boom, boom, boo, run, Nigga run, don't you ever
come back? I remember that to the day I die. Yeah,
this is what we lived through. And my family really
lived through a lot of stuff because they were involved
in a lot of things.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So Herbert's reverend cousin would never come back and he
would die homesick.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
It makes sense.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Herbert's mom didn't like South Carolina, but Herbert's father made
the place work for him, even under the narrow constraints
of the time, and so Herbert grew up in Myrtle Beach.
He knew there were two worlds in Myrtle Beach. First,
there was the Hill. The hill was where black people
lived and had fun. They ran their own restaurants and shops, clubs,
(09:48):
and a barber shop. It's where Charlie's Place was. If
you stood on the hill and face the ocean and
started to walk, you eventually hit Ocean Boulevard, the last
street before the ocean, just you and sand and then
thousands of miles of water. Ocean Boulevard was the main
attraction for white tourists on vacation, and it was full
(10:09):
of Grand Ocean Front Hotel, the.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Original tourist trade in Myrtle beach. The hook was this
Antebellum type lifestyle. If you look at pictures of the
old large hotels like the Ocean for us of Patricia,
you'll see these columns like you see and gone with Winter,
and black people were all the chefs. Black people were
(10:33):
all the waiters. Black people talked the rich down here
etiquette because you had to be that way. You had
to know how to carry yourself any place to be
working in some of this. You working in white dinner jackets,
sometimes white gloves. You know, the stuff that we see
and we kind of get offended in a way when
we see it. But then when you realize the elegance,
(10:55):
the dignity that these men and women had to.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Carry themselves, and that's attention that a lot of people
in Myrtle Beach felt. Of course, it's offensive and I'd
say more than that, deeply disturbing seeing these rich white
tourists being served by black people in buildings that remind
you of gone with the wind. But Herbert also understands
that workers felt a certain dignity too. They moved with
(11:20):
the elegance and white gloves. This wealthy world required. There
was pride in that, a power in that, and this
is how Herbert's dad made Myrtle Beach work for him.
He was a maitre d at one of the grand
hotels on Ocean Boulevard.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
A matre d made more money than doctors at that time.
A good matre d dad did have a bed full
of money on Sundays and he split it with all
the waiters. He'd take apart, but he split it with
all the waiters. Say we wasn't enough, He'd give that
to them. And because of that he won great respect.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
As a major d.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Herbert's dad ran the dining room at the Patricia Inn.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
The Patricia Dinoman was famous. They say, every millionaire in
the South ate there. Richard Nixon ate there. Stroma themon
used to be there all the time, all the segregation
that used to eat there.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
I'm Thurman was a governor of South Carolina, one of
the most famous cheerleaders for segregation of all time. These
were people that controlled everyone's quality of life, and the
people they seemed most eager to control were black people.
Speaker 4 (12:25):
But they couldn't control everything.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
They couldn't get a good seat day. They didn't give
it to him. You know, that's what power is about.
If you're not rich. It's who you know, not what
you know. You know, if strom Thurmant wanted to sit
beside the winda at Patricia, he had to go to
my father and he wasn't coming in there unless he
had his coat in town. And he wasn't like no
(12:48):
food when he got in there.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Nobody was finding your place in this white tourism economy
was one of the few choices if you wanted to thrive,
and I heard stories of thriving in spite of the racism.
People who worked during the tourist season at these hotels
went on to become doctors. One of the people who
worked at the Patricia Inn later became the first black
Chief Justice of South Carolina Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
They didn't allow obstacles to get in their way. They
didn't cop out. They had to deal with a situation
that be thankful that we don't have on our shoulders.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
But still the power was lopsided extremely So.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Can I tell you a quick story. There's a beautiful
lady there named Clee Robertson, and she was what they
called the coffee girl. You know, she served coffee. And
one of the Caucasians made a very lude remark which
I'm not going to say to her, and she was insulted,
(13:45):
and she walked away from him, and he said, can't
you hear me? I tell you I want to say,
you said and so and so. You you know, how
much will it cost? You know? She told my father.
And the guy came to my day when he saw
Clee talking to him and asked him something to the
(14:06):
point like, Rley, what's wrong, I'm trying to give that
a little nigg girl some money, saying he knew daddy
hand was upside his head. Daddy knocked him down. Dad
was fired after thirty nine years, and his honor meant
more to him than a few dollars. And the owner
was basically a good guy. But that's just the time
(14:29):
we lived in, you know. But that's a true story.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
A vacation is a getaway and escape from work from
cold weather, general hustle and bustle. But the way Herbert
paints it and Myrtle Beach, the people came to return
to something that they didn't want to let go of.
In the heat of the South Carolina sun and on
one swept White's Only beaches, they clung to these parts
of the past these very ugly parts.
Speaker 3 (14:56):
What used to fascinate me the white folks. They come
down here and get as dark as they possibly could.
Sometimes they get burned like a re turned red. You know,
anybody's colored. White folks were colored by the way they
turned off kind of goes. Some did strange things to them.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
I went to Myrtle Beach many times over the course
of reporting this story, but I never once had time
to go for a swim. I'd get as far as
the boulevard and I'd stand there and look at the
water and let the breeze hit my face before running
to my next interview. Of course, I could have gone
in that water if I wanted to, and I wanted to.
(15:59):
It was so inviting, This momentary longing I felt, must
be nothing compared to what the people on the hill
would have experienced. To walk by that water day in
and day out on their way to work, pass white tourists,
and know you weren't allowed to swim in that water,
to touch it, I can't imagine. But I eventually learned
(16:20):
of a place up the coast where black people could
experience the bomb of a seaside summer, a place they
could touch the water it was called Atlantic Beach. Its
nickname was the Black Pearl. The way locals talked about it,
it almost sounded like a mirage.
Speaker 6 (16:38):
So think of a carnival with a ferris wheel, the twister,
the carousel. You've got an ocean front, you've got dining,
and think of that with people who look like you,
from wall to wall to wall, with sandy toes where
they've been in the beach. It is a feeling that
(17:01):
says you belong.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
This is home.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Atlantic Beach was more than a dozen miles from Carver Street,
but this home, this oasis was worth the trip when
you could catch a ride because it was run by
black people for black people. There were big orange ropes
that extended out into the ocean. They sectioned off Atlantic
Beach from the neighboring white beaches. But inside the ropes
(17:28):
you could ignore all of that.
Speaker 7 (17:30):
You know, you get tired of working for the other guy,
and so you was happy to see a number of
black people in business. Give your pride, sense of ownership, happiness,
freedom and peace, and you'd love to see your black
people having fun. You know, everybody deserve a vacation lest
(17:51):
you might get sad.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
How Atlantic Beach came to exist is its own wild story.
It was a collective effort. Black people in the area
pulled their money together. Some who had started working in
kitchens in Myrtle Beach. They chipped in and bought land
on the shop, and I learned that Sarah and Charlie
Fitzgerald were two of its biggest investors.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
And Atlantic Beast was jumping before integration. They say his
money did that.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I knew the FitzGeralds were rich. They had multiple businesses.
There was the hotel and the club, and that high
stakes poker game in the back. They also had a
cab company. I just didn't know how rich.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
A lot of the white businesses downtown Charlie had money
in them. Some of them he owned and had white
people front him. Like white people usually to do a
black voot. He helped people. He loan people who wanted
to be paid back. He wasn't to be trifled with,
and he had to have this strong demeanor more.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Than eating in white restaurants, more than sitting in the
white section of the movie theater. This detail shocked me
when I learned that Charlie loaned white people in town money.
This changed my perception of those lines and the ways
in which Charlie made them bend in his favor. He
seemed to be moving according to a roadmap of his
own making. But if Charlie intended to stake a claim
(19:16):
in Myrtle Beach, it didn't hurt to have a little
muscle to back him up. Herbert says, Charlie always had
guys around him, his enforcers, and long after Charlie died,
they kept watch over his wife Sarah.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
Guys like Kidnapper goings chop him in way. All these
guys had nicknames. You know, these people were nobody to
mess with. Pull Chap put you in the ground. And
Rubin was strong as ox. Kidnapper was a lover, but
he knew how to get things done.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
You know, there was something else from Herbert's conversation with
can Daisy Taylor that stuck out to me about Charlie.
Speaker 8 (19:55):
You know, I hate to compare him to like Omar
from the Wire, but he's got that kind of swagger
and the you know he was, he was on the
fringes of you know, he was a bootlegger.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yes, do you know Thomson, the Greek kid who loved
to dance, said Charlie was a bootlegger too, and even
though this was after prohibition, there were still a lot
of ways to bootleg, to manufacture and sell liquor illegally,
mostly tactics for evading taxes.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
I don't know if that was.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
What Charlie was up to, but Herbert says he had
a special arrangement with the police chief to sell liquer
his way. The police chief was a guy named Carlisle Newton.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Carlile was supposed to be Charlie's buddy. Charlie was paying Carlile,
so Charlie is still his liquor.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
You know what's more powerful than bribing the white police
chief and getting away with it. And no matter what
it was, Charlie was great at recognizing a need, and
that brings us to Whispering Pines itself. Back to Charlie's place.
(21:02):
Charlie wanted to give black people who came to work
in Myrtle Beach a place to hang out, a place
to have a good time after work.
Speaker 4 (21:10):
So that's why Arly built.
Speaker 3 (21:11):
His club, a nice club, not some rinky dink hole
in the wall where you'd be safe, where you could
take anybody. Even in those days too many people told
me that not to be true. You could take anybody
you care, as long as you carried yourself in a civilized,
upright fashion and minded you own business and didn't harass
(21:32):
women and things, which was normal at that time. You
were treated with dignity and you could have a good time.
But he took advantage of the fact that there was
a market down here because there was no place else
to go.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
So Charlie had given them a place to go. But
there was another need a place to stay because all
season there were famous black musicians coming to town.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
I mentioned the Ocean for Us Hotel a while ago.
That was the first million dollar hotel in the South.
It was built in the twenties. And because of that,
you have the elite of the elite staying at the
Ocean for Us. Now, they had some white entertainment, but
they wanted the best entertainment, so they'd have a Basie,
or they'd have Ellington, or they'd have the Mills brothers,
who were like the Temptations when I was growing up.
(22:21):
Groups like that, you know, and they couldn't stay there
and they couldn't socialize there.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
Because they were black. Herbert said he knew of one exception,
Sam and Dave, the original singers of the song soul Man.
They were the only black artists that he had heard
of at the time who stayed at the Ocean Forest Hotel,
but with a caveat. They had to use a special
hidden elevator to come and go, so the white patrons
(22:50):
wouldn't know they slept there. These kinds of limitations on
black artists weren't unique to Myrtle Beach. This was all
over the South. There were only a handful of places
where black performers could stay during Jim Crow and stay safely.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
So some of them would go up to Atlantic Beach.
Maybe Duke would go up to Atlantic Beach because get
him an ocean front room. But many of them wanted
to stay down here, So Charlie built the hotel.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Charlie built an end next to his nightclub. Now performers
could stay just to walk away from their gigs instead
of twelve or fifteen miles.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
They'd be playing. After they finished playing the Ocean for us,
they do what we call nowadays midnight special.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
They do a second performance.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
They do a midnight special at Charlie's place. The word
got out to the wealthy elite that were coming down
from the north and the South said, oh, man, guess
I guess it's playing over Charlie's place, so and so
so the Dukellington's over there.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Charlie built it for black people, but it drew in
white people from all over to Everyone wanted to go
to Charlie's place.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Mills, Brothers, Ray, Charles, although Ray was playing back up
for this other guy in those days, so they'd want
to come, and they come over. Any old person in
this community, any old person, they will remember this. I
can barely remember it because I was a child at
the heyday of this stuff. But from one end of
the Carver Street to the other end, and the Carver
(24:25):
Street was a dirt road, then you'd have cadillacts and
packards on Saturday night, Friday night, men, white men in tuxedos,
white women with jewels and gallons will come out there.
Ain't know, Black folks. I don't care how down and
out we've been. We got a hands on a couple
of dollars. We're not about letting somebody out dresses. So
(24:47):
the black women will come out dressed like that. And
you can look at pictures in those days and you
can see my father and all his friends many times
in tuxes, white tuxes. They were sharp, they carried themself
good old spice was out there to be wearing their
old spice, and they had a good time.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Herbert's description match is what a lot of people said
about Charlie's Place in his heyday. People who saw it
firsthand brought to mind similar images, but no one described
it as vividly and enthusiastically as Herbert and his mind.
It is so alive and on a pedestal. A lot
(25:27):
of people talked about Charlie's Place this way. It reminded
me of something we say in French nip book, which
is like a time you're romanticized back in the day.
But in Herbert's case, he's nostalgic for a place he
never really knew. And one of the romantic lines I
heard about this time in Myrtle Beach was segregation by
day and integration at night. Jim Crow era theaters and
(25:49):
clubs were divided inside. It was usually done with a
rope or a balcony. The rope sectioned off black people
from the main action, where white people were able to
move about more freely. Charlie's Place intended to keep the
lines drawn according to the rules. He had a balcony,
but his balcony was for white people. Charlie flipped it.
Speaker 3 (26:11):
Section up in the balcony area like they used to
put black folk in balcony in theaters. When I was
a kid, you didn't have to go through that, but
we did. And he'd have a section for them that
was for them, but they wanted to get down on
the floor because that's where the party was. He flipped
it on. The whites are the ones who really integrated
(26:31):
the place now, because Charlie had a segregated section for them,
but they wanted to get down where the action was.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
The music was so good and the dancing is so
intoxicating that eventually the lines began to blur. This was
an important moment when the white people came down from
the balcony and stepped on the dance floor. It would
be the legacy of Charlie's Place, a symbol of unity,
a surprising image to associate with the Jim Crow era
South segregation by day, integration by night, but it would
(27:02):
come at a cost. Years after Charlie died, after his
father's Heyday at Patricia and Herbert would join the tradition
of black waiters working on the boulevard. He was working
as a bell hop at the Ocean Forest Hotel. Like
the smell of gas coming from the trunk of his
family's buick. There would be another thing that he would
never forget.
Speaker 3 (27:22):
There's one character I'll never forget. His name is Carlile Newton.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Carlile Newton was a police chief in Myrtle Beach from
nineteen forty eight to nineteen seventy four, the same police
chief that people speculated Charlie knew well and paid off
to bootleg. And every Wednesday, according to Herbert, Carlyle came
by the hotel. He'd leave with the Minila envelope. A
lot of the staff noticed that they knew that Carlile,
(27:46):
the police chief, was there to pick up his payoff.
One day, Herbert was on a shift and saw Carlyle
come by just like every other Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
I can remember that vividly. He'd come by every Wednesday,
and he leaved with the Manila envelope.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Herbert says, somebody he was with said something along the
lines of there he is going to get his money.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Carlyle overheard that think he even hurts.
Speaker 3 (28:11):
He came back by. We were standing beside a brick wall.
This fella took me. I guess he's gonna make an
example out of somebody. Slam me against the wall, pulled
out his weapon, big gun, look like a dirty, hairy
pistol or something, you know, jammed it into my stomach
and said, nigga, if you ever tell anybody you saw
me do anything, I'll blow your goddamn brains out. That
(28:35):
sticks in, That sticks in your mind for the rest
of your life.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
This just makes me marvel at how Charlie Fitzgerald made
a man like that, a man willing to shove a
gun in a boy's stomach work for him. How long
would this last before Charlie became a target. Eventually, they
(29:02):
won't want this black man to have this much power
from the moment white people stepped foot on charlie stands,
for it would set something in motion and there would
be a limit.
Speaker 3 (29:18):
Power seeds to power. That's it, and Charlie was an
example of power. They had to crush you.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Next time on Charlie's.
Speaker 9 (29:48):
Place, he comes under fire, he comes under attack. And
that was a story because everyone knew Charlie, and if
Charlie's intimidated and threatened at this moment, then we would
know clearly what that terror.
Speaker 3 (30:02):
Meant for other people.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Charlie's Place is a production of Atlas Obscura and Coco
Punch in partnership with Pushkin Industries and presented by Visit
Myrtle Beach. It's written and produced by Emily Foreman. Our
story editor is Erica Lance. Our team at Atlas Obscura
is Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Johanna Mayer, Linda Lobel, and
Emily Yates. You can follow us on Instagram at Atlas Obscura.
(30:33):
Please head to Charlie's placeshow dot com for more information
about the locations mentioned in the series and how you
can visit yourself.
Speaker 4 (30:41):
I'm marim Gise. Thanks for listening.
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