August 18, 2025 • 41 mins
“You know, that incident was what many of us consider the ugliest black molar in our local history. It was just pure evil and ugly.”
August 26th, 1950 was the night that changed Myrtle Beach. It changed Charlie and the impact reverberated throughout the south.
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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 maybe upsetting. Please
take care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I remember my mother was getting ready to go to
the movies with my cousin and.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
They came back.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
She said, they're writing.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
And when they say they're writing, bat mean the KKK
was writing.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
You know. Once you knew.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
They were writing, you had to stay home for protection.
My granddaddy was sitting in the shop yard and the
police std us to go in the house and make
sure all the lights was out, and every later on
that corner twenty first was out.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
You couldn't see nothing. My aunt was scared.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
She had her young baby and nail crying and shaking
up baby, keeping up baby from crying, and nobody said
a thing.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
This is Charlie's place. I'm riem Gisee, Episode five, All Costs.
While much of Charlie's life is shrouded in mystery, this
moment is different. We actually have documentation, including very detailed
(01:45):
FBI records, of what happened that night. It was a
Saturday night, August twenty sixth, nineteen fifty. Around eight o'clock.
The cars rolled into town like a funeral procession slow
and bumper to bumper. There were men inside the cars
in white robes.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Twenty six car loads are driving through slowly. People are
walking beside cars. Some of them have rifles on their shoulders.
Some are carrying pistols, and they slowly slimed through downtown
and people are terrified.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
These white rope clansmith fitted every category that there were professionals.
There were doctors, they were pharmacists, and they were policemen.
There were law enforcement officers riding with the klan.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
So now they come right fround the cozy corner. I
remember my mom is crying.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
The grand Dragon of the KKK in North and South
Carolina was a man named Thomas Hamilton. He led the
group into town that night.
Speaker 6 (02:59):
So this Thomas Hamilton ran Dragon and the klu Klux clan.
He wanted to be a super big shot. He started
pushing this thing because blacks and whites were partying together,
and the young black kids were learning how to dance
and taking it back to their community, calling it the Shade.
But the rumor was spread that Charlie was running a
(03:19):
prostitution ring over there white girls and black men. They
always used the sixth thing as a cat call to
bring out the lowest elements in their own people.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
To bring out the clansmen looking for an excuse for violence.
By August, the Grand Dragon, Thomas Hamilton, had launched a
full clan recruitment campaign in Myrtle Beach. A local judge
had helped him organize the clan motorcade.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
The Grand Dragon's car was a La Concontinental and on
the front of his bumper he had on the four
foot high cross and it was punched out with light bumps,
red light bumps, and electrified to his battery. And he
had a little red light inside like a siren he
could turn on occasionally. So it's a frightening looking thing.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
It was difficult to see cars lining Carver Street outside
Charlie's place on a Saturday night, the busiest night, but
not like this.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
Chiel had a good crowd of people in his club,
and that wouldn't a white woke in there.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Strangely enough, and people that were there said Charlie came
out and stood on the porch, and he said he
just stood there, and some of his people were standing there.
A lot of people were afraid and ran.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
As a KKK rolled by. They sent Charlie a message.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Somebody had a bullhorn and said we'll be back to
see y'all.
Speaker 7 (04:48):
The N word, and they announced that they will be
back at twelve.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
They intimidated everybody and they left.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
They promised they would be back. Then the lines of
cars snaked away and drove twelve miles up the coast
to Atlantic Beach, the Black Beach, the one place black
people could put their feet in the water.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
It's busy, it's August, it's summer. Probably four thousand people
are there. They scattered them from fear. People just sell
them and just ran.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
What happened next has different accounts.
Speaker 6 (05:27):
People always believe that they came back because Charlie dared
him to. That's not the truth. I've seen the files.
What did happen was this. He called the chief of police.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Charlie called the chief of police because he knew him.
He knew him well. Several sources mentioned that Charlie and
Carlile Newton had had his special arrangement, Charlie allegedly paying
off Carlisle so he could sell illegal liquor. Charlie called
Carlisle because he thought as a chief of police he
could help. But when he called the station. Chief Newton
(05:59):
wasn't there, so Charlie left a message with the radio man.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
And told mclan has been over here and they say
they're coming back, and the people are not going to
sit back and be slaughtered like dogs. They will fight
as they come back, and there'll be some budshit. In
other words, you're saying, do something about this before it happens, before.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
The people at Charlie's place would have to defend themselves.
The radio man said he'd tell the chief, and those.
Speaker 6 (06:24):
Days they used two way radios like the military did.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And this is where things got tricky because there were
police officers and white hoods in that clan parade. In fact,
some think the head car with the siren blaring and
the Grand Dragon Hamilton inside was a police car, and
some think that car picked up the message meant for
the chief.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
And when it was radio to him that Charlie said
what Charlie said, Hamilton decided there was an excuse he
needed to go back.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
The clan cars turned around and headed for Charlie's place.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
As certain as they came back, people ran, and.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
Some people say it was thirty cars, but they were
saying four and five in each car. In other words,
you're talking around one hundred people. They formed a skirmish line.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
They actually lined up kind of liked soldiers in front
of Charlie's place.
Speaker 6 (07:18):
This is right after World War Two, so we have
a large number of them were probably military veterans.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Now these are good old boys, probably all grew up hunting.
They knew how to use weapons, and they liked to
carry backs. A few of them have whips. That's one
of their symbols.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
They started to move forward, and when they did, they
got this guy. His nickname was two thirty because he
always carried a thirty two pistol. They grabbed him and
they started beating him, asking where Charlie was. He wouldn't
tell at first. I think they eventually did.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
According to one report, a man yelled, get your guns ready,
and everybody get in line. The klansmen lined up like soldiers.
They started walking toward the club. Anyone who tried to
leave was driven back into the restaurant.
Speaker 6 (08:10):
This is when Charlie played hero. Now he knew he
could have been killed, but he also knew if they
had been a straight out gunfight with one hundred men
who shot guns and pissed. It would have been a slaughter,
he said. Charlie walked out. He had his weapons on him,
He had two weapons on him.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
One of the klansmen asked who runs this place, and
Charlie revealed himself. I run the place, he said. My
name is Charlie. He's the one we want. The klansman said,
and then they knocked him out cold.
Speaker 6 (08:49):
Three of them approached him, one and got him from
the back and hit him upside the head with a
gun arm bad or something, and knocked him down and
then hit him again and rendered him unconscious Temporarily.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The klansmen picked Charlie up and they threw him in
the trunk of one of their cars. But they weren't
ready to leave yet. The klansmen started.
Speaker 7 (09:10):
To all place was here right here, walk across the
street just like that, I mean, just like a straight bullet.
Speaker 6 (09:19):
Our house was.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
Pointing straight into Charlie's door. And when the gun start
shooting and stuff like that. My mom dragged us out
of the bed and sod y'all.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
Come on, let's go.
Speaker 7 (09:30):
And we didn't know what was time. She said, come on,
let's go. We got to go, get out of here.
We got to go hide to y'all, go under the house,
hide up under the house. And we did. And we
was my brother and I he was two years older
than me.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
We were just.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
Laughing and looking at people running and shooting. We didn't,
you know, we were young then, you know, when he
came through and she came back again and got us
and took us back behind there the house, and we
went through the bushes, you know, stood out there for
a while. People were running all through the woods in
different places when they were.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Shooting, and it would run all in the woods. I
had all my uncles and aunts stuff. We come to Charlie.
They were in the woods running from them, right behind
Whisper and by.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
When the clan members got into the club, they started
to destroy the place.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
They rouffed Cynthia Harald, a lady we called Shag. They
ruffed her up. People said that she sort of confronted
a few of them, so they ruffed her up and
probably hurt her.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Be shagged rather catch. They had to beat her in
order to get where they won't well, be shagged, didn't
them do it? They're trying to take the catch rush
and all this, try to take everything from me. They
try to destroy to please.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
A waiter from the Pink House restaurant was wounded in
the leg. Some other people received shrapnel from glass flying
and things like that. The newspaper report said they shot
from three hundred to five hundred shots into his place.
One person was killed, and it was a klansman who
(11:06):
was shot. Left in the parking lot bleeding under his
clan sheets. He was still wearing its Conway policeman uniform.
He was shot dead. No one knows who shot him.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Many people think he was shot by one of his own,
since he was shot in the back. Now Charlie was
in the back of a trunk and a police officer
had been shot on his property. The men in robes
got back in their cars and drove Charlie away. On
Sunday morning, the people on the hill woke up to
(11:46):
a terrible realization. The Klansmen had taken Charlie.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
They say they had got mister Charlie. They took him someplace.
We didn't know what he took him at that time,
but it was so sad. It was one sad day
in Murtle Beach because nobody could do nothing about it.
They didn't do nothing about it.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
They thought he were dead.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
When miss Kat went to work that day, she saw
her boss's white KKK robe lying out on the bed.
And then the little girl she babysit, came in and.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
The little girl told me, said, you see that thing
on that bed.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I said, what was she talking about?
Speaker 5 (12:26):
You're talking about the suit here, daddy wear they killed Charlie.
They had their suits and everything, the clan suits laid
on the bed, so if anybody go in there, they'll
know what daddy was.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
Clane.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
And the little girl told.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
Me, if you hit me, he will kill you too.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
And all I can do is cry.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I had a aunt, the only sister that my mother had.
Ever since then, she would never that any white person
or anybody chownged me anything enter the house. Hey, my
mother had let them in one time right there get
to receive and she ran them out. She said, don't
(13:24):
let them come in this house. Don't let them do.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It, because she experienced that night. Charlie's Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
She said, don't let them come in in any place.
You've got it, assures me. They had to write and
receit in the car in the rain and then bring
it because.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
That knight must have traumatized her.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
You know, that incident was what many of us consider
the ugliest black molar in our local history. You know,
it was just pure evil and ugly.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
And I learned from that. You know, Uh, don't take
anything for granted.
Speaker 6 (14:02):
You just don't.
Speaker 7 (14:03):
You don't know when's gonna happen, how it's gonna happen,
is gonna do it to you.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Everybody was traumatized, but a lot of blacks. He was
strong man and he destroyed everything. But they didn't take
a lot of heart from a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
People thought Charlie was dead, but they didn't know the
whole story. About a month and a half after the
clan attack on Charlie's place, Charlie churned up in Washington,
d C. He was very much alive. He was there
to give his testimony to the FBI to tell the
story of what happened that night. This is the only
(14:44):
record I have of Charlie talking at length about this time,
beside a brief quote in the newspaper. The statement he
gave is just Charlie in his own words, no speculation,
just what he says he saw an experience after the
Clan's been threw him in that trunk, Charlie said, they
(15:05):
drove me around for about an hour and a half,
and about three or four times during this hour and
a half they stopped and I heard them say, this
is republic too many civilians passing. Lots of the driving
was done on bumpy dirt roads. When they finally stopped,
I did not know where I was. Charlie tells the
(15:25):
FBI agents that the leader told the men to take
off their hoods and put them away. He says, when
I was taken out of the trunk, I was between
two cars and the only light was the tay lights
of these cars. I saw that I was encircled by men.
(15:46):
I lay on the ground face down. Someone stood on
each hand, and someone stood on my feet, and somebody
else stood on my neck. At this time, my wrists
and ankles were cut as a result of their standing
on them. The men then took churns in beating me
with what felt like a bull whip. I counted over
(16:07):
eighty licks before they began to ask me anything. I
heard them say come on, now, it's my turn, and
say you haven't hit him hard enough. Hit him. Charlie
says they asked him about his connections to the County Sheriff,
his connections to the Chief of Police, Carlisle Newton. They
(16:28):
asked about the police officer who was shot at his
place earlier that night. He heard somebody say he couldn't
have done it, as I had him covered. The men
searched him. He had a men's diamond ring, eyeglasses, and
two hundred and thirty five dollars. They took his belongings. Then,
Charlie said, they asked me to swear that I would
(16:50):
go to church every Sunday, and I would take an
oath to leave South Carolina and not even go back
to my place, not go back to my wife and leave. Now,
don't go to Georgia because we got ku klutz men there.
One man said he'd better not stop in North Carolina,
said another. That's when Charlie says they decided to mark him.
(17:12):
Somebody said we ought to swing him to a rope.
Charlie heard a guy say, I've got a penknife, just
the thing, let's notch his ear. It was something klansmen
were known to do. Charlie says he looked up at
the man and saw that he had a small badge
pinned inside his shirt pocket and a revolver in his holster.
(17:35):
He says. When the man saw me look up, he
kicked me on the side of the head, which still
swells and still requires medical attention. When the man notched
my left ear, it apparently bled and I had an
opportunity to jump up, and I jumped toward a nearby ditch.
The ditch was about four and a half feet deep.
I carried two men with me into the ditch. In
(17:56):
the scuffle, I got away and rushed into the nearby bushes.
I fell behind a log in the bushes. As I
was escaping, they shot fifteen or twenty times in my
general direction. I then heard them say let's go. The
clansmen left Charlie for dead, but later that night one
(18:19):
of the drivers from his cab company spotted him on
the side of the road and picked him up. From there,
Charlie got in touch with police Chief Newton, who told
him that he never got the message to send help.
Newton called the doctor. The doctor came and gave Charlie
a shot to put him to sleep. Then the county
(18:39):
sheriff came by to see him, a man named c
Ernest Sassar. Many people call sheriff Sasser, this white officer
a friend and an ally to Charlie. During this time,
Charlie once said about Sasser, quote, I've never known a
straighter white man in my life. Sasser told Charlie it
(19:03):
wasn't looking good. The clan was after both him and
Charlie for the death of a police officer. The robed
officer who had been shot at Charlie's place earlier that
night had died. Sassar said the best thing for him
to do was lock Charlie up until he could get
it straightened out for his own safety. For over a week,
(19:24):
Charlie was moved around to different jail cells throughout the county. Meanwhile,
Sasser went on the radio to try to clear Charlie's name.
In the broadcast, he said Charlie had no part in
the shooting. Sassar instead blamed the klansman who quote left
(19:46):
him on the ground to die. Sassar continues, he dispels
the prostitution rumors. That's not why the clan attack Charlie's place,
he says. Instead, he suggests another reason. He says, to
my knowledge, some white men and women do go to
this place on special occasions to hear the orchestra and
watch the colored people dance. I have on many occasions
(20:10):
told them was not a good policy. Sasser then tells
listeners that the clan has threatened to blow up the
Myrtle Beach radio station if they reveal any information about
clan members, the very station where Sassre broadcasts this message,
but then quickly adds quote, I happen to know a
few men that are members. Some are from good families.
(20:31):
They were led into this unfortunate thing with no intention
of committing a crime. This is so revealing County sheriff
is a political position. Sassar can't completely denounce the clan
if he wants the votes. They're that powerful. But he
also can't stand for what they did to his friend.
He has to say something, and he'd pay for that.
(20:54):
Sassar lost his seat as a county sheriff in the
next election by a lot. He lost to a known
clan sympathizer. There was one area, though, where Sassre dominated.
He carried the precinct known as the Race Path, which
included the Hill neighborhood. The black residents there voted three
hundred and forty three to six for Sasser. All this time.
(21:25):
Parents in Myrtle Beach had tried to shield their kids
from the details of what happened to Charlie. Miss pat
said years passed before the adults began to talk about it,
so the kids were left with a lot of assumptions.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
We had heard different stories. Some people said he was dead,
some people said he was beaten to death. As a child.
I heard his ears were cut off, and I remember
one day, I don't know eight months later, nine months later,
he walks into the Cozy Corner.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Dino had grown up watching Charlie e Club Sandwiches at
his dad's restaurant, the Cozy Corner. Dino thought Charlie was
gone for good and now here. He was walking through
the door as if nothing happened.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
And I remember everybody, everybody knew him. That black cook
came out to see him, and the waitresses all knowing.
And I remember I was staring at him because I
thought his ears had been cut off, and I think
he knew what I was doing, and he swooped me
up and he said, you're looking at my ears. Boy,
(22:33):
No sir, no sir, And he said I got ears
and he did, you couldn't tell you know that his
ears were cut it off. I'm sure it affected him
and changed his thinking and perspective of life, but he
seemed normal when I would sit watch Dad sending shooting breeze,
and he still came in the cozy corner. He still
went to the Broadway theater, sat in the white section.
(22:57):
He still did what he wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Eventually, five Plan members were arrested for the nineteen fifty
attack on Charlie's place, including the Grand Dragon Thomas Hamilton.
If anything, these arrests only emboldened the Klan. They continued
to rally around the Carolinas, and they ditched the hoods.
They stopped hiding their faces, no shame, no fear of
(23:24):
being recognized. And almost immediately after Charlie leaves jail, he's
picked up again for having a gun and an obscene film.
Not that it really matters, but Charlie said the film
wasn't his. It was collateral for a three dollar loan
he had made to a friend who was short of cash,
but the gun was for protection. Charlie spoke to the
(23:45):
newspaper that covered his arrest. He said, quote, I know
it was against the law to have that gun, but
it was right in my conscience, because my life has
been threatened and I am still in danger. He added,
I'm a free man, and I'm not a freeman. I
don't know who is or who isn't a member of
the clan. It's this last line, I don't know who
(24:06):
is or who isn't a member of the Klan that
sticks out. I think think that's a strategic lie on
Charlie's part. I think he was trying to send a
public message to his attackers that he wasn't their threat.
All five clansmen are cleared of all charges. Charlie left
Myrtle Beach for a while. He spent time with friends
(24:28):
in Philly and New York. He went to DC and
gave that testimony to the FBI, but nothing came of it,
and eventually Charlie came home. Even though Dino couldn't see
the difference, Charlie had changed. Some said he got a
(24:48):
little meaner. Some say he faded into the background. The
club may have been called Charlie's Place, but it was
as much Sarah's place as it was his. Sarah had
always had a hand in its success, in all of
their business. They were true partners.
Speaker 6 (25:06):
After the clan rate to that place closed. She had
to manage that place. He was there often, but he
wasn't the same. Everybody says Charlie wasn't the same. But
she had to be tough in a man's world, so
she didn't take no foolishness.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
When Charlie took a back, Sarah kept it going, and
she booked some of the most famous music acts the
club ever saw.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
And she ran it with the iron fist under velvet glove,
so to speak. Ruth Brown and those they loved her.
Bill Pinkney, the last of the original Drifters, he loved her.
When oldest Red and cats like that were coming, that
was miss Siah doing. She had Charlie's old contacts. There
was some guy down in Texas that called him the Peacock.
(25:50):
I think it was a gangster, black gangster, but he
controlled all the top black artists and he was a
friend of her, so I'm thinking she got it to him.
But she had all the artists there. She told me
the only person that she didn't get there to play,
and he'd come there. Only person she didn't get there
(26:12):
to play was James Brown. Everybody says, James Brown's there,
and they'd see his bus outside the bus He parked
the bus there and I think some of his players
would stay there. James would most likely go up to
Atlantic Beach because you could be ocean front up there.
But she said James would come to it. He was
just as nice as could be. He sit down, we
talk and talk.
Speaker 8 (26:32):
Well.
Speaker 6 (26:32):
He just wanted too much money and I couldn't afford him.
Sarah came and held all that.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
I think the fact that Sarah rebuilt the club and
ran it as long as she did helps solidify Carver
Street in the minds of its residents nineteen fifties. Carver
Street is the symbol of the glory days for Minny
and Myrtle Beach. The people on the hill remember it
as this thriving time when black people ran their own
businesses for black people. The fact that Charlie's Place survived
(27:03):
and lived on even after the KKK attack in August
nineteen fifty, the fact that the big artists kept coming
that the Klan's terrorism wasn't the end of the story. Instead,
the attack was a moment of defiance, of resistance, a
testament to the strength of the community. Professor Bobby Donaldson
(27:24):
says Charlie Fitzgerald's actions sent a message.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
So, here is someone whose business is riddled with bullets.
Here is someone who is thrown in the back of
a card, kidnapped, who is stripped and beaten. Here's someone
whose ear is slashed with the knife of a klansman.
And I guess an ordinary person would say, the hell
(27:51):
with it, I'm going to the Promised Land. I'm going elsewhere.
But Charlie was not ordinary, And I think the defiance
is probably what motivated him to stay right there. That
he had already built a business and he was going
to rebuild and stay.
Speaker 6 (28:08):
And he did.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
And so Charlie Fitzgerald returns the very space where he
defired the clan and stayed there until his death.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
It encouraged the community to defend their home at all costs.
Clyde Foster gave me an example of this. He's lived
in Myrtle Beach his whole life, where everyone knows him
as Frankie.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Almost everybody old businesses on their boulevard you know about me,
you know, because I'm that type of person. I'm a
public man.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Frankie hadn't been born when the KKK attacked Charlie's place
in nineteen fifty, but he heard the story. His family
members and friends had been there, and he saw how
it had traumatized them. Frankie's aunt never let a white
person enter her house again after that night. So Frankie
grew up expecting that there would be a time when
he too would have to fight, when he'd also have
(29:02):
to defend his community. And in the nineteen seventies he
thought the time had come. It was a night when
the Temptations came to town to play on Carver Street.
A rumor got out that the Klan was planning an attack.
Frankie was a teenager, and he and his friends wanted
to be prepared.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
We were young on Carver Street here, almost all the
young people. We were in trees and stuff, waiting on them.
We had malotar cocktails. We were young. We weren't gonna
let that happen again. Which we'll never let them come
through there. The older people, they couldn't do it. They
already went through that experience. We were in trees and
(29:42):
in the woods on Carver Street waiting on them to come.
We were going to destroy him. We're gonna blow him up.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
But Frankie says the word got out that these kids
were ready. He thinks the store where they bought bullets
let the klan know that the community was armed.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
And the way we figured out, they warned them, say
don't go back in that neighborhood. Them people, the people
ready for you, and they didn't come.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
I come back.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Charlie died on July fourth, nineteen fifty five, five years
after that night. In August. He had lung cancer because we.
Speaker 7 (30:29):
Used to go over there and he used to be
in the bed. He had a tank. He used to
walk around with the breathing tank, you know, and.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
Stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
According to his death certificate, he died eight months from diagnosis.
He returned to Tacoa, Georgia, to be buried where he
was born. He returned home as Lucius Rocker, and you
Sayah cremated him.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
She was devastated.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
And she cried a lot, but she tried to keep
it for days open and a lot of child friends
made sure she had the support for the whole family,
the whole yorb but nobody could get her out of
that linguage she was in because she was upset.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Finally, in nineteen sixty five, Sarah decided it was time
to close Charlie's place. Then she took what seemed like
a hard pivot. She left the nightclub life and became
a Jehovah's witness.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Miss Sarah found religion, and she not only gave up
that life, but she didn't want anything to do with it.
She never wanted to talk about it. I remember I
tried to chat with her and everybody told me she
will not talk about it. She walked away from that
part of her life and never again spoke of it
(31:49):
or involved herself in it.
Speaker 7 (31:51):
And she closed the business down and she live. She
tore it down, and people were really upset with her
for tearing to build him down.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
But no one who had been there, including Miss Sarah,
would forget Herbert says Sarah told him that she knew
exactly who was in the KKK in town and who
raided their club that night, but she would never tell
for fear of being taken.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
She told me something that stuck with me. She said,
you know what, I'm not going to die until I
know every last one of them is dead. And she
wasn't playing because I got a picture of her with me.
She was ninety four and still eye candy and She
died about three years later than that. She was working
to day she died. She didn't have to work, she
(32:44):
had money, but she liked to work.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
In the ocean. Time is long. The Atlantic Ocean has
existed for over one hundred million years. The thundering waves
in friction beat rock and glass into pebbles and eventually sand.
A human life in the scheme of things is a blit,
like a grain of that sand. But all those grains
(33:20):
add up to something. Still, the physical geography of Myrtle
Beach is fragile. The beach erodes. In nineteen fifty four,
Hurricane Hazel hit Myrtle Beach and wiped out eighty percent
of its ocean front properties, virtually erasing the shoreline. Charlie
(33:41):
and Sarah Fitzgerald were once fixtures of Myrtle Beach, but
decades after they died, people started to forget.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
Miss Sarah. I missed it to this day. I think
of Missirah a lot. I told her said one day,
I'm do something with that property. I made her a promise.
I was determined to keep it. I pushed and pushed
and pushed, and the biggest problem was getting people around here.
The younger people the ones is forty fifty years old,
getting them on board because they didn't know anything about it.
(34:11):
That clan raid scared black people. So this is what
terrorism does. This is how terrorism wins. It's not about
killing somebody, it's about putting fear in somebody. And it
frightened the people in this community so badly that they
didn't tell their children because they felt like their children.
Some of them may want to retaliate because they knew
(34:34):
who did what. Don't think they didn't know who did what.
They knew who did what. So when I started talking
about Charlie's Place, nobody knew what I was talking about,
none of the young. When the forty and fifty years old.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
In twenty sixteen, all that was left of Charlie's Place
was a house Sarah and Charlie lived in the city
decided to knock it down.
Speaker 6 (34:54):
They were having a demolition party at Charlie's Place. They
built it as a demolition party. That's a valuable land
up there.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
City councilman Mike Chestnut says he had a sledgehammer in
his hand when he got a call from a neighbor
who said, don't you know the history of this place.
Speaker 9 (35:11):
And my phone started ringing off the hook. You know, hey,
y'all don't need to tear that place down. Y'all don't
really know what you got there. We need to save it,
and you know, talk about the history, you know, the
early Black community here in Myrtle Beach. And now, kids,
you not we stopped the demolition that day.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
He halted the demolition and fought to preserve the building
instead as a landmark, which they did. Today there's a
small business incubator in the old inn, and the Fitzgerald's
House still stands as a museum, a love letter.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
To that time.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
And every year jazz and r and b artists from
all over come here for the Myrtle Beach Jazz Fest
in the exact same spot where the Whispering Pines once stood.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
It's a very beautiful place where we are today, Charlie's Place.
It's a very historic landmark here, and I just found
out today about just the history here.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
So on my last trip to Myrtle Beach, I went
to jazz Fest. I looked up towards the sky full
of stars, at those pine trees swaying above me. I
thought about Billie Holiday and Count Basie Sarah and Charlie,
and I noticed the crowd, people from all walks of life,
(36:34):
hundreds of people just soaking in the music together. It
can be hard to pinpoint how Sarah and Charlie left
their mark beyond the lessons and memories they left with
the people that knew them personally. But on nights like this,
it's clear this is what Charlie and Sarah thought for
a place where everyone could experience the music, no matter
(36:57):
who you are or what you look like. In Myrtle Beach,
these grounds remain a special place, and echo of what
they built is here for anyone who wants to come
and experience it. To myself, if Charlie and Sarah could
see it, they'd really be pleased. There's a memory of
(37:24):
Charlie that Roddy Brown shared with me. It's how I
pictured him at the end. It surpasses the cut ear
lobes and the breathing tanks. Roddy remembers seeing Charlie. It's
an image of him on the beach, the sun kissing
his skin. To me, it's an image of defiance.
Speaker 10 (37:44):
When I came here nineteen fifty, wanted December. When we
moved in Charlie was back on the beach. Yeah, going strong.
Charlie was going strong. Charlie was doing fine.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Roddy had never known Charlie before the clan attack. He
only knew this version after, and to him, it looked good.
It's interesting. Was lost to history and what remains. I
had to go digging to find the fragments that were
still there, the stories people held onto all these years,
the story of Myrtle Beach, And in Roddy's case, the
(38:22):
memory he was left with was a lone black man
on a crowded white beach in summer, flagrantly defying the rules,
an image of what might be possible, what they all deserved.
(38:44):
As for Miss Pat, she's still here too. I feel
so lucky to have spent time with her and hear
her stories about Myrtle Beach and her life.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
It was nice gruwing up in Myrtle Beach, and I
never wanted to leave home. Everybody left home and went
to New York and went to Florida.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
I love Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
I love Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Oh my life. You know, I go visit, but I
love my home.
Speaker 5 (39:14):
Nereus, why didn't you leave out of want to leave.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You can find her in the same spot in Myrtle Beach,
like a beacon, just inside her front door, in her
lazy boy, ready to call out to visitors, waiting for
whoever wants to come in and hear a story about
a time gone by.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 7 (39:44):
Has did it?
Speaker 8 (39:45):
I did it.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
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. 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.
(40:40):
Please head to Charlie's placeshow dot com for more information
about the locations mentioned in the series and how you
can visit yourself. Irene 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.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
I remember my mother was getting ready to go to
the movies with my cousin and.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
They came back.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
She said, they're writing.
Speaker 5 (00:48):
And when they say they're writing, bat mean the KKK
was writing.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
You know. Once you knew.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
They were writing, you had to stay home for protection.
My granddaddy was sitting in the shop yard and the
police std us to go in the house and make
sure all the lights was out, and every later on
that corner twenty first was out.
Speaker 4 (01:11):
You couldn't see nothing. My aunt was scared.
Speaker 5 (01:14):
She had her young baby and nail crying and shaking
up baby, keeping up baby from crying, and nobody said
a thing.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
This is Charlie's place. I'm riem Gisee, Episode five, All Costs.
While much of Charlie's life is shrouded in mystery, this
moment is different. We actually have documentation, including very detailed
(01:45):
FBI records, of what happened that night. It was a
Saturday night, August twenty sixth, nineteen fifty. Around eight o'clock.
The cars rolled into town like a funeral procession slow
and bumper to bumper. There were men inside the cars
in white robes.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
Twenty six car loads are driving through slowly. People are
walking beside cars. Some of them have rifles on their shoulders.
Some are carrying pistols, and they slowly slimed through downtown
and people are terrified.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
These white rope clansmith fitted every category that there were professionals.
There were doctors, they were pharmacists, and they were policemen.
There were law enforcement officers riding with the klan.
Speaker 4 (02:44):
So now they come right fround the cozy corner. I
remember my mom is crying.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
The grand Dragon of the KKK in North and South
Carolina was a man named Thomas Hamilton. He led the
group into town that night.
Speaker 6 (02:59):
So this Thomas Hamilton ran Dragon and the klu Klux clan.
He wanted to be a super big shot. He started
pushing this thing because blacks and whites were partying together,
and the young black kids were learning how to dance
and taking it back to their community, calling it the Shade.
But the rumor was spread that Charlie was running a
(03:19):
prostitution ring over there white girls and black men. They
always used the sixth thing as a cat call to
bring out the lowest elements in their own people.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
To bring out the clansmen looking for an excuse for violence.
By August, the Grand Dragon, Thomas Hamilton, had launched a
full clan recruitment campaign in Myrtle Beach. A local judge
had helped him organize the clan motorcade.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
The Grand Dragon's car was a La Concontinental and on
the front of his bumper he had on the four
foot high cross and it was punched out with light bumps,
red light bumps, and electrified to his battery. And he
had a little red light inside like a siren he
could turn on occasionally. So it's a frightening looking thing.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
It was difficult to see cars lining Carver Street outside
Charlie's place on a Saturday night, the busiest night, but
not like this.
Speaker 6 (04:19):
Chiel had a good crowd of people in his club,
and that wouldn't a white woke in there.
Speaker 4 (04:24):
Strangely enough, and people that were there said Charlie came
out and stood on the porch, and he said he
just stood there, and some of his people were standing there.
A lot of people were afraid and ran.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
As a KKK rolled by. They sent Charlie a message.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
Somebody had a bullhorn and said we'll be back to
see y'all.
Speaker 7 (04:48):
The N word, and they announced that they will be
back at twelve.
Speaker 4 (04:55):
They intimidated everybody and they left.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
They promised they would be back. Then the lines of
cars snaked away and drove twelve miles up the coast
to Atlantic Beach, the Black Beach, the one place black
people could put their feet in the water.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
It's busy, it's August, it's summer. Probably four thousand people
are there. They scattered them from fear. People just sell
them and just ran.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
What happened next has different accounts.
Speaker 6 (05:27):
People always believe that they came back because Charlie dared
him to. That's not the truth. I've seen the files.
What did happen was this. He called the chief of police.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Charlie called the chief of police because he knew him.
He knew him well. Several sources mentioned that Charlie and
Carlile Newton had had his special arrangement, Charlie allegedly paying
off Carlisle so he could sell illegal liquor. Charlie called
Carlisle because he thought as a chief of police he
could help. But when he called the station. Chief Newton
(05:59):
wasn't there, so Charlie left a message with the radio man.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
And told mclan has been over here and they say
they're coming back, and the people are not going to
sit back and be slaughtered like dogs. They will fight
as they come back, and there'll be some budshit. In
other words, you're saying, do something about this before it happens, before.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
The people at Charlie's place would have to defend themselves.
The radio man said he'd tell the chief, and those.
Speaker 6 (06:24):
Days they used two way radios like the military did.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
And this is where things got tricky because there were
police officers and white hoods in that clan parade. In fact,
some think the head car with the siren blaring and
the Grand Dragon Hamilton inside was a police car, and
some think that car picked up the message meant for
the chief.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
And when it was radio to him that Charlie said
what Charlie said, Hamilton decided there was an excuse he
needed to go back.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
The clan cars turned around and headed for Charlie's place.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
As certain as they came back, people ran, and.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
Some people say it was thirty cars, but they were
saying four and five in each car. In other words,
you're talking around one hundred people. They formed a skirmish line.
Speaker 4 (07:12):
They actually lined up kind of liked soldiers in front
of Charlie's place.
Speaker 6 (07:18):
This is right after World War Two, so we have
a large number of them were probably military veterans.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Now these are good old boys, probably all grew up hunting.
They knew how to use weapons, and they liked to
carry backs. A few of them have whips. That's one
of their symbols.
Speaker 6 (07:34):
They started to move forward, and when they did, they
got this guy. His nickname was two thirty because he
always carried a thirty two pistol. They grabbed him and
they started beating him, asking where Charlie was. He wouldn't
tell at first. I think they eventually did.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
According to one report, a man yelled, get your guns ready,
and everybody get in line. The klansmen lined up like soldiers.
They started walking toward the club. Anyone who tried to
leave was driven back into the restaurant.
Speaker 6 (08:10):
This is when Charlie played hero. Now he knew he
could have been killed, but he also knew if they
had been a straight out gunfight with one hundred men
who shot guns and pissed. It would have been a slaughter,
he said. Charlie walked out. He had his weapons on him,
He had two weapons on him.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
One of the klansmen asked who runs this place, and
Charlie revealed himself. I run the place, he said. My
name is Charlie. He's the one we want. The klansman said,
and then they knocked him out cold.
Speaker 6 (08:49):
Three of them approached him, one and got him from
the back and hit him upside the head with a
gun arm bad or something, and knocked him down and
then hit him again and rendered him unconscious Temporarily.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
The klansmen picked Charlie up and they threw him in
the trunk of one of their cars. But they weren't
ready to leave yet. The klansmen started.
Speaker 7 (09:10):
To all place was here right here, walk across the
street just like that, I mean, just like a straight bullet.
Speaker 6 (09:19):
Our house was.
Speaker 7 (09:19):
Pointing straight into Charlie's door. And when the gun start
shooting and stuff like that. My mom dragged us out
of the bed and sod y'all.
Speaker 6 (09:29):
Come on, let's go.
Speaker 7 (09:30):
And we didn't know what was time. She said, come on,
let's go. We got to go, get out of here.
We got to go hide to y'all, go under the house,
hide up under the house. And we did. And we
was my brother and I he was two years older
than me.
Speaker 6 (09:43):
We were just.
Speaker 7 (09:44):
Laughing and looking at people running and shooting. We didn't,
you know, we were young then, you know, when he
came through and she came back again and got us
and took us back behind there the house, and we
went through the bushes, you know, stood out there for
a while. People were running all through the woods in
different places when they were.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Shooting, and it would run all in the woods. I
had all my uncles and aunts stuff. We come to Charlie.
They were in the woods running from them, right behind
Whisper and by.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
When the clan members got into the club, they started
to destroy the place.
Speaker 4 (10:21):
They rouffed Cynthia Harald, a lady we called Shag. They
ruffed her up. People said that she sort of confronted
a few of them, so they ruffed her up and
probably hurt her.
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Be shagged rather catch. They had to beat her in
order to get where they won't well, be shagged, didn't
them do it? They're trying to take the catch rush
and all this, try to take everything from me. They
try to destroy to please.
Speaker 4 (10:46):
A waiter from the Pink House restaurant was wounded in
the leg. Some other people received shrapnel from glass flying
and things like that. The newspaper report said they shot
from three hundred to five hundred shots into his place.
One person was killed, and it was a klansman who
(11:06):
was shot. Left in the parking lot bleeding under his
clan sheets. He was still wearing its Conway policeman uniform.
He was shot dead. No one knows who shot him.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
Many people think he was shot by one of his own,
since he was shot in the back. Now Charlie was
in the back of a trunk and a police officer
had been shot on his property. The men in robes
got back in their cars and drove Charlie away. On
Sunday morning, the people on the hill woke up to
(11:46):
a terrible realization. The Klansmen had taken Charlie.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
They say they had got mister Charlie. They took him someplace.
We didn't know what he took him at that time,
but it was so sad. It was one sad day
in Murtle Beach because nobody could do nothing about it.
They didn't do nothing about it.
Speaker 3 (12:09):
They thought he were dead.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
When miss Kat went to work that day, she saw
her boss's white KKK robe lying out on the bed.
And then the little girl she babysit, came in and.
Speaker 5 (12:21):
The little girl told me, said, you see that thing
on that bed.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
I said, what was she talking about?
Speaker 5 (12:26):
You're talking about the suit here, daddy wear they killed Charlie.
They had their suits and everything, the clan suits laid
on the bed, so if anybody go in there, they'll
know what daddy was.
Speaker 6 (12:38):
Clane.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
And the little girl told.
Speaker 5 (12:40):
Me, if you hit me, he will kill you too.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
And all I can do is cry.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
I had a aunt, the only sister that my mother had.
Ever since then, she would never that any white person
or anybody chownged me anything enter the house. Hey, my
mother had let them in one time right there get
to receive and she ran them out. She said, don't
(13:24):
let them come in this house. Don't let them do.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
It, because she experienced that night. Charlie's Yeah.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
She said, don't let them come in in any place.
You've got it, assures me. They had to write and
receit in the car in the rain and then bring
it because.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
That knight must have traumatized her.
Speaker 6 (13:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
You know, that incident was what many of us consider
the ugliest black molar in our local history. You know,
it was just pure evil and ugly.
Speaker 7 (13:54):
And I learned from that. You know, Uh, don't take
anything for granted.
Speaker 6 (14:02):
You just don't.
Speaker 7 (14:03):
You don't know when's gonna happen, how it's gonna happen,
is gonna do it to you.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Everybody was traumatized, but a lot of blacks. He was
strong man and he destroyed everything. But they didn't take
a lot of heart from a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
People thought Charlie was dead, but they didn't know the
whole story. About a month and a half after the
clan attack on Charlie's place, Charlie churned up in Washington,
d C. He was very much alive. He was there
to give his testimony to the FBI to tell the
story of what happened that night. This is the only
(14:44):
record I have of Charlie talking at length about this time,
beside a brief quote in the newspaper. The statement he
gave is just Charlie in his own words, no speculation,
just what he says he saw an experience after the
Clan's been threw him in that trunk, Charlie said, they
(15:05):
drove me around for about an hour and a half,
and about three or four times during this hour and
a half they stopped and I heard them say, this
is republic too many civilians passing. Lots of the driving
was done on bumpy dirt roads. When they finally stopped,
I did not know where I was. Charlie tells the
(15:25):
FBI agents that the leader told the men to take
off their hoods and put them away. He says, when
I was taken out of the trunk, I was between
two cars and the only light was the tay lights
of these cars. I saw that I was encircled by men.
(15:46):
I lay on the ground face down. Someone stood on
each hand, and someone stood on my feet, and somebody
else stood on my neck. At this time, my wrists
and ankles were cut as a result of their standing
on them. The men then took churns in beating me
with what felt like a bull whip. I counted over
(16:07):
eighty licks before they began to ask me anything. I
heard them say come on, now, it's my turn, and
say you haven't hit him hard enough. Hit him. Charlie
says they asked him about his connections to the County Sheriff,
his connections to the Chief of Police, Carlisle Newton. They
(16:28):
asked about the police officer who was shot at his
place earlier that night. He heard somebody say he couldn't
have done it, as I had him covered. The men
searched him. He had a men's diamond ring, eyeglasses, and
two hundred and thirty five dollars. They took his belongings. Then,
Charlie said, they asked me to swear that I would
(16:50):
go to church every Sunday, and I would take an
oath to leave South Carolina and not even go back
to my place, not go back to my wife and leave. Now,
don't go to Georgia because we got ku klutz men there.
One man said he'd better not stop in North Carolina,
said another. That's when Charlie says they decided to mark him.
(17:12):
Somebody said we ought to swing him to a rope.
Charlie heard a guy say, I've got a penknife, just
the thing, let's notch his ear. It was something klansmen
were known to do. Charlie says he looked up at
the man and saw that he had a small badge
pinned inside his shirt pocket and a revolver in his holster.
(17:35):
He says. When the man saw me look up, he
kicked me on the side of the head, which still
swells and still requires medical attention. When the man notched
my left ear, it apparently bled and I had an
opportunity to jump up, and I jumped toward a nearby ditch.
The ditch was about four and a half feet deep.
I carried two men with me into the ditch. In
(17:56):
the scuffle, I got away and rushed into the nearby bushes.
I fell behind a log in the bushes. As I
was escaping, they shot fifteen or twenty times in my
general direction. I then heard them say let's go. The
clansmen left Charlie for dead, but later that night one
(18:19):
of the drivers from his cab company spotted him on
the side of the road and picked him up. From there,
Charlie got in touch with police Chief Newton, who told
him that he never got the message to send help.
Newton called the doctor. The doctor came and gave Charlie
a shot to put him to sleep. Then the county
(18:39):
sheriff came by to see him, a man named c
Ernest Sassar. Many people call sheriff Sasser, this white officer
a friend and an ally to Charlie. During this time,
Charlie once said about Sasser, quote, I've never known a
straighter white man in my life. Sasser told Charlie it
(19:03):
wasn't looking good. The clan was after both him and
Charlie for the death of a police officer. The robed
officer who had been shot at Charlie's place earlier that
night had died. Sassar said the best thing for him
to do was lock Charlie up until he could get
it straightened out for his own safety. For over a week,
(19:24):
Charlie was moved around to different jail cells throughout the county. Meanwhile,
Sasser went on the radio to try to clear Charlie's name.
In the broadcast, he said Charlie had no part in
the shooting. Sassar instead blamed the klansman who quote left
(19:46):
him on the ground to die. Sassar continues, he dispels
the prostitution rumors. That's not why the clan attack Charlie's place,
he says. Instead, he suggests another reason. He says, to
my knowledge, some white men and women do go to
this place on special occasions to hear the orchestra and
watch the colored people dance. I have on many occasions
(20:10):
told them was not a good policy. Sasser then tells
listeners that the clan has threatened to blow up the
Myrtle Beach radio station if they reveal any information about
clan members, the very station where Sassre broadcasts this message,
but then quickly adds quote, I happen to know a
few men that are members. Some are from good families.
(20:31):
They were led into this unfortunate thing with no intention
of committing a crime. This is so revealing County sheriff
is a political position. Sassar can't completely denounce the clan
if he wants the votes. They're that powerful. But he
also can't stand for what they did to his friend.
He has to say something, and he'd pay for that.
(20:54):
Sassar lost his seat as a county sheriff in the
next election by a lot. He lost to a known
clan sympathizer. There was one area, though, where Sassre dominated.
He carried the precinct known as the Race Path, which
included the Hill neighborhood. The black residents there voted three
hundred and forty three to six for Sasser. All this time.
(21:25):
Parents in Myrtle Beach had tried to shield their kids
from the details of what happened to Charlie. Miss pat
said years passed before the adults began to talk about it,
so the kids were left with a lot of assumptions.
Speaker 4 (21:40):
We had heard different stories. Some people said he was dead,
some people said he was beaten to death. As a child.
I heard his ears were cut off, and I remember
one day, I don't know eight months later, nine months later,
he walks into the Cozy Corner.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Dino had grown up watching Charlie e Club Sandwiches at
his dad's restaurant, the Cozy Corner. Dino thought Charlie was
gone for good and now here. He was walking through
the door as if nothing happened.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
And I remember everybody, everybody knew him. That black cook
came out to see him, and the waitresses all knowing.
And I remember I was staring at him because I
thought his ears had been cut off, and I think
he knew what I was doing, and he swooped me
up and he said, you're looking at my ears. Boy,
(22:33):
No sir, no sir, And he said I got ears
and he did, you couldn't tell you know that his
ears were cut it off. I'm sure it affected him
and changed his thinking and perspective of life, but he
seemed normal when I would sit watch Dad sending shooting breeze,
and he still came in the cozy corner. He still
went to the Broadway theater, sat in the white section.
(22:57):
He still did what he wanted to do.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Eventually, five Plan members were arrested for the nineteen fifty
attack on Charlie's place, including the Grand Dragon Thomas Hamilton.
If anything, these arrests only emboldened the Klan. They continued
to rally around the Carolinas, and they ditched the hoods.
They stopped hiding their faces, no shame, no fear of
(23:24):
being recognized. And almost immediately after Charlie leaves jail, he's
picked up again for having a gun and an obscene film.
Not that it really matters, but Charlie said the film
wasn't his. It was collateral for a three dollar loan
he had made to a friend who was short of cash,
but the gun was for protection. Charlie spoke to the
(23:45):
newspaper that covered his arrest. He said, quote, I know
it was against the law to have that gun, but
it was right in my conscience, because my life has
been threatened and I am still in danger. He added,
I'm a free man, and I'm not a freeman. I
don't know who is or who isn't a member of
the clan. It's this last line, I don't know who
(24:06):
is or who isn't a member of the Klan that
sticks out. I think think that's a strategic lie on
Charlie's part. I think he was trying to send a
public message to his attackers that he wasn't their threat.
All five clansmen are cleared of all charges. Charlie left
Myrtle Beach for a while. He spent time with friends
(24:28):
in Philly and New York. He went to DC and
gave that testimony to the FBI, but nothing came of it,
and eventually Charlie came home. Even though Dino couldn't see
the difference, Charlie had changed. Some said he got a
(24:48):
little meaner. Some say he faded into the background. The
club may have been called Charlie's Place, but it was
as much Sarah's place as it was his. Sarah had
always had a hand in its success, in all of
their business. They were true partners.
Speaker 6 (25:06):
After the clan rate to that place closed. She had
to manage that place. He was there often, but he
wasn't the same. Everybody says Charlie wasn't the same. But
she had to be tough in a man's world, so
she didn't take no foolishness.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
When Charlie took a back, Sarah kept it going, and
she booked some of the most famous music acts the
club ever saw.
Speaker 6 (25:29):
And she ran it with the iron fist under velvet glove,
so to speak. Ruth Brown and those they loved her.
Bill Pinkney, the last of the original Drifters, he loved her.
When oldest Red and cats like that were coming, that
was miss Siah doing. She had Charlie's old contacts. There
was some guy down in Texas that called him the Peacock.
(25:50):
I think it was a gangster, black gangster, but he
controlled all the top black artists and he was a
friend of her, so I'm thinking she got it to him.
But she had all the artists there. She told me
the only person that she didn't get there to play,
and he'd come there. Only person she didn't get there
(26:12):
to play was James Brown. Everybody says, James Brown's there,
and they'd see his bus outside the bus He parked
the bus there and I think some of his players
would stay there. James would most likely go up to
Atlantic Beach because you could be ocean front up there.
But she said James would come to it. He was
just as nice as could be. He sit down, we
talk and talk.
Speaker 8 (26:32):
Well.
Speaker 6 (26:32):
He just wanted too much money and I couldn't afford him.
Sarah came and held all that.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
I think the fact that Sarah rebuilt the club and
ran it as long as she did helps solidify Carver
Street in the minds of its residents nineteen fifties. Carver
Street is the symbol of the glory days for Minny
and Myrtle Beach. The people on the hill remember it
as this thriving time when black people ran their own
businesses for black people. The fact that Charlie's Place survived
(27:03):
and lived on even after the KKK attack in August
nineteen fifty, the fact that the big artists kept coming
that the Klan's terrorism wasn't the end of the story. Instead,
the attack was a moment of defiance, of resistance, a
testament to the strength of the community. Professor Bobby Donaldson
(27:24):
says Charlie Fitzgerald's actions sent a message.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
So, here is someone whose business is riddled with bullets.
Here is someone who is thrown in the back of
a card, kidnapped, who is stripped and beaten. Here's someone
whose ear is slashed with the knife of a klansman.
And I guess an ordinary person would say, the hell
(27:51):
with it, I'm going to the Promised Land. I'm going elsewhere.
But Charlie was not ordinary, And I think the defiance
is probably what motivated him to stay right there. That
he had already built a business and he was going
to rebuild and stay.
Speaker 6 (28:08):
And he did.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
And so Charlie Fitzgerald returns the very space where he
defired the clan and stayed there until his death.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
It encouraged the community to defend their home at all costs.
Clyde Foster gave me an example of this. He's lived
in Myrtle Beach his whole life, where everyone knows him
as Frankie.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
Almost everybody old businesses on their boulevard you know about me,
you know, because I'm that type of person. I'm a
public man.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Frankie hadn't been born when the KKK attacked Charlie's place
in nineteen fifty, but he heard the story. His family
members and friends had been there, and he saw how
it had traumatized them. Frankie's aunt never let a white
person enter her house again after that night. So Frankie
grew up expecting that there would be a time when
he too would have to fight, when he'd also have
(29:02):
to defend his community. And in the nineteen seventies he
thought the time had come. It was a night when
the Temptations came to town to play on Carver Street.
A rumor got out that the Klan was planning an attack.
Frankie was a teenager, and he and his friends wanted
to be prepared.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
We were young on Carver Street here, almost all the
young people. We were in trees and stuff, waiting on them.
We had malotar cocktails. We were young. We weren't gonna
let that happen again. Which we'll never let them come
through there. The older people, they couldn't do it. They
already went through that experience. We were in trees and
(29:42):
in the woods on Carver Street waiting on them to come.
We were going to destroy him. We're gonna blow him up.
Speaker 1 (29:50):
But Frankie says the word got out that these kids
were ready. He thinks the store where they bought bullets
let the klan know that the community was armed.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
And the way we figured out, they warned them, say
don't go back in that neighborhood. Them people, the people
ready for you, and they didn't come.
Speaker 6 (30:10):
I come back.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Charlie died on July fourth, nineteen fifty five, five years
after that night. In August. He had lung cancer because we.
Speaker 7 (30:29):
Used to go over there and he used to be
in the bed. He had a tank. He used to
walk around with the breathing tank, you know, and.
Speaker 6 (30:35):
Stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
According to his death certificate, he died eight months from diagnosis.
He returned to Tacoa, Georgia, to be buried where he
was born. He returned home as Lucius Rocker, and you
Sayah cremated him.
Speaker 4 (30:53):
She was devastated.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
And she cried a lot, but she tried to keep
it for days open and a lot of child friends
made sure she had the support for the whole family,
the whole yorb but nobody could get her out of
that linguage she was in because she was upset.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Finally, in nineteen sixty five, Sarah decided it was time
to close Charlie's place. Then she took what seemed like
a hard pivot. She left the nightclub life and became
a Jehovah's witness.
Speaker 4 (31:27):
Miss Sarah found religion, and she not only gave up
that life, but she didn't want anything to do with it.
She never wanted to talk about it. I remember I
tried to chat with her and everybody told me she
will not talk about it. She walked away from that
part of her life and never again spoke of it
(31:49):
or involved herself in it.
Speaker 7 (31:51):
And she closed the business down and she live. She
tore it down, and people were really upset with her
for tearing to build him down.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
But no one who had been there, including Miss Sarah,
would forget Herbert says Sarah told him that she knew
exactly who was in the KKK in town and who
raided their club that night, but she would never tell
for fear of being taken.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
She told me something that stuck with me. She said,
you know what, I'm not going to die until I
know every last one of them is dead. And she
wasn't playing because I got a picture of her with me.
She was ninety four and still eye candy and She
died about three years later than that. She was working
to day she died. She didn't have to work, she
(32:44):
had money, but she liked to work.
Speaker 1 (32:58):
In the ocean. Time is long. The Atlantic Ocean has
existed for over one hundred million years. The thundering waves
in friction beat rock and glass into pebbles and eventually sand.
A human life in the scheme of things is a blit,
like a grain of that sand. But all those grains
(33:20):
add up to something. Still, the physical geography of Myrtle
Beach is fragile. The beach erodes. In nineteen fifty four,
Hurricane Hazel hit Myrtle Beach and wiped out eighty percent
of its ocean front properties, virtually erasing the shoreline. Charlie
(33:41):
and Sarah Fitzgerald were once fixtures of Myrtle Beach, but
decades after they died, people started to forget.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
Miss Sarah. I missed it to this day. I think
of Missirah a lot. I told her said one day,
I'm do something with that property. I made her a promise.
I was determined to keep it. I pushed and pushed
and pushed, and the biggest problem was getting people around here.
The younger people the ones is forty fifty years old,
getting them on board because they didn't know anything about it.
(34:11):
That clan raid scared black people. So this is what
terrorism does. This is how terrorism wins. It's not about
killing somebody, it's about putting fear in somebody. And it
frightened the people in this community so badly that they
didn't tell their children because they felt like their children.
Some of them may want to retaliate because they knew
(34:34):
who did what. Don't think they didn't know who did what.
They knew who did what. So when I started talking
about Charlie's Place, nobody knew what I was talking about,
none of the young. When the forty and fifty years old.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
In twenty sixteen, all that was left of Charlie's Place
was a house Sarah and Charlie lived in the city
decided to knock it down.
Speaker 6 (34:54):
They were having a demolition party at Charlie's Place. They
built it as a demolition party. That's a valuable land
up there.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
City councilman Mike Chestnut says he had a sledgehammer in
his hand when he got a call from a neighbor
who said, don't you know the history of this place.
Speaker 9 (35:11):
And my phone started ringing off the hook. You know, hey,
y'all don't need to tear that place down. Y'all don't
really know what you got there. We need to save it,
and you know, talk about the history, you know, the
early Black community here in Myrtle Beach. And now, kids,
you not we stopped the demolition that day.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
He halted the demolition and fought to preserve the building
instead as a landmark, which they did. Today there's a
small business incubator in the old inn, and the Fitzgerald's
House still stands as a museum, a love letter.
Speaker 5 (35:44):
To that time.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
And every year jazz and r and b artists from
all over come here for the Myrtle Beach Jazz Fest
in the exact same spot where the Whispering Pines once stood.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
It's a very beautiful place where we are today, Charlie's Place.
It's a very historic landmark here, and I just found
out today about just the history here.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
So on my last trip to Myrtle Beach, I went
to jazz Fest. I looked up towards the sky full
of stars, at those pine trees swaying above me. I
thought about Billie Holiday and Count Basie Sarah and Charlie,
and I noticed the crowd, people from all walks of life,
(36:34):
hundreds of people just soaking in the music together. It
can be hard to pinpoint how Sarah and Charlie left
their mark beyond the lessons and memories they left with
the people that knew them personally. But on nights like this,
it's clear this is what Charlie and Sarah thought for
a place where everyone could experience the music, no matter
(36:57):
who you are or what you look like. In Myrtle Beach,
these grounds remain a special place, and echo of what
they built is here for anyone who wants to come
and experience it. To myself, if Charlie and Sarah could
see it, they'd really be pleased. There's a memory of
(37:24):
Charlie that Roddy Brown shared with me. It's how I
pictured him at the end. It surpasses the cut ear
lobes and the breathing tanks. Roddy remembers seeing Charlie. It's
an image of him on the beach, the sun kissing
his skin. To me, it's an image of defiance.
Speaker 10 (37:44):
When I came here nineteen fifty, wanted December. When we
moved in Charlie was back on the beach. Yeah, going strong.
Charlie was going strong. Charlie was doing fine.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Roddy had never known Charlie before the clan attack. He
only knew this version after, and to him, it looked good.
It's interesting. Was lost to history and what remains. I
had to go digging to find the fragments that were
still there, the stories people held onto all these years,
the story of Myrtle Beach, And in Roddy's case, the
(38:22):
memory he was left with was a lone black man
on a crowded white beach in summer, flagrantly defying the rules,
an image of what might be possible, what they all deserved.
(38:44):
As for Miss Pat, she's still here too. I feel
so lucky to have spent time with her and hear
her stories about Myrtle Beach and her life.
Speaker 5 (38:55):
It was nice gruwing up in Myrtle Beach, and I
never wanted to leave home. Everybody left home and went
to New York and went to Florida.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
I love Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 5 (39:07):
I love Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Oh my life. You know, I go visit, but I
love my home.
Speaker 5 (39:14):
Nereus, why didn't you leave out of want to leave.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
You can find her in the same spot in Myrtle Beach,
like a beacon, just inside her front door, in her
lazy boy, ready to call out to visitors, waiting for
whoever wants to come in and hear a story about
a time gone by.
Speaker 8 (39:41):
Thank you for listening.
Speaker 7 (39:44):
Has did it?
Speaker 8 (39:45):
I did it.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
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. 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.
(40:40):
Please head to Charlie's placeshow dot com for more information
about the locations mentioned in the series and how you
can visit yourself. Irene Gise, thanks for listening.
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