August 11, 2025 • 37 mins
“And in the minds of many, Charlie Fitzgerald's dance hall becomes the worst fears of the champions of white supremacy.”
There’s much mystery surrounding Charlie Fitzgerald and who he was before Myrtle Beach. Before he was Charlie Fitzgerald he was Lucious Rucker. So who is Lucious Rucker?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:17):
Pushkin. A quick warning some of the language and imagery
used to describe this period of time may be upsetting.
Please take care while listening. On my very first trip
to Myrtle Beach, I wanted to orient myself at the place.
(00:40):
Like a good tourist. I signed up for a trolley
tour and it happened to stop at Charlie's Place. That
was the first time I saw. The club isn't there anymore,
but the house where Charlie and Sarah lived is inside.
The house is a kind of museum. There's a replica
of the bar, tables and chairs, a piano in the corner,
a few photos, and something that completely shook my understanding
(01:04):
of the story. There was a death certificate there and
the name on it was a name I had never.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Heard for he was using another name where he found out,
you know, Charlie Fitzgerald. His name was Lucius Rucker.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Lucius Rucker. That was interesting. This was a shrine to
Charlie Fitzgerald. But the death certificate says Lucius Rucker. Who
is Lucius Rucker? Dino Thompson, that Greek kid who hung
around Charlie's place, only ever knew him as Charlie.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Why did he change his name? That was mysterious. That
was interesting. You know, I didn't know anybody it changed
her name except my dad. We changed it because his
Greek name was so long it ran off of his
army named Day.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
I wanted to figure out what was going on with
this name change, so I asked everybody I could, But
most people I talked to who knew the FitzGeralds hadn't
heard of a Lucius Rucker. Did you know that Charlie
Fitzgerald wasn't his real name?
Speaker 3 (02:06):
That's all we knew, Joni Fridger.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, his real name was Lucius Rucker.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, Lucia's Ruccer.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Before I saw the death certificate, I thought Charlie and
Sarah were just very benevolent, well off people, and they
made their money being entrepreneurs. But clearly they had a past.
Charlie did, and it started with Lucia's Rucker.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
How does Lucia's Rucker become Charlie Fitzgerald And then how
does this enterprising black man born to the turn of
the twentieth century find his roots in Rotor Beach, South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
It sounded like more than a name change. It sounded
like a reinvention. Did Charlie bury his past on purpose?
Was there something he wanted to hide? This is Charlie's place.
I'm rine guise, Episode four, Mister Nobody from Nowhere. My
(03:25):
dad always used to tell me, never forget where you
come from. By the time I was in high school,
we'd already moved to four different countries, Algeria to Mali, Mali,
to the Ivory Coast, Ivory Coast to America. My dad,
a highly educated mathematician, had hard time finding work, and
he saw an opportunity in Batanu, Louisiana, a place with
(03:47):
a foncophone past. He thought maybe that would make things easier.
He really had no clue. Now. My family never fully
bought into the idea of the American dream, But when
I moved to the American South, I felt it being
(04:08):
sold to me hard. And while I was of it,
I couldn't help but notice that social mobility seemed more
possible here than in any place I'd lived before. It
was that mix of hope and disillusionment that drew me
to f. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. This was one
of the first books I read in English. When I
moved to the States and I loved it. And when
(04:30):
I heard about the name change from Lucius Rutger to
Charlie Fitzgerald, I immediately thought of Gatsby. To refresh your memory.
It's a nineteen twenty five novel, and Jay Gatsby is
this mysterious man who throws lavish parties on his Long
Island mansion night after night. He hosts these parties all
to get the attention of a woman he loves named Daisy.
(04:52):
But Daisy is already married to Tom. Their old money,
whereas Gatsby is new money. No one knows where Gatsby
came from or how he made his fortune. It's implied
he's built this whole persona. All the mystery and the
way he bucks class norms makes Gatsby a threat to
the old money families around him. Eventually we learn Gatsby
(05:16):
actually came from a poor farming family in North Dakota
German immigrants, and he was born James gatts He changed
his name to Jay Gatsby. At a climactic moment, we
learn it was bootlegging that made gats be rich. It's
Tom who calls Gatsby out. He uses Gatsby's real past
(05:36):
to diminish him in Daisy's eyes, and he calls Gadsby
a mister nobody from nowhere. This moment really struck a chord,
because this is the exact thing that holds immigrants back.
The minute you step foot in this new place, you
(05:58):
become a nobody from nowhere. Who you are is what
you left behind, so you reinvent yourself. No one I
talked to knew about Charlie's life before Myrtle Beach. Still,
the matter of where Charlie came from came up a lot.
(06:19):
What I thought was a basic and innocent question open
a can of worms. Every time it became a central
part of the mystery surrounding Charlie. Being an immigrant, I
should have known better. Where are you from is always
a loaded question. Some said Charlie was from up North,
some said the Islands Trinidad. Some said he was from
(06:40):
New York on the run from the mob. This mystery
elevated him in the eyes of the people on the hill.
It added to his folk hero status. The rumors swirling
around Jay Gatsby also worked in his favor and turned
him into a king. Now when it came to Charlie's origins.
No one mentioned any part of the American South. But
(07:01):
there was one thing Herbert Riley said about Charlie that
really stuck with me. He was the amateur historian who
passed away several years ago.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
One thing about Charlie he did grew up down here.
He never saw strange fruit hanging from the popula trees.
The black men that grew up down here in the
country in the twenties, it was nothing unusual for them,
at least once in their lifetime to see somebody hanging
from a tree that puts fear in you. That was
the purpose of it. This is terrorism. There's no terrorism
(07:33):
like white supremacist terrorism. Let me tell you.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
If Charlie didn't grow up in the South, maybe that's
why he was so bold. But was this true? There
was something on that trolley tour that led me to
an answer. It was on that death certificate hanging in
the Fitzgerald's house turned museum Lucius Rucker. Because according to
the death certificate, Lucius Rucker was born into CoA, Georgia,
(07:57):
and if Charlie was Lucius Rucker, he almost certainly was
from the South. This brought the picture into focus I
wanted to talk to a historian who understood South Carolina
history deeply and the unique circumstances that would have shaped
Charlie's life and the choices he made. That person turned
out to be doctor Bobby Donaldson at the University of
(08:18):
South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
So for the last twenty five years, I've done a
number of all interviews of South Carolinians about race relations
and civil rights. And one thing I've learned is how
much people have forgotten unless prompted, unless there is a
unique moment that I can pull from o archival record
or photograph about the past. However, once that rewind button
(08:43):
is pressed, it is amazing the volumes of information about
the history of our state, about our nation that are
buried in the layers of people's minds. I was interviewing
a gentleman about his participation in student demonstrations in nineteen sixty.
(09:05):
He stopped me and he said, you know, I'm from Conway,
South Carolina. Have you ever heard of Charlie Fitzgerald? And
I had not, And he then began to give me
a dissertation on Charlie Fitzgerald and what he remembered happening
in nineteen fifty and he said the police dogs tear
(09:27):
gas he experienced as a college student was nothing compared
to the fear and terror he remembered as a little
boy growing up in Conway, not too far from Rdle Beach.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Doctor Donaldson went deep into the archives. He pulled documents
in old interviews he had done for his research. By
the time we talked, he knew a lot about Charlie Fitzgerald.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
There's a document that caught my eye late last night.
I think it was his World War II registration that
there was a sister who lived in Rodle Beach. I
did not know that, and so I'm curious if her
presence there may have been what drew him to the community.
And it looked like from some of the public records
that his sister was a nurse in Oor County.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
A sister in Myrtle Beach. Charlie is a person I
was told had no known family. Obviously he came from somewhere,
but I didn't expect to find links to any relatives,
let alone a sister in Myrtle Beach. It turns out
there's a trove of documents about Charlie Fitzgerald's life since
its reports draft cards, newspaper clippings. I was surprised to
(10:36):
find so much on a man who seemed like he
tried hard to not be known. Here's what we know
about Charlie on paper, or rather Lucius Rucker. Lucius was
born into Cooha, Georgia, on August thirty first, nineteen hundred.
He was the youngest and only son of Nlly and
Effie Rucker. Nalli was a brakeman for the railroad. Effie
(11:00):
was a teacher. One census report says Effie's father was
from Ireland and the whole family was identified as Mulatto.
This might give a little insight into the lighter shade
of Charlie's skin. And I learned Blush has had two
older sisters, a nett In Ethel, and when he was
a teenager, the family moved from Georgia to Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
This is all making more sense now. Greenville is one
of the emerging big cities not too far from that
part of Georgia, so it's not too surprising that his
path takes him from his rural town to Greenville and
then to other parts of the state.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Professor Donaldson says he thinks a lot of black families
traveled the same path to the nearby big city. And
that's where Charlie spent all of his twenties, as far
as I can tell, in Greenville, where he worked several jobs.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
He was the janet of an Elks lodge and a cook.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
He also compressed cotton. He worked that job into his thirties.
So Charlie would have been coming of age exactly against
that backdrop of the terrorism Herbert described White Line, the
KKK burning crosses on people's lawns. This is what went
on in the nineteen thirties in Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
And here is where African America is a coming of
age trying to figure out what is the best way
to navigate through the brutality of racial violence and Jim
Crow policy. But I also know that most black people
were not living day to day under this curse of
bigger train white supremacis. They knew it existed, they knew
(12:40):
it was there. But here is people making a way
out of no way.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
In other words, their lives were more than the oppression
they faced. Charlie grew up during a time where the
ideas about how to navigate the world as a black
person were coming from political activists and scholars, civil rights
giants like W. E. B.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Du Bois, who was the founder of the Niagara Movement
and the NAACP, Marcus Garvey, who leads a Back to
Africa movement, a strong champion of black nationalism and black
entrepreneurship and self help.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
And Booker T.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Washington, who champion entrepreneurship and self help and what some
have described as racial accommodation.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Accommodation rather than resistance tactics like protests. He said, do
not agitate, rather work with your hands, prove useful, and
this will erode racial barriers. Du Bois and others criticize
Washington for promoting this approach rather than actively fighting to
end discrimination. They didn't all agree, but these men all
(13:42):
stressed black entrepreneurship, although they had different ideas about the
limitations of racism what w eb Du Boys referred to
as the problem of the color line, and they had
different ideas of how to grapple with it. Do you
ignore it, work within it, accommodate the racists, push back,
or leave.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
So Charlie Fitzgerald is hearing options. Here are people building
their own lives, people establishing their own businesses, their own neighborhoods,
their own communities, their own churches, their own schools, living
within the color line. So that's the era in which
Charlie Fitzgerald is building his business. That is the era
(14:29):
in which he is trying to navigate a path forward.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
This is also the era when people in South Carolina
become aware of a soldier named Isaac Woodard. In nineteen
forty six, Charlie was in his forties and running his
nightclub in Myrtle Beach. That year, this soldier, Isaac Woodard,
was returning home from war. He was just twenty six
years old and hopped on a Greyhound bus to Winnsboro,
(14:54):
South Carolina. Along the route, he asked the bus driver
to pull over so he could use the restroom. The
bus driver refused. They argued about it, and at the
next stop, policemen pulled Woodard off the bus, beat him
in an alley, and threw him in jail.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
This gentleman is honorably discharged from the military, and on
the very same day he is discharged, he is brutally
beaten by a local police in a community called Batesburg,
South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Beaten and blinded, the officer who blinded Woodard later stated
in court that he beat him for saying yes instead
of yes sir.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
And this becomes a national story because here is Isaac
Woodard who becomes a symbol of white supremacy, a symbol
of racial violence, but also a symbol of black resistance.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Isaac Woodard was just one example of the aftermath of
war because in the South, Herbert Riley says, there's something
that always happened after war, this.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
Colls clan fever to rise. Clan Rise is after every
war you have the greatest clan parade ever. In nineteen twenty,
that's right after Black troops came back from World War One.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Charlie lived through two World Wars, and when the second
one ended, the cycle began again. The Ku Klux Klan
rose again.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
Because they were mad, because black people just coming back
from World War two, and black men felt strong, entitled,
they'd given their lives and see a lot of these
Southern boys had to be in the same foxhole of
black people who were saving their lives many times. So
although they wouldn't just embrace it, they knew the truth
(16:48):
in their heart.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Black soldiers are hopeful they'll come home to greater respect
and fair treatment. But that doesn't happen.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Black men in uniform are not lifted up as heroes.
They are dismissed as threats.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Somewhere along the way, Lucius Rutger becomes Charlie Fitzgerald. And
as far as I know, he was going by Charlie
Fitzgerald as early as nineteen forty, and that's what it
says on the Monks Corner, South Carolina Census. He was
married to Sarah by then and making a living selling
beer and wine. Although locals say the FitzGeralds opened the
(17:35):
club in Myrtle Beach a few years earlier, in nineteen
thirty seven, it's a little unclear exactly when the FitzGeralds
made Myrtle Beach home.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
What surprises me most about Fitzgerald in the forties and fifties,
many African Americans who aspired to do well, they had
made the decision that that future was not in the
American South. That it was obvious there was no room
for ambition and aspiration, there were no room for Charlie Fitzgerald's.
(18:10):
And so there were many Charlie FitzGeralds who got on
the migration train and found themselves in Washington, d c.
And Baltimore, New York, Austin, Philadelphia. But he cast his
net right here in the South.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Charlie never left the South, not really in that way.
He was a lot like Booker T. Washington, this man
who was born into slavery, who decided to stay, who
worked with white people, let the fruits of his labor
do the talking. Washington's strategy made him powerful. He had
all sorts of connections with white politicians and some of
(18:52):
the wealthiest Americans. President William McKinley celebrated Washington for being
a black leader who was not too quote unquote radical
for whites. President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to the White
House and later called in Washington as a consultant on
race related issues. Washington went far with this approach. He
(19:13):
seemed to fit in places in the South where you'd
never imagine black people to be at the time. This
was a lot like Charlie. And when Charlie moved to
Myrtle Beach, he moved to Carver Street, into the black
neighborhood everyone knew as the Hill, but its official name
is the Booker T. Washington Neighborhood. As doctor Donaldson points
out though Washington was criticized for being too accommodating at
(19:36):
times because he chose not to resist, not to agitate,
to labor away and remain palatable to white people. I
don't think anyone would describe Charlie as accommodating. But to
stay in the South when others traveled north, which honestly
seemed like a safer and more forgiving path. What did
(19:56):
it take to stay And how did Charlie make the
leap for working in a cotton mill in Greenville to
opening a successful nightclub in Myrtle Beach. How did he
pull that off?
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Fitzgerald is influential, powerful, but he was notorious. That's a
good adjective for him. Here was a guy who made
his money in gambling and alcohol and amusement. And there
are newspaper accounts where he is arrested at various times
(20:28):
for violating local ordinances. I remember seeing one in the
forties in North Carolina. So he was a roving entrepreneur
who was beloved and respected by some and despised and
ridiculed by others.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
There are so many rumors swirling around Charlie, and they
all point to a central theme. Charlie lived on the
edge of danger. There was a gambling paying off the
police to bootleg. A lot of people talked about that,
and there were other things like frequent trips to New York.
He'd go to New York about once a month.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
He would go to New York, and we thought maybe
Charlie was, you know, with the big boys. You know,
I'm not saying that he was.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
What was Charlie doing in New York? Did he have
ties to the mob? Did this have something to do
with why he changed his name? Was Charlie in trouble
or could the name change be about something more personal,
a different kind of hiding. Miss pat told me that
Charlie had affairs.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
But Charlie had a lady working for him, had a
baby for him, and Messiah got the bb in dubbed it,
you know how to during girl go with the married man.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
And I'm so shocked that Miss Sarah adopted.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Him, but Shi had to keep her husband. We never
dreaming of going through this mess like that.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Charlie had a son and his name was Nathaniel Rucker.
If he had a son and gave him his original
last name, then how much was he really trying to
hide it. Nathaniel died decades before I came to Myrtle Beach,
but as I was talking to people on the hill,
they began to tell me about another son, also from
an affair, a son who was still alive in Myrtle
(22:21):
Beach named Ronnie. Unlike Nathaniel, Ronnie wasn't raised by the FitzGeralds.
Neighbors told me that Ronnie always had questions about his dad,
about Charlie, even to him, Charlie was something of a mystery.
Before I could decide how to reach out to Ronnie,
he passed away. Trying to get to the bottom of
(22:43):
Charlie was a lot of guesswork, blind reaches into the
murky past. In the end, I'd never find a satisfying
answer as to why he changed his name. It's tempting
to draw the conclusion that Charlie was running from something.
Maybe he was, I don't know. But what I really
think is Charlie wasn't running. He was creating. He was
(23:04):
inventing a new image for himself, or rather, Lucius Rucker
was looking for a name that the sophistication he wanted
to embody as an entrepreneur. Maybe it helped him pass
in white society when he needed to. I believe choosing
the name Charlie Fitzgerald was about creating a new identity
for himself to become something bigger than anyone ever expected
(23:27):
him to be. Regardless of his name, Lucius Rucker or
Charlie Fitzgerald needed audacity to bootleg as a black man
back then, when a misinterpreted glance could incite mob violence,
when you could be blinded for responding with a yes
instead of a yes sir. If he did do it,
(23:48):
it was hard to picture how Charlie got away with it.
Maybe he was really well liked, or like Booker T. Washington,
useful to someone who could protect him.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
There's a whole big question that Charlie Fitzgerald, who had
clubs and hotels and dance halls, could not have been
successful unless he had white champions, a white supporters, And
I think that's some space to really investigate. That Charlie
(24:21):
had some level of advocacy among the leadership of Motor Beach,
and one of the probably clearest examples of that is
the county sheriff Sassar, who comes to his aid and
comes his defense. Why that is I don't know, I'm
very curious, and there.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Will come a time when Sheriff Sassar would save Charlie.
We'll get to that. All Through the nineteen forties, Charlie
built up businesses, the Popular Club with a roster of musicians,
a cab company, a restaurant, a hotel, the gambling game
in the back room, money in white businesses downtown, maybe
(25:04):
another club on Atlantic Beach. This was a powerful man.
But by the late nineteen forties there was a storm brewing,
and the first lightning strike came in nineteen forty eight
in another part of South Carolina. You could trace it
to a man named George Elmore, definitely a Charlie Fitzgerald type,
a light skinned entrepreneur. One hundred and fifty miles away.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
George Elmore owned a grocery store. George Elmore owned a
liquor store. George Elmore had a taxi service, George Elmore
had a photography business. And George Elmore was the secretary
of the Progressive Democratic Party that sought to give African
(25:50):
Americans a political voice when they were actually being excluded
from the white Democratic Party.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
And one of those ways black people were obviously excluded
was they weren't allowed to vote. George Elmore sought to
change that.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
And so George Elmore, a fair skinned gentleman, is ultimately
able to get his name on the voting roster.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
At first, the clerk thought Elmore was white, so that's
how he was registered. And then they found out he
was black.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
And they said, you and your people cannot vote. Then
Georgia Eilmore takes that moment, files a lawsuit that is
ultimately ruled in his favor called Elmore v. Rice, where
a federal judge rules it unconstitutional for black people to
be denied the right to vote in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
For the first time, black people would be allowed to
vote in South Carolina. They would be allowed to vote
in the nineteen forty eight Democratic primary, all because of
George Elmore, and this meant Charlie and Sarah Fitzgerald would
have a decision to make. Early on, when I began
my research, I read a book recommended to me by
(27:01):
someone at the local Historical Society. It's a Brief History
of Myrtle Beach from nineteen hundred to nineteen eighty by
Barbara F. Stokes. I found something there that surprised me.
In Myrtle Beach. There were only two black people who
registered to vote in the nineteen forty eight Democratic primary,
Charlie and Sarah Fitzgerald.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
Not another black over here would register. Charlie offered to
put up money for him if they needed whatever, not
a one.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Now, this was a very big deal to be the
first was to take a stand and to be visible.
This decision would be documented for all to see, specifically
for racist white people to see.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
And almost immediately he comes under fire, He comes under attack,
and ultimately withdraws his name from the registration book.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Charlie asked the mayor to scratch their names off the roll,
and he told a newspaper reporter, I don't think this
is the right time to put our names on the book.
The news article quotes Charlie is saying that blacks and
whites and Myrtle Beach get along and well can continue
to do so. If quote chief politicians and outside agitators
leave us alone.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Then that was a story. Because everyone knew Charlie. And
if Charlie's intimidated and threatened at this moment by simply
doing what by simply wanting to exercise the right to vote,
then we would know clearly what that terror meant for
other people. And I should say too, because Charlie and
(28:37):
Sarah would draw their names. They come into criticism by
black leadership for doing so. Here you have these very powerful,
independently wealthy citizens, and if they are going to withdraw
their names, then so would the sharecropper, so would the
(28:57):
chauffeur show with the maid. And I think there was
a concern that if the FitzGeralds were to withdraw their names,
the dominoes would fall and the very momentum you hope
you would achieve would be lost. Now that did not happen,
by the way.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Charlie and Sarah retreated, but a lot of other people
outside of Myrtle Beach didn't. About thirty thousand black people
in South Carolina voted in that nineteen forty eight primary.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
In nineteen forty eight, black people vote in record numbers
and have a tremendous influence in state politics.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
In the lead up to the nineteen forty eight presidential election,
a new party forms, the Dixiecrats. It's made up of
a group of white Southern Democrats and segregationists who opposed
Truman's civil rights agenda. The Dixiecrats choose Strom Thurman to lead.
He's the governor of South Carolina at the time.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
In his accepted speech, he makes a powerful line where
he says there are not enough armies in this country
that would force white people to share a swimming pool
in the theater with black people. His words are far
more racist than that. That becomes not only a mantra,
(30:19):
that becomes marching orders that the governor of South Carolina
would make a clear declaration that why supremacy is actually policy,
and that it will shape and guide this state of
South Carolina. And even though Thurman himself comes out against
the Klan, his very rhetoric provides some fuel for the Klan.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Strom Thurmond, of course, does not become president, but in
nineteen fifty he runs for Senate. He goes head to
head with Olin Johnson, and the rhetoric becomes louder and
more racist.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
And essentially what shape the campaign was who was the
most racist of the two.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
It becomes a fight to show who loves segregation more,
because that's what it was going to take to win
in South Carolina. Charlie the light skinned entrepreneur George Elmore,
who registered to vote becomes a folk hero. But that's
a dangerous path to follow. George Elmore put himself on
the line, and he would become a target. In the
(31:24):
late nineteen forties, the Klan would come to George Elmore's house,
burn a cross in his yard, and threaten his family.
This victory for tens of thousands of black people turning
out to vote would cost Elmore a lot.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
George Elmore loses his store. George Elmore loses his other businesses.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
State agents rate Elmore's liquor store, banks call in loans
on their home. He's forced into bankruptcy.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
George Elmore is evicted from his house. George Elmore's wife
is placed in a mental institution, his children are taken
away from him.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
George Elmore becomes the victim of racism. So what would
happen to Charlie.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Here are these teenagers and college students, young people black
and white, gathering in the night at Charlie's place, integrating, dancing, socializing, drinking.
One of the worst fears that was preached in pulpits,
that was put in newspapers and in campaign literature was
(32:37):
that if the civil rights agenda goes forward, it's going
to lead to the mongrelization of the races. It's going
to lead to the demise of white people, and it's
going to lead to scenarios where the fair maidens of
white women is compromised, is abused, is exploited by black men,
(33:05):
and in the minds of many, Charlie Fitzgerald's dance Hall
becomes the worst fears of the champions of white supremacy.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
When you read The Great Gatsby, the whole thing feels
like the simmering electric increase intension. It builds and builds.
You send something very bad is going to happen, like
something's got to give. Something bad does happen. Gatsby loses Daisy,
but when she accidentally kills someone with Gatsby's car, he
(33:46):
takes the blame. He sacrifices himself for her. But love
is not enough to overcome the class dynamics, and neither
is money. A man who wants revenge for the car
accident finds Gasby at his mansion and shoots him. It
ends with the image of Gatsby lying face down dead,
(34:06):
floating in his pool. August twenty sixth of nineteen fifty
is the night the tensions in Charlie's life would come
to a head. It's a night that everyone on Carver Street,
everyone on the hill, everyone who is alive and there
remembers well. On that night, Miss Pat was at her
(34:28):
granddad's barbershop on twenty first Street on the hill.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
My grandad was sitting in his shop yard burning fire
vernon trash. You used to burn trash every night.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Miss Pat's granddad was out there when the Chief of police,
Carlisle Newton, came by. He came to deliver a warning.
He said, stay put and no one is going to
bother you. Miss Pat's granddad told them all to go
inside and shut out the lights.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
He said, if I get killed, y'all pray.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Her granddad had them pray for everything, but they never
had to pray for anything like this before. He said,
do not turn on the lights until I come get you.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
That's all he told us to do. And every lady
on that corner twenty first was out and my aunt
was scared. My aunt was in there crying and shaking
up baby, keeping up baby from crying. Nobody said a thing.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Miss Pat's granddad posted up in the front yard. They
waited in the dark house and listened for gunshots.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
And he had a big fire in the front yard
and in front of his shop with a shot gun,
crossed his lap and grant Dad to sit there and
burn that fire. Next thing we know, Charlie was gone.
Charlie was gone.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Next time on Charlie's Place.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Don't take anything for granted, You just don't.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
You don't know when's gonna happen, how it's gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Who's gonna do it to you? She said, they're writing.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
And when they're say they're writing, that mean the KKK
was writing. Charlie's Place is a production of Atlas Obscura
and Rococo Punch in partnership with Pushkin Industries and presented
by Visit Myrtle Beach. It's written and produced by Emily Foreman.
(36:46):
Our story editor is Erica Lance. Our team at Atlas
Obscurra is Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Johanna Mayer, Linda Lobel,
and Emily Yates. You can follow us on Instagram at
Atlas Obscura. A special thanks to Christopher Frere and Brianna
Ashford Carroll at the University of South Carolina Center for
Civil Rights History and Research. And also to Barbara F. Stokes,
(37:11):
author of Myrtle Beach, A History nineteen hundred to nineteen eighty.
Please head to Charlie's playshow dot com for more information
about the locations mentioned in the series and how you
can visit yourself. I'mrin d s. Thanks for listening binge
(37:39):
the entire season of Charlie's Place ad free by subscribing
to Pushkin Plus. Sign up on the show page on
Apple Podcasts or Pushkin dot fm slash Plus. Pushkin Plus
subscribers can access ad free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive
binges of other true crime podcasts throughout the year.
Pushkin. A quick warning some of the language and imagery
used to describe this period of time may be upsetting.
Please take care while listening. On my very first trip
to Myrtle Beach, I wanted to orient myself at the place.
(00:40):
Like a good tourist. I signed up for a trolley
tour and it happened to stop at Charlie's Place. That
was the first time I saw. The club isn't there anymore,
but the house where Charlie and Sarah lived is inside.
The house is a kind of museum. There's a replica
of the bar, tables and chairs, a piano in the corner,
a few photos, and something that completely shook my understanding
(01:04):
of the story. There was a death certificate there and
the name on it was a name I had never.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Heard for he was using another name where he found out,
you know, Charlie Fitzgerald. His name was Lucius Rucker.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
Lucius Rucker. That was interesting. This was a shrine to
Charlie Fitzgerald. But the death certificate says Lucius Rucker. Who
is Lucius Rucker? Dino Thompson, that Greek kid who hung
around Charlie's place, only ever knew him as Charlie.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Why did he change his name? That was mysterious. That
was interesting. You know, I didn't know anybody it changed
her name except my dad. We changed it because his
Greek name was so long it ran off of his
army named Day.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
I wanted to figure out what was going on with
this name change, so I asked everybody I could, But
most people I talked to who knew the FitzGeralds hadn't
heard of a Lucius Rucker. Did you know that Charlie
Fitzgerald wasn't his real name?
Speaker 3 (02:06):
That's all we knew, Joni Fridger.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Yeah, his real name was Lucius Rucker.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Yeah, Lucia's Ruccer.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Before I saw the death certificate, I thought Charlie and
Sarah were just very benevolent, well off people, and they
made their money being entrepreneurs. But clearly they had a past.
Charlie did, and it started with Lucia's Rucker.
Speaker 4 (02:31):
How does Lucia's Rucker become Charlie Fitzgerald And then how
does this enterprising black man born to the turn of
the twentieth century find his roots in Rotor Beach, South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
It sounded like more than a name change. It sounded
like a reinvention. Did Charlie bury his past on purpose?
Was there something he wanted to hide? This is Charlie's place.
I'm rine guise, Episode four, Mister Nobody from Nowhere. My
(03:25):
dad always used to tell me, never forget where you
come from. By the time I was in high school,
we'd already moved to four different countries, Algeria to Mali, Mali,
to the Ivory Coast, Ivory Coast to America. My dad,
a highly educated mathematician, had hard time finding work, and
he saw an opportunity in Batanu, Louisiana, a place with
(03:47):
a foncophone past. He thought maybe that would make things easier.
He really had no clue. Now. My family never fully
bought into the idea of the American dream, But when
I moved to the American South, I felt it being
(04:08):
sold to me hard. And while I was of it,
I couldn't help but notice that social mobility seemed more
possible here than in any place I'd lived before. It
was that mix of hope and disillusionment that drew me
to f. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. This was one
of the first books I read in English. When I
moved to the States and I loved it. And when
(04:30):
I heard about the name change from Lucius Rutger to
Charlie Fitzgerald, I immediately thought of Gatsby. To refresh your memory.
It's a nineteen twenty five novel, and Jay Gatsby is
this mysterious man who throws lavish parties on his Long
Island mansion night after night. He hosts these parties all
to get the attention of a woman he loves named Daisy.
(04:52):
But Daisy is already married to Tom. Their old money,
whereas Gatsby is new money. No one knows where Gatsby
came from or how he made his fortune. It's implied
he's built this whole persona. All the mystery and the
way he bucks class norms makes Gatsby a threat to
the old money families around him. Eventually we learn Gatsby
(05:16):
actually came from a poor farming family in North Dakota
German immigrants, and he was born James gatts He changed
his name to Jay Gatsby. At a climactic moment, we
learn it was bootlegging that made gats be rich. It's
Tom who calls Gatsby out. He uses Gatsby's real past
(05:36):
to diminish him in Daisy's eyes, and he calls Gadsby
a mister nobody from nowhere. This moment really struck a chord,
because this is the exact thing that holds immigrants back.
The minute you step foot in this new place, you
(05:58):
become a nobody from nowhere. Who you are is what
you left behind, so you reinvent yourself. No one I
talked to knew about Charlie's life before Myrtle Beach. Still,
the matter of where Charlie came from came up a lot.
(06:19):
What I thought was a basic and innocent question open
a can of worms. Every time it became a central
part of the mystery surrounding Charlie. Being an immigrant, I
should have known better. Where are you from is always
a loaded question. Some said Charlie was from up North,
some said the Islands Trinidad. Some said he was from
(06:40):
New York on the run from the mob. This mystery
elevated him in the eyes of the people on the hill.
It added to his folk hero status. The rumors swirling
around Jay Gatsby also worked in his favor and turned
him into a king. Now when it came to Charlie's origins.
No one mentioned any part of the American South. But
(07:01):
there was one thing Herbert Riley said about Charlie that
really stuck with me. He was the amateur historian who
passed away several years ago.
Speaker 5 (07:09):
One thing about Charlie he did grew up down here.
He never saw strange fruit hanging from the popula trees.
The black men that grew up down here in the
country in the twenties, it was nothing unusual for them,
at least once in their lifetime to see somebody hanging
from a tree that puts fear in you. That was
the purpose of it. This is terrorism. There's no terrorism
(07:33):
like white supremacist terrorism. Let me tell you.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
If Charlie didn't grow up in the South, maybe that's
why he was so bold. But was this true? There
was something on that trolley tour that led me to
an answer. It was on that death certificate hanging in
the Fitzgerald's house turned museum Lucius Rucker. Because according to
the death certificate, Lucius Rucker was born into CoA, Georgia,
(07:57):
and if Charlie was Lucius Rucker, he almost certainly was
from the South. This brought the picture into focus I
wanted to talk to a historian who understood South Carolina
history deeply and the unique circumstances that would have shaped
Charlie's life and the choices he made. That person turned
out to be doctor Bobby Donaldson at the University of
(08:18):
South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
So for the last twenty five years, I've done a
number of all interviews of South Carolinians about race relations
and civil rights. And one thing I've learned is how
much people have forgotten unless prompted, unless there is a
unique moment that I can pull from o archival record
or photograph about the past. However, once that rewind button
(08:43):
is pressed, it is amazing the volumes of information about
the history of our state, about our nation that are
buried in the layers of people's minds. I was interviewing
a gentleman about his participation in student demonstrations in nineteen sixty.
(09:05):
He stopped me and he said, you know, I'm from Conway,
South Carolina. Have you ever heard of Charlie Fitzgerald? And
I had not, And he then began to give me
a dissertation on Charlie Fitzgerald and what he remembered happening
in nineteen fifty and he said the police dogs tear
(09:27):
gas he experienced as a college student was nothing compared
to the fear and terror he remembered as a little
boy growing up in Conway, not too far from Rdle Beach.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Doctor Donaldson went deep into the archives. He pulled documents
in old interviews he had done for his research. By
the time we talked, he knew a lot about Charlie Fitzgerald.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
There's a document that caught my eye late last night.
I think it was his World War II registration that
there was a sister who lived in Rodle Beach. I
did not know that, and so I'm curious if her
presence there may have been what drew him to the community.
And it looked like from some of the public records
that his sister was a nurse in Oor County.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
A sister in Myrtle Beach. Charlie is a person I
was told had no known family. Obviously he came from somewhere,
but I didn't expect to find links to any relatives,
let alone a sister in Myrtle Beach. It turns out
there's a trove of documents about Charlie Fitzgerald's life since
its reports draft cards, newspaper clippings. I was surprised to
(10:36):
find so much on a man who seemed like he
tried hard to not be known. Here's what we know
about Charlie on paper, or rather Lucius Rucker. Lucius was
born into Cooha, Georgia, on August thirty first, nineteen hundred.
He was the youngest and only son of Nlly and
Effie Rucker. Nalli was a brakeman for the railroad. Effie
(11:00):
was a teacher. One census report says Effie's father was
from Ireland and the whole family was identified as Mulatto.
This might give a little insight into the lighter shade
of Charlie's skin. And I learned Blush has had two
older sisters, a nett In Ethel, and when he was
a teenager, the family moved from Georgia to Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
This is all making more sense now. Greenville is one
of the emerging big cities not too far from that
part of Georgia, so it's not too surprising that his
path takes him from his rural town to Greenville and
then to other parts of the state.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
Professor Donaldson says he thinks a lot of black families
traveled the same path to the nearby big city. And
that's where Charlie spent all of his twenties, as far
as I can tell, in Greenville, where he worked several jobs.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
He was the janet of an Elks lodge and a cook.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
He also compressed cotton. He worked that job into his thirties.
So Charlie would have been coming of age exactly against
that backdrop of the terrorism Herbert described White Line, the
KKK burning crosses on people's lawns. This is what went
on in the nineteen thirties in Greenville, South Carolina.
Speaker 4 (12:20):
And here is where African America is a coming of
age trying to figure out what is the best way
to navigate through the brutality of racial violence and Jim
Crow policy. But I also know that most black people
were not living day to day under this curse of
bigger train white supremacis. They knew it existed, they knew
(12:40):
it was there. But here is people making a way
out of no way.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
In other words, their lives were more than the oppression
they faced. Charlie grew up during a time where the
ideas about how to navigate the world as a black
person were coming from political activists and scholars, civil rights
giants like W. E. B.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Du Bois, who was the founder of the Niagara Movement
and the NAACP, Marcus Garvey, who leads a Back to
Africa movement, a strong champion of black nationalism and black
entrepreneurship and self help.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
And Booker T.
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Washington, who champion entrepreneurship and self help and what some
have described as racial accommodation.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Accommodation rather than resistance tactics like protests. He said, do
not agitate, rather work with your hands, prove useful, and
this will erode racial barriers. Du Bois and others criticize
Washington for promoting this approach rather than actively fighting to
end discrimination. They didn't all agree, but these men all
(13:42):
stressed black entrepreneurship, although they had different ideas about the
limitations of racism what w eb Du Boys referred to
as the problem of the color line, and they had
different ideas of how to grapple with it. Do you
ignore it, work within it, accommodate the racists, push back,
or leave.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
So Charlie Fitzgerald is hearing options. Here are people building
their own lives, people establishing their own businesses, their own neighborhoods,
their own communities, their own churches, their own schools, living
within the color line. So that's the era in which
Charlie Fitzgerald is building his business. That is the era
(14:29):
in which he is trying to navigate a path forward.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
This is also the era when people in South Carolina
become aware of a soldier named Isaac Woodard. In nineteen
forty six, Charlie was in his forties and running his
nightclub in Myrtle Beach. That year, this soldier, Isaac Woodard,
was returning home from war. He was just twenty six
years old and hopped on a Greyhound bus to Winnsboro,
(14:54):
South Carolina. Along the route, he asked the bus driver
to pull over so he could use the restroom. The
bus driver refused. They argued about it, and at the
next stop, policemen pulled Woodard off the bus, beat him
in an alley, and threw him in jail.
Speaker 4 (15:13):
This gentleman is honorably discharged from the military, and on
the very same day he is discharged, he is brutally
beaten by a local police in a community called Batesburg,
South Carolina.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
Beaten and blinded, the officer who blinded Woodard later stated
in court that he beat him for saying yes instead
of yes sir.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
And this becomes a national story because here is Isaac
Woodard who becomes a symbol of white supremacy, a symbol
of racial violence, but also a symbol of black resistance.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
Isaac Woodard was just one example of the aftermath of
war because in the South, Herbert Riley says, there's something
that always happened after war, this.
Speaker 5 (16:05):
Colls clan fever to rise. Clan Rise is after every
war you have the greatest clan parade ever. In nineteen twenty,
that's right after Black troops came back from World War One.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Charlie lived through two World Wars, and when the second
one ended, the cycle began again. The Ku Klux Klan
rose again.
Speaker 5 (16:25):
Because they were mad, because black people just coming back
from World War two, and black men felt strong, entitled,
they'd given their lives and see a lot of these
Southern boys had to be in the same foxhole of
black people who were saving their lives many times. So
although they wouldn't just embrace it, they knew the truth
(16:48):
in their heart.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Black soldiers are hopeful they'll come home to greater respect
and fair treatment. But that doesn't happen.
Speaker 4 (16:57):
Black men in uniform are not lifted up as heroes.
They are dismissed as threats.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Somewhere along the way, Lucius Rutger becomes Charlie Fitzgerald. And
as far as I know, he was going by Charlie
Fitzgerald as early as nineteen forty, and that's what it
says on the Monks Corner, South Carolina Census. He was
married to Sarah by then and making a living selling
beer and wine. Although locals say the FitzGeralds opened the
(17:35):
club in Myrtle Beach a few years earlier, in nineteen
thirty seven, it's a little unclear exactly when the FitzGeralds
made Myrtle Beach home.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
What surprises me most about Fitzgerald in the forties and fifties,
many African Americans who aspired to do well, they had
made the decision that that future was not in the
American South. That it was obvious there was no room
for ambition and aspiration, there were no room for Charlie Fitzgerald's.
(18:10):
And so there were many Charlie FitzGeralds who got on
the migration train and found themselves in Washington, d c.
And Baltimore, New York, Austin, Philadelphia. But he cast his
net right here in the South.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Charlie never left the South, not really in that way.
He was a lot like Booker T. Washington, this man
who was born into slavery, who decided to stay, who
worked with white people, let the fruits of his labor
do the talking. Washington's strategy made him powerful. He had
all sorts of connections with white politicians and some of
(18:52):
the wealthiest Americans. President William McKinley celebrated Washington for being
a black leader who was not too quote unquote radical
for whites. President Theodore Roosevelt invited him to the White
House and later called in Washington as a consultant on
race related issues. Washington went far with this approach. He
(19:13):
seemed to fit in places in the South where you'd
never imagine black people to be at the time. This
was a lot like Charlie. And when Charlie moved to
Myrtle Beach, he moved to Carver Street, into the black
neighborhood everyone knew as the Hill, but its official name
is the Booker T. Washington Neighborhood. As doctor Donaldson points
out though Washington was criticized for being too accommodating at
(19:36):
times because he chose not to resist, not to agitate,
to labor away and remain palatable to white people. I
don't think anyone would describe Charlie as accommodating. But to
stay in the South when others traveled north, which honestly
seemed like a safer and more forgiving path. What did
(19:56):
it take to stay And how did Charlie make the
leap for working in a cotton mill in Greenville to
opening a successful nightclub in Myrtle Beach. How did he
pull that off?
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Fitzgerald is influential, powerful, but he was notorious. That's a
good adjective for him. Here was a guy who made
his money in gambling and alcohol and amusement. And there
are newspaper accounts where he is arrested at various times
(20:28):
for violating local ordinances. I remember seeing one in the
forties in North Carolina. So he was a roving entrepreneur
who was beloved and respected by some and despised and
ridiculed by others.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
There are so many rumors swirling around Charlie, and they
all point to a central theme. Charlie lived on the
edge of danger. There was a gambling paying off the
police to bootleg. A lot of people talked about that,
and there were other things like frequent trips to New York.
He'd go to New York about once a month.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
He would go to New York, and we thought maybe
Charlie was, you know, with the big boys. You know,
I'm not saying that he was.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
What was Charlie doing in New York? Did he have
ties to the mob? Did this have something to do
with why he changed his name? Was Charlie in trouble
or could the name change be about something more personal,
a different kind of hiding. Miss pat told me that
Charlie had affairs.
Speaker 3 (21:37):
But Charlie had a lady working for him, had a
baby for him, and Messiah got the bb in dubbed it,
you know how to during girl go with the married man.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
And I'm so shocked that Miss Sarah adopted.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Him, but Shi had to keep her husband. We never
dreaming of going through this mess like that.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Charlie had a son and his name was Nathaniel Rucker.
If he had a son and gave him his original
last name, then how much was he really trying to
hide it. Nathaniel died decades before I came to Myrtle Beach,
but as I was talking to people on the hill,
they began to tell me about another son, also from
an affair, a son who was still alive in Myrtle
(22:21):
Beach named Ronnie. Unlike Nathaniel, Ronnie wasn't raised by the FitzGeralds.
Neighbors told me that Ronnie always had questions about his dad,
about Charlie, even to him, Charlie was something of a mystery.
Before I could decide how to reach out to Ronnie,
he passed away. Trying to get to the bottom of
(22:43):
Charlie was a lot of guesswork, blind reaches into the
murky past. In the end, I'd never find a satisfying
answer as to why he changed his name. It's tempting
to draw the conclusion that Charlie was running from something.
Maybe he was, I don't know. But what I really
think is Charlie wasn't running. He was creating. He was
(23:04):
inventing a new image for himself, or rather, Lucius Rucker
was looking for a name that the sophistication he wanted
to embody as an entrepreneur. Maybe it helped him pass
in white society when he needed to. I believe choosing
the name Charlie Fitzgerald was about creating a new identity
for himself to become something bigger than anyone ever expected
(23:27):
him to be. Regardless of his name, Lucius Rucker or
Charlie Fitzgerald needed audacity to bootleg as a black man
back then, when a misinterpreted glance could incite mob violence,
when you could be blinded for responding with a yes
instead of a yes sir. If he did do it,
(23:48):
it was hard to picture how Charlie got away with it.
Maybe he was really well liked, or like Booker T. Washington,
useful to someone who could protect him.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
There's a whole big question that Charlie Fitzgerald, who had
clubs and hotels and dance halls, could not have been
successful unless he had white champions, a white supporters, And
I think that's some space to really investigate. That Charlie
(24:21):
had some level of advocacy among the leadership of Motor Beach,
and one of the probably clearest examples of that is
the county sheriff Sassar, who comes to his aid and
comes his defense. Why that is I don't know, I'm
very curious, and there.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
Will come a time when Sheriff Sassar would save Charlie.
We'll get to that. All Through the nineteen forties, Charlie
built up businesses, the Popular Club with a roster of musicians,
a cab company, a restaurant, a hotel, the gambling game
in the back room, money in white businesses downtown, maybe
(25:04):
another club on Atlantic Beach. This was a powerful man.
But by the late nineteen forties there was a storm brewing,
and the first lightning strike came in nineteen forty eight
in another part of South Carolina. You could trace it
to a man named George Elmore, definitely a Charlie Fitzgerald type,
a light skinned entrepreneur. One hundred and fifty miles away.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
George Elmore owned a grocery store. George Elmore owned a
liquor store. George Elmore had a taxi service, George Elmore
had a photography business. And George Elmore was the secretary
of the Progressive Democratic Party that sought to give African
(25:50):
Americans a political voice when they were actually being excluded
from the white Democratic Party.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
And one of those ways black people were obviously excluded
was they weren't allowed to vote. George Elmore sought to
change that.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
And so George Elmore, a fair skinned gentleman, is ultimately
able to get his name on the voting roster.
Speaker 1 (26:14):
At first, the clerk thought Elmore was white, so that's
how he was registered. And then they found out he
was black.
Speaker 4 (26:21):
And they said, you and your people cannot vote. Then
Georgia Eilmore takes that moment, files a lawsuit that is
ultimately ruled in his favor called Elmore v. Rice, where
a federal judge rules it unconstitutional for black people to
be denied the right to vote in the Democratic Party.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
For the first time, black people would be allowed to
vote in South Carolina. They would be allowed to vote
in the nineteen forty eight Democratic primary, all because of
George Elmore, and this meant Charlie and Sarah Fitzgerald would
have a decision to make. Early on, when I began
my research, I read a book recommended to me by
(27:01):
someone at the local Historical Society. It's a Brief History
of Myrtle Beach from nineteen hundred to nineteen eighty by
Barbara F. Stokes. I found something there that surprised me.
In Myrtle Beach. There were only two black people who
registered to vote in the nineteen forty eight Democratic primary,
Charlie and Sarah Fitzgerald.
Speaker 5 (27:22):
Not another black over here would register. Charlie offered to
put up money for him if they needed whatever, not
a one.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Now, this was a very big deal to be the
first was to take a stand and to be visible.
This decision would be documented for all to see, specifically
for racist white people to see.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
And almost immediately he comes under fire, He comes under attack,
and ultimately withdraws his name from the registration book.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Charlie asked the mayor to scratch their names off the roll,
and he told a newspaper reporter, I don't think this
is the right time to put our names on the book.
The news article quotes Charlie is saying that blacks and
whites and Myrtle Beach get along and well can continue
to do so. If quote chief politicians and outside agitators
leave us alone.
Speaker 4 (28:16):
Then that was a story. Because everyone knew Charlie. And
if Charlie's intimidated and threatened at this moment by simply
doing what by simply wanting to exercise the right to vote,
then we would know clearly what that terror meant for
other people. And I should say too, because Charlie and
(28:37):
Sarah would draw their names. They come into criticism by
black leadership for doing so. Here you have these very powerful,
independently wealthy citizens, and if they are going to withdraw
their names, then so would the sharecropper, so would the
(28:57):
chauffeur show with the maid. And I think there was
a concern that if the FitzGeralds were to withdraw their names,
the dominoes would fall and the very momentum you hope
you would achieve would be lost. Now that did not happen,
by the way.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Charlie and Sarah retreated, but a lot of other people
outside of Myrtle Beach didn't. About thirty thousand black people
in South Carolina voted in that nineteen forty eight primary.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
In nineteen forty eight, black people vote in record numbers
and have a tremendous influence in state politics.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
In the lead up to the nineteen forty eight presidential election,
a new party forms, the Dixiecrats. It's made up of
a group of white Southern Democrats and segregationists who opposed
Truman's civil rights agenda. The Dixiecrats choose Strom Thurman to lead.
He's the governor of South Carolina at the time.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
In his accepted speech, he makes a powerful line where
he says there are not enough armies in this country
that would force white people to share a swimming pool
in the theater with black people. His words are far
more racist than that. That becomes not only a mantra,
(30:19):
that becomes marching orders that the governor of South Carolina
would make a clear declaration that why supremacy is actually policy,
and that it will shape and guide this state of
South Carolina. And even though Thurman himself comes out against
the Klan, his very rhetoric provides some fuel for the Klan.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
Strom Thurmond, of course, does not become president, but in
nineteen fifty he runs for Senate. He goes head to
head with Olin Johnson, and the rhetoric becomes louder and
more racist.
Speaker 4 (30:56):
And essentially what shape the campaign was who was the
most racist of the two.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
It becomes a fight to show who loves segregation more,
because that's what it was going to take to win
in South Carolina. Charlie the light skinned entrepreneur George Elmore,
who registered to vote becomes a folk hero. But that's
a dangerous path to follow. George Elmore put himself on
the line, and he would become a target. In the
(31:24):
late nineteen forties, the Klan would come to George Elmore's house,
burn a cross in his yard, and threaten his family.
This victory for tens of thousands of black people turning
out to vote would cost Elmore a lot.
Speaker 4 (31:39):
George Elmore loses his store. George Elmore loses his other businesses.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
State agents rate Elmore's liquor store, banks call in loans
on their home. He's forced into bankruptcy.
Speaker 4 (31:54):
George Elmore is evicted from his house. George Elmore's wife
is placed in a mental institution, his children are taken
away from him.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
George Elmore becomes the victim of racism. So what would
happen to Charlie.
Speaker 4 (32:12):
Here are these teenagers and college students, young people black
and white, gathering in the night at Charlie's place, integrating, dancing, socializing, drinking.
One of the worst fears that was preached in pulpits,
that was put in newspapers and in campaign literature was
(32:37):
that if the civil rights agenda goes forward, it's going
to lead to the mongrelization of the races. It's going
to lead to the demise of white people, and it's
going to lead to scenarios where the fair maidens of
white women is compromised, is abused, is exploited by black men,
(33:05):
and in the minds of many, Charlie Fitzgerald's dance Hall
becomes the worst fears of the champions of white supremacy.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
When you read The Great Gatsby, the whole thing feels
like the simmering electric increase intension. It builds and builds.
You send something very bad is going to happen, like
something's got to give. Something bad does happen. Gatsby loses Daisy,
but when she accidentally kills someone with Gatsby's car, he
(33:46):
takes the blame. He sacrifices himself for her. But love
is not enough to overcome the class dynamics, and neither
is money. A man who wants revenge for the car
accident finds Gasby at his mansion and shoots him. It
ends with the image of Gatsby lying face down dead,
(34:06):
floating in his pool. August twenty sixth of nineteen fifty
is the night the tensions in Charlie's life would come
to a head. It's a night that everyone on Carver Street,
everyone on the hill, everyone who is alive and there
remembers well. On that night, Miss Pat was at her
(34:28):
granddad's barbershop on twenty first Street on the hill.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
My grandad was sitting in his shop yard burning fire
vernon trash. You used to burn trash every night.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
Miss Pat's granddad was out there when the Chief of police,
Carlisle Newton, came by. He came to deliver a warning.
He said, stay put and no one is going to
bother you. Miss Pat's granddad told them all to go
inside and shut out the lights.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
He said, if I get killed, y'all pray.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Her granddad had them pray for everything, but they never
had to pray for anything like this before. He said,
do not turn on the lights until I come get you.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
That's all he told us to do. And every lady
on that corner twenty first was out and my aunt
was scared. My aunt was in there crying and shaking
up baby, keeping up baby from crying. Nobody said a thing.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Miss Pat's granddad posted up in the front yard. They
waited in the dark house and listened for gunshots.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
And he had a big fire in the front yard
and in front of his shop with a shot gun,
crossed his lap and grant Dad to sit there and
burn that fire. Next thing we know, Charlie was gone.
Charlie was gone.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Next time on Charlie's Place.
Speaker 5 (36:16):
Don't take anything for granted, You just don't.
Speaker 3 (36:20):
You don't know when's gonna happen, how it's gonna happen.
Speaker 4 (36:23):
Who's gonna do it to you? She said, they're writing.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
And when they're say they're writing, that mean the KKK
was writing. Charlie's Place is a production of Atlas Obscura
and Rococo Punch in partnership with Pushkin Industries and presented
by Visit Myrtle Beach. It's written and produced by Emily Foreman.
(36:46):
Our story editor is Erica Lance. Our team at Atlas
Obscurra is Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Johanna Mayer, Linda Lobel,
and Emily Yates. You can follow us on Instagram at
Atlas Obscura. A special thanks to Christopher Frere and Brianna
Ashford Carroll at the University of South Carolina Center for
Civil Rights History and Research. And also to Barbara F. Stokes,
(37:11):
author of Myrtle Beach, A History nineteen hundred to nineteen eighty.
Please head to Charlie's playshow dot com for more information
about the locations mentioned in the series and how you
can visit yourself. I'mrin d s. Thanks for listening binge
(37:39):
the entire season of Charlie's Place ad free by subscribing
to Pushkin Plus. Sign up on the show page on
Apple Podcasts or Pushkin dot fm slash Plus. Pushkin Plus
subscribers can access ad free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive
binges of other true crime podcasts throughout the year.
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