Speaker 1: Pushkin a quick warning. Some of the language and imagery
Speaker 1: used to describe this period of time maybe upsetting. Please
Speaker 1: take care while listening.
Speaker 2: I was interviewing a gentleman about his participation in student
Speaker 2: demonstrations in nineteen sixty. He stopped me and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm from South Carolina. Have you ever heard
Speaker 2: of Charlie Fitzgerald? He mentioned specifically knowing Charlie Fitzgerald, knowing
Speaker 2: his wife, and then relating to me what he remembered
Speaker 2: happening in nineteen fifty. Charlie Fitzgerald. It was notorious. That's
Speaker 2: a good adjective for him. He was constantly having the makeovers,
Speaker 2: seemingly always reinventing himself. He was a roving entrepreneur who
Speaker 2: was beloved and respected by some and despised and ridiculed
Speaker 2: by others. Trader, turncoat, folk hero, defiant. The atmosphere is
Speaker 2: thick with this vehement rhetoric of white supremacy. Here was
Speaker 2: a black man who thumbed his nose at laws and customs,
Speaker 2: and that is why he's a threat. What happened to
Speaker 2: Charlie Fitzgerald was almost I guess it would be an
Speaker 2: imit till moment. It would be a Pearl Harbor moment
Speaker 2: people remembered vividly. An ordinary person would say, the hell
Speaker 2: with it, I'm going to the Promised Land, I'm going elsewhere.
Speaker 2: But Charlie was not ordinary.
Speaker 1: I came to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in search of
Speaker 1: a folk hero, a man who died in nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: a man who's almost forgotten, but whose name is still
Speaker 1: in the air. He was the mythic proprietor of a
Speaker 1: mythic space, a place that sounded like a mirage.
Speaker 3: It did exist.
Speaker 1: On a Saturday night in nineteen forty in the seaside
Speaker 1: town of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The smell of salty
Speaker 1: air and perfume, a night out on the town. Everyone
Speaker 1: is filing into a nightclub. The sound of Count Basie's
Speaker 1: orchestra carries into the night. Jim Crow laws are in
Speaker 1: full effect.
Speaker 3: It would still be.
Speaker 1: Decades before black and white people were allowed to even
Speaker 1: eat together in a restaurant. But something surprising is happening
Speaker 1: inside the club, something the laws were designed to prevent.
Speaker 1: Throughout the South, black and white people dance together. They partner,
Speaker 1: press against each other, swing and sway to the music.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel dangerous, it feels joyous. Nothing else seems
Speaker 1: to matter. The lines on the outside don't exist. This
Speaker 1: was Charlie's place. It doesn't seem real, but a few
Speaker 1: people still remember. I heard a phrase on one of
Speaker 1: my visits to Myrtle Beach about Charlie's place.
Speaker 4: Segregation in the day, integration.
Speaker 1: That night, Segregation by day, integration by night. The people
Speaker 1: who lived it even have a hard time explaining it
Speaker 1: how this nightclub existed when it did for as long
Speaker 1: as it did from nineteen thirty seven to nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: But they say it had everything to do with Charlie Fitzgerald.
Speaker 1: Things just went that way with Charlie. He blurred the lines.
Speaker 1: The rules just didn't seem to apply to him, and
Speaker 1: when I asked why, it just led to more questions.
Speaker 5: Charlie was big question mark. A lot of people knew
Speaker 5: him but didn't really know him.
Speaker 6: He always had an aura about him, and people you
Speaker 6: say he was a serious man. I took that to
Speaker 6: mean that he could be a dangerous man.
Speaker 7: He carried two pistols.
Speaker 8: He had a forty five on one side and the
Speaker 8: thirty eight or another side, and he carried those guns
Speaker 8: with him all the time.
Speaker 9: The rumor was spread that Charlie was running a prostitution
Speaker 9: ring over there.
Speaker 1: Charlie was a source of constant speculation and misinformation. I
Speaker 1: got to work separating rumors from the facts. Now, as
Speaker 1: far as businesses go, what we learned about Charlie was
Speaker 1: he had gambling in the back, yes, yes, and.
Speaker 3: Some other businesses.
Speaker 5: Yeah, But I can't disclose that.
Speaker 1: When I came to Myrtle Beach, these questions were sometimes
Speaker 1: met with a guarded attitude. There was something here people
Speaker 1: were compelled to protect. I was on a mission to
Speaker 1: find out what that was. I Marine Giese and this
Speaker 1: is Charlie's Place. Episode one was Spring Pines. I had
Speaker 1: to prepare to go back to the South, a place
Speaker 1: I've rarely been since I was a girl in Louisiana.
Speaker 1: I usually wear my hair natural bud for the trip
Speaker 1: to Myrtle Beach, I straightened it. My parents and I
Speaker 1: first moved to the South when I was twelve years old.
Speaker 1: We came here from the Ivory Coast. I didn't speak English,
Speaker 1: and I still remember what my teacher told me. While
Speaker 1: I learned the language. She said listen. Things we do
Speaker 1: not talk about, sex, religion, politics, do not touch those
Speaker 1: subjects that never made sense to me as a kid.
Speaker 1: What else is there to talk about that stuck with me?
Speaker 1: And this story, it turns out, would touch on all
Speaker 1: the things that you don't talk about in polite conversation
Speaker 1: in the South. Coaxing out the truth would be delicate.
Speaker 1: I had one shot to get this right, and I
Speaker 1: didn't have a lot of time because most of the
Speaker 1: people who really knew the story were well into their eighties.
Speaker 1: There weren't a lot of people left, but there was
Speaker 1: Miss Pat. But Miss Pat, I was curious, do you
Speaker 1: still stay in contact with everybody you grew up with?
Speaker 3: That's still you know?
Speaker 5: You do?
Speaker 10: Yeah?
Speaker 9: The most fan I might take. Yeah, there's so many.
Speaker 9: I'm younger than me dead, and it bothers me. I
Speaker 9: get nervous. I'm not ready to go yet.
Speaker 5: M m.
Speaker 1: Miss Pat has a wheelchair ramp leading into her house
Speaker 1: because she has very limited mobility. She had a heart
Speaker 1: attack recently and can't leave her home. She says most
Speaker 1: everyone who worked dry cleaners and Myrtle Beach in the
Speaker 1: fifties like she did, ended up with either cancer or
Speaker 1: heart trouble because of the cleaning fluids they used. Each
Speaker 1: time I walked up to her house, she'd spot me
Speaker 1: first and call out through the screen door from her
Speaker 1: lazy boy, hey baby, And each time it was good
Speaker 1: to be reminded of the warmth in her voice.
Speaker 9: Charlie fitzher was a good man to the whole neighborhood,
Speaker 9: the town, everywhere. And you either respect him or you
Speaker 9: hate him. And see I respect him because see he
Speaker 9: didn't mind putting something on you. Next with mister Charlie
Speaker 9: was to us, you respect him.
Speaker 1: Not many folks really knew him, and I would come
Speaker 1: to believe that maybe that was intentional on Charlie's part.
Speaker 1: But Miss Pat knew Charlie, and everyone that sent me
Speaker 1: her way described her as a mess. I knew exactly
Speaker 1: what that meant. A mess in the South is someone
Speaker 1: who talks a lot.
Speaker 9: Now you stop me, because I don't know when the hoosh.
Speaker 3: A mess was exactly what I needed.
Speaker 9: Mm, Now, what do you want to talk about? How
Speaker 9: I was raised on Myrtle Beach on Clver Street.
Speaker 1: Miss Pat helped me understand the setting around Charlie's Club
Speaker 1: in the nineteen forties before integration. Carver Street was the
Speaker 1: center of black life in Myrtle Beach. There were shops, restaurants, clubs,
Speaker 1: juke joints, all owned by black people for black people.
Speaker 9: Crver Street was the only street that we could sell anything.
Speaker 9: Oop Moub a business. We weren't allowed on Oak Street
Speaker 9: at all.
Speaker 1: Back then, there were boundaries around where black people lived
Speaker 1: and where they were allowed to move freely.
Speaker 3: In Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 1: This neighborhood was known as the Hill, made up of
Speaker 1: several streets including Carver Set, a few blocks back from
Speaker 1: the ocean. Miss Pat was born on the Hill in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty three. By the time she was two years old,
Speaker 1: her mother and two sisters died from tuberculosis. She was
Speaker 1: raised by her grandmother. They survived by knowing where to
Speaker 1: find cracks in the system. They existed between broken rules
Speaker 1: and abandoned materials. During this time of extreme segregation. Miss
Speaker 1: Pat's grandmother was resourceful. Black people weren't allowed to buy
Speaker 1: coal in town, so they collected fragments that fell off
Speaker 1: the coal train. They dug tar out of the street
Speaker 1: before it dried to patch their roof. They worked at
Speaker 1: night to avoid the police.
Speaker 5: Sure did the.
Speaker 1: First gasto of her family owned was fished out of
Speaker 1: the ocean after Hurricane Hazel.
Speaker 9: And raged it out for three weeks before we could
Speaker 9: put it together.
Speaker 1: They kept pigs, grew their own fruits and vegetables, sold corn, liquor,
Speaker 1: and did laundry for Taurus.
Speaker 9: Oh god, there's some nasty girls come to Murtle Beach.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 9: I wouldn't touch your clothes. I said, no, no, I
Speaker 9: don't want the germs clean your clothes. The girls, the
Speaker 9: mens was all right, but them, girl, Oh my god.
Speaker 1: She shared her vivid memories with me, revealing them as
Speaker 1: kind of a mental map. Geographically, her world was small,
Speaker 1: but the details she shared conveyed something much bigger. It
Speaker 1: helped me understand what the community on the Hill was
Speaker 1: made of and what it took for Miss Pat to survive,
Speaker 1: To live out an entire life here. It was almost
Speaker 1: freedom as long as she stayed in the lines. Outside
Speaker 1: the hill, Miss Pat was barely allowed to exist because
Speaker 1: outside the hill, she couldn't eat inside restaurants outside the hill,
Speaker 1: she couldn't wear shorts on the boardwalk along the ocean.
Speaker 1: Outside the hill, she couldn't step barefoot on the sand,
Speaker 1: let alone touch the water.
Speaker 9: Maryle Beech was a good place. If you stay in
Speaker 9: your place. I put it like that. You couldn't go
Speaker 9: into the ocean. We couldn't go in none of the water.
Speaker 1: Until the late nineteen sixties, it was forbidden for black
Speaker 1: people to swim in the ocean in Myrtle.
Speaker 9: Beach because they say the dirt would come off and
Speaker 9: go in the water. That's why we couldn't. We could
Speaker 9: daminate the water. But other than that, it was all right.
Speaker 9: I love family. My family was the biggest thing that
Speaker 9: ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: When Miss pat wasn't helping her grandmother, she was hanging
Speaker 1: out at her grandfather's barbershop.
Speaker 9: My granddaddy was something you didn't nobody ever had a
Speaker 9: granddaddy like mine. And he will call me to cut
Speaker 9: his hair and say if I cut him, to go shoot.
Speaker 7: Me and shoot.
Speaker 9: And showed me how to shoot the gun, the pistol
Speaker 9: and the shotgun. Howse were you fifteen?
Speaker 1: Everything happened in her grandfather's yard behind the barbershop. It's
Speaker 1: where she learned how to shoot a gun, how to
Speaker 1: shave her granddad's head with a street razor without cutting him,
Speaker 1: and where she learned how to.
Speaker 11: Dance and dance.
Speaker 9: Oh my god, we dance in the yard. We didn't
Speaker 9: worry about what went on outside, but we dance all
Speaker 9: we won't. I love the dance more than I need anything,
Speaker 9: Yet didn't Drake, didn't hang out? I dance. Anybody want
Speaker 9: to dance?
Speaker 7: All Ridney.
Speaker 1: When Miss Pat says we didn't worry about what went
Speaker 1: on on the outside, she means outside of the hill.
Speaker 1: That world didn't matter. What mattered was who she was
Speaker 1: on the hill, and on the hill, Miss Pat was
Speaker 1: known as one of the best dancers in Myrtle Beach.
Speaker 1: Dance was everything, and right on Carver, in the center
Speaker 1: of all the action was the best place to dance.
Speaker 1: Charlie Fitzgerald's nightclub, Charlie's Place. The insiders know that before
Speaker 1: it was Charlie's Place, everyone knew it as Whispering Pines.
Speaker 3: They called it that because of a legend.
Speaker 1: Once Billy Holliday and Count Basie came and played two
Speaker 1: nights in a row. The locals say, Billy Holliday's voice
Speaker 1: lingered like a whisper through those pine trees.
Speaker 9: And that's why they called it Prisburne Pines. Because the
Speaker 9: wind blow those trees was Oh my god, it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: Whispering Pines was run by a married couple, two black entrepreneurs,
Speaker 1: Charlie and Sarah Fitzgerald. According to the people who lived
Speaker 1: on the hill, Charlie and Sarah were forces of nature,
Speaker 1: two outsiders who came to town in nineteen thirty seven.
Speaker 1: When I asked people, where did Charlie come from? I
Speaker 1: thought it was a simple question with a simple answer.
Speaker 5: So I'm saving you from Georgia. I think Charley went
Speaker 5: from New York ghwere so I think he came from Jamaica, simplace.
Speaker 6: And he came from north Nobody knew exactly where. Nobody
Speaker 6: talked about where he came from.
Speaker 1: So yeah, not so simple. But wherever Sarah and Charlie
Speaker 1: came from, they ended up in Myrtle Beach. When they
Speaker 1: opened their club in nineteen thirty seven, it drew entertainers
Speaker 1: and visitors from all over the country. On Saturday night,
Speaker 1: carswood line, Carver Street, women emerged in evening gowns and
Speaker 1: men in white tuxes. The crowd felt enormous, and they
Speaker 1: were all there for the music, and not just any music.
Speaker 1: It was the best music.
Speaker 9: Oh yes, God, Ruth Brown, James Brown, Girl. I see
Speaker 9: so many people up in there.
Speaker 5: Bill Richard, you haven't heard of him?
Speaker 9: Oh my god. They don't talk about Wilson Pickett. They
Speaker 9: don't talk about him there.
Speaker 4: Right now from the country, Roy Hamilton, Johnny is my
Speaker 4: favorite to drift to, Fat.
Speaker 10: Diaminal's, Johnny Taylor, Rossi Clarke, Curtis Mayfield.
Speaker 5: The Impressions.
Speaker 4: Marvin Gable was here. Marbin Gare used to come to
Speaker 4: there the shop get his haircut.
Speaker 10: The last concert that I tend to hear with Otis Redding.
Speaker 10: We were having such a good time that the floor
Speaker 10: was really caving in.
Speaker 9: It was crowded, people from all over South Carolinas. Please.
Speaker 1: Charlie's Place or with Spring Pines, was a stop on
Speaker 1: the Chillin Circuit, safe venues for black entertainers in the
Speaker 1: Jim Crow South. These clubs and Duke Joints launched artists careers,
Speaker 1: and Charlie's Place contributed to that. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: what it felt like to be inside that history. Most
Speaker 1: people I interviewed, their memories are of a specific era
Speaker 1: at Charlie's Place. Maybe if you remember the late forties
Speaker 1: and a lot like miss Pat. Remember the fifties and sixties.
Speaker 1: I would have loved to be a fly on the wall.
Speaker 9: It was like stepping in another world. And they had
Speaker 9: these black and white squares on the floor. You had
Speaker 9: never seen nothing like that. All you see the wood flow,
Speaker 9: I mean, it was so pretty and so different.
Speaker 1: Charlie and Sarah kept tabs on the kids and let
Speaker 1: them in to dance while the acts warmed up. As
Speaker 1: long as you were out of there by nine point thirty.
Speaker 1: Miss Pat took advantage of that. She put on a
Speaker 1: dress and went to see all the artists who came through.
Speaker 9: You couldn't wear no pants, no slacks at all, and
Speaker 9: my oldest sister went out the slacks on it.
Speaker 12: He marched or red bag home. That's right, and you
Speaker 12: had to be out of there by nine thirty. He
Speaker 12: just was strict when he come down to children. He
Speaker 12: didn't allow children to be in grown people company.
Speaker 1: The more time I spent in Myrtle Beach, the more
Speaker 1: people turned up with something to share about Charlie's place.
Speaker 1: The club isn't there anymore, but I heard many stories
Speaker 1: about what it looked like inside. I'd sketch as I
Speaker 1: listened and tried to capture it in as much detail
Speaker 1: as possible, piece together from people's distant memories. Roddy Brown's
Speaker 1: family ran Club Bamboo next door to Charlie's place. He says,
Speaker 1: Charlie's Place was always packed.
Speaker 4: Okay, you got it a huge building here, and you
Speaker 4: could see maybe fifteen hundred people in here.
Speaker 5: Fifteen hundred, that's a thousand, five hundred. See that.
Speaker 4: We have no need to get some un daddy pictures
Speaker 4: because there got to be some pictures of Charlie's there.
Speaker 3: There aren't any other than that bar in pictures.
Speaker 11: No.
Speaker 1: What I can gather is when you stepped inside, there
Speaker 1: was a big bar in front, and towards the back
Speaker 1: there were a set of folding tables and chairs. They
Speaker 1: were in clear view of the front door. Miss Pat
Speaker 1: says she always found her dad there with his girlfriends.
Speaker 1: If his wife walked in the door, he'd have time
Speaker 1: to spot her and move the girlfriend out of you.
Speaker 9: I didn't care what he did, as long as he'd
Speaker 9: bothered me. I didn't like my daddy too goood.
Speaker 1: Further behind the tables was Charlie's back room. As a kid,
Speaker 1: you'd be in trouble if Charlie caught you trying to
Speaker 1: sneak in there.
Speaker 9: But you're never allowed to go in that back room. Well,
Speaker 9: missus Charlie would let you know, I'll get you tomorrow
Speaker 9: if I don't get you today.
Speaker 1: Miss pat says that didn't stop kids trying to get
Speaker 1: back there to rob him. That's where the money was
Speaker 1: in the back room, or the grown up scambled. On
Speaker 1: the right side was a patio. That's where the musicians performed.
Speaker 1: It was sort of a makeshift enclosure made from old
Speaker 1: signs and a big green canvas curtain, so you couldn't
Speaker 1: watch the music from outside.
Speaker 5: I used to listen in my bed.
Speaker 4: I used to slip out of my bed to slip
Speaker 4: round the Charlie's and see the performance.
Speaker 5: That was twelve years old.
Speaker 1: Roddy and his friends climbed the trees outside to try
Speaker 1: to catch a glimpse of the performers. Of course, Charlie,
Speaker 1: the man of mystery, didn't make it easy for him.
Speaker 4: He had curtains, big military curtains to block off the view.
Speaker 4: Big I don't know where Childy got those curtains. Those
Speaker 4: things were so big you'd take a whole day to
Speaker 4: put them up.
Speaker 1: Everything happened at Charlie's place. The dancing, the music, yes,
Speaker 1: but it was also a place where people came to
Speaker 1: blow off steam, and that could look like a lot
Speaker 1: of things. Roddy remembers being there in the daytime and
Speaker 1: seeing something that would stick with him. In broad daylight
Speaker 1: in Charlie's club, Roddy saw a man get shot right
Speaker 1: in front of him, he said, a guy he knew
Speaker 1: named Nathan pulled the trigger. As Roddy puts it, he
Speaker 1: witnessed an almost killing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Trevor is looking at it, almost to
Speaker 4: killing all kinds.
Speaker 5: We were so terrified. You.
Speaker 4: So this was during the day, these guys getting drunk,
Speaker 4: getting ready for the dance and starting some foolishness. Charlie
Speaker 4: came up to the board, Nathan put that good up,
Speaker 4: a better cussin and all that.
Speaker 5: But it was a time. You see, we were listening.
Speaker 5: We're living in an age.
Speaker 4: It's totally different from this atmosphere, totally cardval and the
Speaker 4: sin City.
Speaker 1: But Charlie was prepared for anything. He always carried two pistols.
Speaker 1: Everyone knew they were there under his coat. If the
Speaker 1: hell was one big family, Charlie and Sarah were the
Speaker 1: matriarch and patriarch to many who lived there. They were
Speaker 1: miss Pat's neighbors and they looked out for her and missus.
Speaker 9: Charlie is a good looking man. He is real told
Speaker 9: and his wife was kind of halfway short, and she
Speaker 9: had real curly hair, but she was so pretty and
Speaker 9: she would make hot dog the best hot dog he
Speaker 9: ever had on her beach.
Speaker 1: The Fitzgerald's also owned a motel next to the club.
Speaker 1: The building bent around in a horseshoe. In the center
Speaker 1: of the horseshoe was a house where the FitzGeralds lived.
Speaker 1: They ran a supper club out of it and sometimes
Speaker 1: invited the kids in for hot dogs and candy.
Speaker 9: Charlie was a good man.
Speaker 1: Charlie made sure Miss pat got her share.
Speaker 9: What he said, he meant it, and he said, Patrician,
Speaker 9: I was real skinny. He said, if you don't get
Speaker 9: in here and get the candy on the candy. If
Speaker 9: you go and you too little, let him take all
Speaker 9: the candy. And Miss Sarah will give me my hot
Speaker 9: dog first so I can gain weight. My other sister
Speaker 9: was big and I was little skinny. But there was
Speaker 9: a nice people.
Speaker 1: They were kind, but they were more than that, they
Speaker 1: had standards everyone learned to maintain.
Speaker 9: And Miss Sarah was a sweetheart.
Speaker 11: She was a pretty goodman, but she was very strict.
Speaker 9: You didn't go in her house any kind of where
Speaker 9: you come through the side.
Speaker 3: Ms Pat says.
Speaker 1: The FitzGeralds were big on education. Before there was an
Speaker 1: integrated school in Myrtle Beach, the kids on the hill
Speaker 1: had to ride a bus to Conway, fourteen miles away,
Speaker 1: and they never knew when it was going to come,
Speaker 1: and when it did it got stuck on a hill
Speaker 1: heading out of town. The bus would start to roll
Speaker 1: backwards and the kids would have to jump out and push.
Speaker 9: It over every time.
Speaker 1: But Sarah made sure Miss Pat got to school.
Speaker 9: And we missed that school bus. She a fuss all
Speaker 9: the way to come away fourteen miles. Why did you
Speaker 9: miss the school bus or the bus too early?
Speaker 11: Or was you lazy?
Speaker 9: You couldn't get up?
Speaker 11: What was the problem?
Speaker 9: Oh, my god, as long as you wasn't involved in
Speaker 9: it doing wrong, she would take it to school and
Speaker 9: wouldn't see nothing. But if it's your fault you didn't
Speaker 9: get up on time? Oh when did you first?
Speaker 7: The whole time?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 8: Huh?
Speaker 9: And takes your breakfast.
Speaker 1: That sounds brutal, but also very loving.
Speaker 11: It is she was.
Speaker 1: And since the kids on the hill couldn't go to
Speaker 1: the beach, Miss pat says, the Fitzgerald's put a kiddie
Speaker 1: pool in the back. But another neighbor, Leroy Brunson, mainly
Speaker 1: recalls the great lengths Miss Sarah took to keep the
Speaker 1: kids out of it. So she wasn't always sweet, well.
Speaker 7: Missus Fitzgerald was. She had a temple.
Speaker 1: She didn't care for kids the way Leroy tells it.
Speaker 1: Instead of a guard dog, the Fitzgerald's had a garden monkey,
Speaker 1: a spider monkey. Leroy remembers Miss Sarah kept the monkey
Speaker 1: near the pool, tied to a tree.
Speaker 8: She took the monkey and she put a longer line
Speaker 8: on him so he could reach all the way to
Speaker 8: the front of the pool. So my little niece and
Speaker 8: my son, he told her that don't go around the pool.
Speaker 7: That monkey about then excuse me, she went anyway.
Speaker 8: She tried to run and the monkey caught on to
Speaker 8: her shirt and he was holding them man. So Miss
Speaker 8: Sarah came out there and she got the monkey off
Speaker 8: and told us I told you kids, and don't come
Speaker 8: run yet said get off and around here, don't come
Speaker 8: run here anymore.
Speaker 3: That's so funny. I didn't hear anything about a monkey.
Speaker 8: And she had out front used to be her little
Speaker 8: palm trees with the little fruits on them, the little
Speaker 8: orange type fruits on the path of the tree, and
Speaker 8: the kids used to come in and pick them and
Speaker 8: they would eat them because they were really sweet. And
Speaker 8: she went out there and she chopped him down.
Speaker 1: It's hard to tell if she was a contradiction all
Speaker 1: along or changed over the years, but Miss Sarah lived
Speaker 1: into her nineties, so people in town have much more
Speaker 1: vivid memories of her. Either way, people remember Sarah and
Speaker 1: Charlie's kindness.
Speaker 9: He would allow the children to come overay for Christmas.
Speaker 9: He give everybody child who could walk, who could crawl,
Speaker 9: who could dance, who could do anything. He'd give everybody
Speaker 9: child a gift.
Speaker 8: He get all the kids on Christmas come out there,
Speaker 8: and he would have a bucket with dollar bills. I
Speaker 8: mean maybe I don't know, back there, probably hundred dollars
Speaker 8: and all the kids line up and he would throw
Speaker 8: them up in the air.
Speaker 7: Boy, we would we would tussle for that money.
Speaker 1: It always seemed like the FitzGeralds had cash to spare
Speaker 1: and spread around to neighbors, and Leroy said something about
Speaker 1: that money when I first met him that stuck in
Speaker 1: the back of my mind.
Speaker 3: He told me Charlie went to New York.
Speaker 5: A lot, go to New York. About once a month.
Speaker 5: He would go to New York.
Speaker 7: And we thought maybe Charlie was, you know, with the
Speaker 7: big boys. You know, I'm not saying that he was.
Speaker 1: You know, others would have mentioned potential ties to organized
Speaker 1: crime to Charlie did spend time in New York, but
Speaker 1: that's about all I could verify. It was hard to
Speaker 1: find anything concrete about Charlie. I could only find two
Speaker 1: photographs of him. People that knew him told me he
Speaker 1: didn't like to get his picture taken.
Speaker 3: In fact, there's a book about.
Speaker 1: Myrtle Beach with a picture of a man labeled Charlie Fitzgerald,
Speaker 1: and it's clearly not him. For such an important figure,
Speaker 1: someone larger than life, who shaped the attitudes and culture
Speaker 1: in Myrtle Beach and beyond, this is bizarre and honestly
Speaker 1: kind of shocking. Charlie is someone everyone knew.
Speaker 3: How does that.
Speaker 1: Knowledge get lost? Has it been lost? It's clear Charlie
Speaker 1: was going to be hard to pin down. Despite Miss
Speaker 1: Sarah's help with getting to school, Miss Pat dropped out
Speaker 1: when she was sixteen. She says it was because she
Speaker 1: was mad at her dad.
Speaker 3: He spent the.
Speaker 1: Money she'd saved for her graduation cap and gown, so
Speaker 1: she just quit and started working full time, and there
Speaker 1: weren't many jobs. Miss Pat didn't like cooking slapping the hogs,
Speaker 1: but she loved working at the dry cleaners the best,
Speaker 1: even though it paid the worst.
Speaker 9: I love the sea clot of nice and fresh and
Speaker 9: now PAOs creased down to the mags.
Speaker 11: I love that.
Speaker 1: And for the most part, she liked taking care of
Speaker 1: the kids of white families, even though it brought her
Speaker 1: into the lions Den. There was a family in town
Speaker 1: she babysat for often in the summer, she took the
Speaker 1: little girl to the beach. Miss Pat was careful to
Speaker 1: never let the waves lap at her feet and get
Speaker 1: her socks wet. If she came back with wet socks
Speaker 1: would know she had touched that water and she could
Speaker 1: get fired. But Miss Pat says they were a nice family,
Speaker 1: nice enough. One day, while babysitting, she saw something laid
Speaker 1: out on a bed. It looked like a white dress.
Speaker 1: Then she saw it had a hood. She knew exactly
Speaker 1: what it was.
Speaker 9: And you had them in Ni Kleana's all the time,
Speaker 9: because that work in Ni Kleanans all the time. You
Speaker 9: just go ahead and do it.
Speaker 1: You washed an iron the white KKK suit. Although her
Speaker 1: friends and family had a good life on the hill,
Speaker 1: they knew that the klu kutz Klan was everywhere, white
Speaker 1: clad ghosts that threatened all their lives. And here it
Speaker 1: was again in the house of the white family. She
Speaker 1: babysat for a KKK robe. As she looked at the
Speaker 1: clan uniform laid out on the bed, the little girl
Speaker 1: she was watching turned and threatened her.
Speaker 3: She said, you see this.
Speaker 11: I said, yes.
Speaker 9: She said, if you don't do what I'll tell you
Speaker 9: to do, my daddy put this back on and he'll
Speaker 9: do you like I didn't missus Charlie.
Speaker 11: And I just let it go.
Speaker 1: Coming up on Charlie's place, it.
Speaker 3: Is a feeling that says you belong, this is home.
Speaker 8: The slop and then there was the bump.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I need to shake.
Speaker 5: That's the main thing. Charlie was lixemple a power.
Speaker 8: No one told him what to do, what he wanted
Speaker 8: to do, That's what he did.
Speaker 9: Where you come in here, stir up trouble and gonna
Speaker 9: beat trouble. Will you think somebody making more money than
Speaker 9: you make they're gonna stir up trouble? We would intreat
Speaker 9: and in the woods on Call Street, waiting on them
Speaker 9: to come.
Speaker 1: Charlie's Place is a production of Atlas Obscura and Rococo
Speaker 1: Punch in partnership with Pushkin Industries and presented by Visit
Speaker 1: Myrtle Beach. It's written and produced by Emily Foreman. Our
Speaker 1: story editor is Erica Lance. Our team at Atlas Obscura
Speaker 1: is Doug Baldinger, Chris Naka, Johanna Mayer, Linda Lobel, and
Speaker 1: Emily Yates. You can follow us on Instagram at Atlas Obscura.
Speaker 1: Please head to Charlie'show dot com for more information about
Speaker 1: the locations mentioned in the series and how you can
Speaker 1: visit yourself. I'mrin guise, Thanks for listening. Binge the entire
Speaker 1: season of Charlie's Place, add free by subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
Speaker 1: Sign up on the show page on Apple Podcasts or
Speaker 1: Pushkin dot Fm, Slash plus. Pushkin Plus subscribers can access
Speaker 1: ad free episodes, full audiobooks, and exclusive binges of other
Speaker 1: true crime podcasts throughout the year.