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the memory palace
Introducing Charlie’s Place: A Cultural Haven That Brought People Together Through Music
00:36:32
PAID CONTENT: A preview of the new podcast, Charlie's Place from Pushkin Industries
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- [00:02]
Nate DiMeo
This episode of the Memory palace is brought to you by Home Aglow. There are few better gifts you can give yourself than ponying up to have someone else clean your house. And it is not because you can't. You are a capable adult. I trust you to take care of yourself. But it is because you are giving yourself the gift of time. It is summer. You've got a billion things going on. You have a million better things to do than clean your house. Turn to Homaglow, get going. Go do those things. Homogloam is a five star home service platform. It is so easy to book top rated cleaners in your area for any occasion. Right there. Online, you've got a big party. You have the in laws coming. You've just kind of let things go for a while. Have them come in for one time from Homoglow. You can also get something on the books regularly with their Forever Clean membership. And you can give yourself that gift and watch it keep giving over and over again. More free time, a cleaner, calmer environment. Fewer squabbles with your roommates or your spouse or your kids or yourself in the mirror after you've walked by that pile of nonsense you have on top of that one table that's been there for a week and a half. Take home cleaning off your plate this summer by using homaglow. Head to homaglow.com memory to get your first three hours of cleaning for only $19. That is h o m e a g l o w.com spell this episode of the Memory palace is brought to you by Life Kit from npr, the podcast that helps you get a little bit more every day out of that body that you live in. These are little life hacks that can make a big difference, that are fun but serious. Because this is npr. This isn't some weird TikTok. You want to reduce wrinkles, first you find a lizard. It's not that kind of nonsense. But these are real tips about health and happiness and exercise and personal safety and navigating your financial life brought to you with charm and flair and that great NPR way of making complex things understandable. Each short episode of Life Kit is going to give you strategies to help you make your life a little bit better, a little more meaningful. It is so well done. Real journalists talking to real experts, getting actionable answers to questions that that might have been lingering through for a while, like how to manage your credit cards without piling on debt, how to make your spring cleaning more efficient. But other times, and to me, these are the best episodes. They're presenting solutions to issues that maybe didn't feel like had solutions that just felt like the ambient noise of life, like how to do a better job at keeping calm in emergencies, or how to not let old friendships slip away. It's a cool show. Listen down to the Life Kit Podcast from From npr. The Memory palace is supported by the new podcast Charlie's Place and by very occasional sponsored content like this hey, it's Nate. As a listener of the Memory palace, you know my show loves exploring lost moments and forgotten figures from our past. The podcast that I am about to share with you does just that. Charlie's Place tells the story of an iconic music venue that united a community divided by racial segregation, honoring the legacy of those who stood up for unity in a divided time. Segregation was the law in the 1940s and 1950s, but Charlie's place had its own rules, a juke joint that welcomed black and white people to enjoy some of the greatest musicians of our time, artists like Little Richard, Ray Charles, Lena Horne, and many more. Charlie Fitzgerald, a revolutionary but mysterious black businessman, was the club's founder. His spot was more than a nightclub. It was a cultural hub that defied racial barriers in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Breaking the rules at a time when infractions came at a high cost. Charlie's Place sparked intense resistance from segregationists, leading to a raid by Ku Klux Klan members and profound change that reverberated throughout the community, interspersing interviews with historians, cultural experts and Carolinians who share firsthand accounts of growing up during the height of Charlie's plays. Host Reem Guiset tells the tale of triumph and tragedy, of resilience and joy, of a place where music changed lives and shaped a movement. Enjoy this preview if you want to hear more. Find Charlie's Place wherever you get your podcasts.
- [04:26]
Reem Gise
Pushkin A quick warning. Some of the language and imagery used to describe this period of time may be upsetting. Please take care while listening.
- [04:45]
Unnamed Interviewee
I was interviewing a gentleman about his participation in student demonstrations in 1960. He stopped me and he said, you know, I'm from South Carolina. Have you ever heard of Charlie Fitzgerald? He mentioned specifically knowing Charlie Fitzgerald, knowing his wife, and then relaying to me what he remembered happening in 1950. Charlie Fitzgerald was notorious. That's a good adjective for him. He was constantly having makeovers, seemingly always reinventing himself. He was a roving entrepreneur who was beloved and respected by some and despised and ridiculed by others. Traitor, turncoat, folk hero, Defiant. The atmosphere is thick with this Vehement rhetoric of white supremacy. Here was a black man who thumbed his nose at laws and customs, and that is why he's a threat. What happened to Charlie Fitzgerald was almost, I guess it would be an Emmett Till moment. It would be a Pearl harbor moment. People remembered vividly. An ordinary person would say, the hell with it. I'm going to the promised land. I'm going elsewhere. But Charlie was not ordinary.
- [06:57]
Reem Gise
I came to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in search of a folk hero. A man who died in 1955, a man who's almost forgotten, but whose name is still in the air. He was the mythic proprietor of a mythic space, A place that sounded like a mirage, but it did exist. On a Saturday night in 1940, in the seaside town of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The smell of salty air and perfume. A night out on the town. Everyone is filing into a nightclub. The sound of Count Basie's orchestra carries into the night. Jim Crow laws are in full effect. It would still be decades before black and white people were allowed to even eat together in a restaurant. But something surprising is happening inside the club. Something the laws were designed to prevent. Throughout the south, black and white people dance together. They partner, press against each other, swing and sway to the music. It doesn't feel dangerous. It feels joyous. Nothing else seems to matter. The lines on the outside exist. This was Charlie's place. It doesn't seem real, but a few people still remember. I heard a phrase on one of my visits to Myrtle beach about Charlie's place.
- [08:41]
Unnamed Interviewee
Segregation in the day, integration at night.
- [08:46]
Reem Gise
Segregation by day, integration by night. The people who lived it even have a hard time explaining it. How this nightclub existed when it did, for as long as it did from 1937 to 1966. But they say it had everything to do with Charlie Fitzgerald. Things just went that way with Charlie. He blurred the lines. The rules just didn't seem to apply to him. And when I asked why, it just led to more questions.
- [09:16]
Unnamed Interviewee
Charlie was big question mark. A lot of people knew him, but.
- [09:21]
Didn'T really know him.
- [09:22]
Ms. Pat
He always had an aura about him. And people used to say he was a serious man.
- [09:29]
Nate DiMeo
I took that to mean that he.
- [09:30]
Ms. Pat
Could be a dangerous man.
- [09:34]
Leroy Brunson
He carried two pistols. He had a.45 on one side and a.38 on the other side. And he carried those guns with him all the time.
- [09:43]
Ms. Pat
The rumor was spread that Charlie was running a prostitution ring over there.
- [09:51]
Reem Gise
Charlie was a source of constant speculation and misinformation. I got to work separating rumors from the facts. Now as far as businesses go, what we learned about Charlie was he had gambling in the back.
- [10:06]
Unnamed Interviewee
Yes. Yes, he did.
- [10:08]
Leroy Brunson
And.
- [10:10]
Reem Gise
Some other businesses.
- [10:13]
Unnamed Interviewee
Yeah. But I can't disclose that.
- [10:16]
Reem Gise
When I came to Myrtle beach, these questions were sometimes met with a guarded attitude. There was something here people were compelled to protect. I was on a mission to find out what that was. I'm Reem Gise, and this is Charlie's Place. Episode 1 Whispering Pines I had to prepare to go back to the South, a place I've rarely been since I was a girl in Louisiana. I usually wear my hair natural, but for the trip to Myrtle Beach, I straightened it. My parents and I first moved to the south when I was 12 years old. We came here from the Ivory Coast. I didn't speak English, and I still remember what my teacher told me while I learned the language. She said, listen, things we do not talk about, sex or religion, politics. Do not touch those subjects. That never made sense to me as a kid. What else is there to talk about? That stuck with me. And this story, it turns out, would touch on all the things that you don't talk about in polite conversation in the South. Coaxing out the truth would be delicate. I had one shot to get this right, and I didn't have a lot of time because most of the people who really knew the story were well into their 80s. There weren't a lot of people left, but there was Ms. Pat. But, Ms. Pat, I was curious. Do you still stay in contact with everybody you grew up with that's still, you know, here? You do?
- [12:15]
Ms. Pat
Yeah. The most of them, if I can find them, I'd stay in contact with them.
- [12:19]
Reem Gise
Yeah.
- [12:20]
Ms. Pat
Mm. But so many of them younger than me, dad.
- [12:23]
Reem Gise
Yeah.
- [12:24]
Ms. Pat
And it bothers me. I get nervous. I'm not ready to go yet. Mm.
- [12:31]
Unnamed Interviewee
Mm.
- [12:32]
Reem Gise
Yeah. Ms. Pat has a wheelchair ramp leading into her house because she has very limited mobility. She had a heart attack recently and can't leave her home. She says most everyone who worked dry cleaners in Myrtle beach in the 50s like she did ended up with either cancer or heart trouble because of the cleaning fluids they used. Each time I walked up to her house, she'd spot me first and call out through the screen door from her lazy boy, hey, baby. And each time, it was good to be reminded of the warmth in her voice.
- [13:04]
Ms. Pat
Charlie Fitzgerald was a good man to the whole neighborhood, the town, everywhere. And you either respect him or you hate him. And see, I respect him because, see, he didn't mind putting something on you. That's the way Mr. Charlie was to us. You respect him.
- [13:25]
Reem Gise
Not many folks really knew him, and I would come to believe that maybe that was intentional on Charlie's part. But Ms. Pat knew Charlie, and everyone that sent me her way described her as a mess. I knew exactly what that meant. A mess in the south is someone who talks a lot.
- [13:43]
Ms. Pat
Now you stop me cause I don't know when to hush.
- [13:47]
Reem Gise
A mess was exactly what I needed.
- [13:51]
Ms. Pat
Now what do you want me to talk about? How I was raised on Myrtle beach, on Carver Street.
- [13:58]
Reem Gise
Ms. Pat helped me understand the setting around Charlie's club. In the 1940s, before integration, Carver street was the center of black life in Myrtle Beach. There were shops, restaurants, clubs, juke joints, all owned by black people. For black people.
- [14:15]
Ms. Pat
Culver street was the only street that we could sell anything, open up a business. We weren't allowed on Oak street at all.
- [14:25]
Reem Gise
Back then. There were boundaries around where black people lived and where they were allowed to move freely. In Myrtle beach, this neighborhood was known as the Hill, made up of several streets, including Carver, set a few blocks back from the ocean. Ms. Pat was born on the hill in 1943. By the time she was two years old, her mother and two sisters died from tuberculosis. She was raised by her grandmother. They survived by knowing where to find cracks in the system. They existed between broken rules and abandoned materials. During this time of extreme segregation, Ms. Pat's grandmother was resourceful. Black people weren't allowed to buy coal in town, so they collected fragments that fell off the coal train. They dug tar out of the street before it dried to patch their roof. They worked at night to avoid the police.
- [15:18]
Ms. Pat
We sure did.
- [15:20]
Reem Gise
The first gas stove her family owned was fished out of the ocean after.
- [15:23]
Ms. Pat
Hurricane Hazel and dried it out for three weeks where we could put it together.
- [15:28]
Reem Gise
They kept pigs, grew their own fruits and vegetables, sold corn liquor, and did laundry for tourists.
- [15:34]
Ms. Pat
Oh, God. There's some nasty girls coming to Myrtle Beach. Oh, my God. I wouldn't touch the clothes. I said, no, no, I don't want the germs. Clean your clothes. The girls, the men's was all right, but them girl. Oh, my God.
- [15:51]
Reem Gise
She shared her vivid memories with me, revealing them as kind of a mental map. Geographically, her world was small, but the details she shared conveyed something much bigger. It helped me understand what the community on the Hill was made of and what it took for Ms. Pat to survive, to live out an entire life here. It was almost freedom. As long as she stayed in the lines outside the hill, Ms. Pat was barely allowed to exist. Because outside the hill. She couldn't eat inside restaurants outside the hill. She couldn't wear shorts on the boardwalk along the ocean outside the hill. She couldn't step barefoot on the sand, let alone touch the water.
- [16:34]
Ms. Pat
Myrl beach was a good place if you stay in your place. If I put it like that. You couldn't go into the ocean. We couldn't go in none of the water.
- [16:46]
Reem Gise
Until the late 1960s, it was forbidden for black people to swim in the ocean in Myrtle Beach.
- [16:52]
Ms. Pat
Because they say the dirt would come off and go in the water. That's why we couldn't recontaminate the water. But other than that, it was all right. I love family. My family was the biggest thing that ever happened to me.
- [17:31]
Reem Gise
When Ms. Pat wasn't helping her grandmother. She was hanging out at her grandfather's barbershop.
- [17:36]
Ms. Pat
My granddaddy was something nobody ever had. A granddaddy like mine. And he would call me to cut his hair and said, if I cut him, he gonna shoot me and shoot at it. And show me how to shoot the gun, the pistol and the shotgun.
- [17:53]
Reem Gise
How old were you?
- [17:54]
Ms. Pat
15.
- [17:56]
Reem Gise
Everything happened in her grandfather's yard behind the barbershop. It's where she learned how to shoot a gun. How to shave her granddad's head with a straight razor without cutting him. And where she learned how to dance.
- [18:09]
Ms. Pat
And dance. Oh, my God. We dance in the yard. We didn't worry about what went on outside. But we dance all we want. I love the dance more than I did anything else. Didn't drink, didn't hang out. But, honey, I danced. Anybody want to dance already?
- [18:29]
Reem Gise
When Ms. Pat says we didn't worry about what went on on the outside. She means outside of the hill. That world didn't matter. What mattered was who she was on the hill. And on the hill, Ms. Pat was known as one of the best dancers in Myrtle Beach. Dance was everything. And right on Carver, in the center of all the action. Was the best place to dance. Charlie Fitzgerald's nightclub. Charlie's Place. The insiders know that before it was Charlie's Place, everyone knew it as Whispering Pines. They called it that because of a legend once. Billie Holiday and Count Basie came and played two nights in a row. The locals say Billie Holiday's voice lingered like a whisper through those pine trees.
- [19:21]
Ms. Pat
And that's why they call it Whispering Pines. Because when the wind blow those trees was. Oh, my God, it was beautiful.
- [19:30]
Reem Gise
Whispering Pines was run by a married couple. Two black entrepreneurs, Charlie and Sarah Fitzgerald. According to the people who lived on The Hill. Charlie and Sarah were forces of nature. Two outsiders who came to town in 1937. When I asked people, where did Charlie come from? I thought it was a simple question with a simple answer.
- [19:51]
Unnamed Interviewee
Some said he was from Georgia. I think Charlie was from New York somewhere.
- [19:55]
Ms. Pat
So I think he came from Jamaica or someplace. And he came from up north. Nobody knew exactly where. Nobody talked about where he came from.
- [20:02]
Reem Gise
So yeah, not so simple. But wherever Sarah and Charlie came from, they ended up in Myrtle Beach. When they opened their club in 1937, it drew entertainers and visitors from all over the country. On Saturday night, cars would line Carver Street. Women emerged in evening gowns and men in white tuxes. The. The crowd felt enormous. And they were all there for the music. And not just any music. It was the best music.
- [20:37]
Ms. Pat
Oh yes. God. Ruth Brown. Jane Brown. Girl, I see so many people up in there.
- [20:44]
Unnamed Interviewee
Ben Richard, you haven't heard of him.
- [20:45]
Ms. Pat
Oh my God. They don't talk about Wilson Pickett. They don't talk about them directly from the country.
- [20:55]
Unnamed Interviewee
Roy Hamilton, Johnny Ace, my favorite. The Drifters, Fats Dominoes, Johnny Taylor Rossi.
- [21:01]
Ms. Pat
Clark Curtis Mayfield, the Impressions.
- [21:05]
Unnamed Interviewee
Marvin Gaye was here. Marvin Gaye used to come to the barbershop, get his hair cut.
- [21:12]
Ms. Pat
The last concert that I attended here with Otis Redding, we were having such a good time that the floor was really caving in. It was crowded. People from all over South Carolina said Charlie Fitzs Place.
- [21:26]
Reem Gise
Charlie's Place, or Whispering Pines, was a stop on the chitlin circuit, safe venues for black entertainers in the Jim Crow South. These clubs and juke joints launched artists careers and Charlie's Place contributed to that. I wanted to know what it felt like to be inside that history. Most people I interviewed, their memories are of a specific era at Charlie's Place, maybe a few remember the late 40s. And a lot like Ms. Pat remember the 50s and 60s. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall.
- [21:56]
Ms. Pat
It was like stepping in another world. And they had these black and white squares on the floor. You'd never see nothing like that. All you see is wood floor. I mean, it was so pretty and so different.
- [22:11]
Reem Gise
Charlie and Sarah kept tabs on the kids and let them in to dance while the acts warmed up. As long as you were out of there by 9:30. Ms. Pat took advantage of that. She put on a dress and went to see all the artists who came through.
- [22:24]
Ms. Pat
You couldn't wear no pants, no slacks at all. And my oldest sister went out with his slacks on. And he marched right back Home. That's right. And you had to be out of there by 9:30. He just was strict when it come down to children. He didn't allow children to be in grown people company.
- [22:40]
Reem Gise
The more time I spent in Myrtle beach, the more people turned up with something to share about Charlie's place. The club isn't there anymore, but I heard many stories about what it looked like inside. I'd sketch as I listened and tried to capture it in as much detail as possible, pieced together from people's distant memories. Roddy Brown's family ran Club Bamboo next door to Charlie's Place. He says Charlie's place was always packed.
- [23:04]
Unnamed Interviewee
Okay, you got a huge building here and you could seat maybe 1500 people in here. 1500, that's 1,500.
- [23:17]
Reem Gise
See, we have no pictures.
- [23:19]
Unnamed Interviewee
You need to get some Aunt Daddy pictures because there got to be some pictures of Charlie's.
- [23:23]
Reem Gise
There aren't any other than that bar.
- [23:25]
Unnamed Interviewee
No interior pictures?
- [23:26]
Reem Gise
No. What I can gather is when you stepped inside, there was a big bar in front and towards the back there were a set of folding tables and chairs. They were in clear view of the front door. Ms. Pat says she always found her dad there with his girlfriends. If his wife walked in the door, he'd have time to spot her and move the girlfriend out of view.
- [23:47]
Ms. Pat
I didn't care what he done as long as he didn't bother me. I didn't like my daddy too good.
- [23:53]
Reem Gise
Further behind the tables was Charlie's backroom. As a kid you'd be in trouble if Charlie caught you trying to sneak in there.
- [24:00]
Ms. Pat
But you're never allowed to go in that back room. But Mr. Charlie would let you know. I'll get you tomorrow if I don't get you today.
- [24:09]
Reem Gise
Ms. Pat says that didn't stop kids trying to get back there to rob him. That's where the money was in the back room where the grownups gambled. On the right side was a patio. That's where the musicians performed. It was sort of a makeshift enclosure made. Made from old signs and a big green canvas curtain so you couldn't watch the music from outside.
- [24:30]
Unnamed Interviewee
I used to listen in my bed. I used to slip out of my bed to slip around the Charlie's and see the performers. I was 12 years old.
- [24:39]
Reem Gise
Roddy and his friends climbed the trees outside to try to catch a glimpse of the performers. Of course, Charlie, the man of mystery, didn't make it easy for him.
- [24:48]
Unnamed Interviewee
He had curtains, big military curtains to block off the view. I don't know where Charlie Got those curtains. Those things were so big, you'd take a whole day to put them up.
- [25:02]
Reem Gise
Everything happened at Charlie's place. The dancing, the music, yes, but it was also a place where people came to blow off steam. And that could look like a lot of things. Roddy remembers being there in the daytime and seeing something that would stick with him. In broad daylight in Charlie's club, Roddy saw a man get shot right in front of him. He said a guy he knew named Nathan pulled the trigger. As Roddy puts it, he witnessed an almost killing.
- [25:33]
Unnamed Interviewee
And here I am, 12 years looking at it. Almost a killing. All kinds of things. We were so terrified, you know. So this was during the day. These guys getting drunk, getting ready for the dance and starting some foolishness. Charlie came up and said, boy, Nathan put that gun up. Good old cussing and all that. But it was his time. You see, we were living in an age. It's totally different from this atmosphere. Totally carnal. I'm a sin city.
- [26:06]
Reem Gise
But Charlie was prepared for anything. He always carried two. Two pistols. Everyone knew they were there under his coat. If the Hill was one big family, Charlie and Sarah were the matriarch and patriarch to many who lived there. They were Ms. Pat's neighbors, and they looked out for her.
- [26:27]
Ms. Pat
And Mr. Charlie is a good looking man. He was real tall, and his wife was kind of halfway short. And she had real curly hair, but she was so pretty. And she would make hot dog the best hot dog you ever had on Myrtle Beach.
- [26:41]
Reem Gise
The Fitzgeralds also owned a motel next to the club. The building bent around in a horseshoe. In the center of the horseshoe was the house where the Fitzgeralds lived. They ran a supper club out of it and sometimes invited the kids in for hot dogs and candy.
- [26:55]
Ms. Pat
Charlie was a good man.
- [26:57]
Reem Gise
Charlie made sure Ms. Pat got her share.
- [27:00]
Ms. Pat
What he said, he meant it. And he said, patricia, I was real skinny. He said, if you don't get in here and get the candy, all the candy, if you're going, you're too little to let him take all the candy. And Ms. Sarah will give me my hot dog first so I can gain weight. My other sister was big and I was little. A little skinny. But they were some nice people.
- [27:21]
Reem Gise
They were kind, but they were more than that. They had standards everyone learned to maintain.
- [27:26]
Ms. Pat
And Ms. Sarah was a sweetheart. She was a pretty woman, but she was very strict. You didn't go in her house any kind of way. You come to the side.
- [27:36]
Reem Gise
Miss Pat says the Fitzgeralds were big on education before there was an Integrated school in Myrtle Beach. The kids on the hill had to ride a bus to Conway, 14 miles away. And they never knew when it was going to come. And when it did, it got stuck on a hill heading out of town. The bus would start to roll backwards and the kids would have to jump out and push it over every time. But Sarah made sure Ms. Pat got to school.
- [28:05]
Ms. Pat
We missed that school bus. She'll fuss all the way to Conway, 14 miles. Why did you miss the school bus? Was the bus too early or was you lazy or you couldn't get up? What was the problem? Oh my God. Long as you wasn't involved in it. Doing wrong, she would take you to school and wouldn't see nothing. But if it was your fault, you didn't get up on time. Oh honey. She fussed the whole time. Uh huh. And fix your breakfast.
- [28:34]
Reem Gise
That sounds brutal. But also very loving.
- [28:37]
Ms. Pat
It is. She was.
- [28:39]
Reem Gise
And since the kids on the hill couldn't go to the beach, Ms. Pat says the Fitzgeralds put a kiddie pool in the back. But another neighbor, Leroy Brunson, mainly recalls the great lengths Ms. Sarah took to keep the kids out out of it. So she wasn't always sweet?
- [28:54]
Leroy Brunson
Well, Ms. Fitzgerald was. She had a temper. She didn't care for kids.
- [29:05]
Reem Gise
The way Leroy tells it, instead of a guard dog, the Fitzgeralds had a guard monkey, a spider monkey. Leroy remembers Ms. Sarah kept a monkey near the pool tied to a tree.
- [29:16]
Leroy Brunson
She took the monkey and she put a longer line on him so he could reach all the way to the front of the pool. So my little niece and my son, he told us that don't go around the pool. That monkey are back there. Excuse me. She went anyway. She tried to run and the monkey caught hold to her shirt and he was holding her, man. So Miss Sarah came out there and she got the monkey off her and told her, I told you kids don't come around yet. So get off around here and don't come around here anymore.
- [30:02]
Reem Gise
That's so funny. I didn't hear anything about a monkey.
- [30:05]
Leroy Brunson
And she had that front used to be the little pool palm trees with the little fruits on them, the little orange type fruits on the Palmer tree. And the kids used to come in and pick them and they would eat them because they were really sweet. And she went out there and she chopped them down.
- [30:22]
Reem Gise
It's hard to tell if she was a contradiction all along or changed over the years. But Ms. Sarah lived into her 90s, so people in town have much more vivid memories of her either way. People remember Sarah and Charlie's kindness.
- [30:37]
Ms. Pat
He would allow the children to come over there for Christmas. He'd give everybody a child who could walk, who could crawl, who could dance, who could do anything. He'd give everybody child a gift.
- [30:47]
Leroy Brunson
He'd get all the kids on Christmas come out there and he would have a bucket with dollar bills. I mean, maybe, I don't know, back there, probably a hundred dollars. And all the kids line up and he would throw them up in the air. Boy, we would tussle for that money.
- [31:05]
Reem Gise
It always seemed like the Fitzgeralds had cash to spare and spread around to neighbors. And Leroy said something about that money when I first met him. That stuck in the back of my mind. He told me Charlie went to New York a lot.
- [31:18]
Leroy Brunson
He'd go to New York about once a month, he would go to New York. And we thought maybe Charlie was, you know, with the big boys, you know. I'm not saying that he was, you know.
- [31:33]
Reem Gise
Others would mention potential ties to organized crime, too. Charlie did spend time in New York, but that's about all I could verify. It was hard to find anything concrete about Charlie. I could only find two photographs of him. People that knew him told me he didn't like to get his picture taken. In fact, there's a book about Myrtle beach with a picture of a man labeled Charlie Fitzgerald. And it's called Clearly Not Him. For such an important figure, someone larger than life, who shaped the attitudes and culture in Myrtle beach and beyond. This is bizarre and honestly, kind of shocking. Charlie is someone everyone knew. How does that knowledge get lost? Has it been lost? It's clear Charlie was going to be hard to pin down. Despite Ms. Sarah's help with getting to school, Ms. Pat dropped out when she was 16. She says it was because she was mad at her dad. He spent the money she'd saved for her graduation cap and gown. So she just quit and started working full time. And there weren't many jobs. Ms. Pat didn't like cooking, slapping the hogs. But she loved working at the dry cleaners the best, even though it paid the worst.
- [32:50]
Ms. Pat
I love to see clothes nice and fresh and them pants creased down to the max. I love that.
- [32:58]
Reem Gise
And for the most part, she liked taking care of the kids of white families. Even though it brought her into the lion's den. There was a family in town she babysat for. Often in the summer, she took the little girl to the beach. Ms. Pat was careful to never let the waves lap at her feet and get her socks wet if she came back with wet socks. The parents would know she had touched that water and she could get fired. But Ms. Pat says they were a nice family. Nice enough. One day while babysitting, she saw something laid out on a bed. It looked like a white dress. Then she saw it had a hood. She knew exactly what it was.
- [33:40]
Ms. Pat
And you had them in the cleaners all the time? Because I work in the cleaners all the time. You just go ahead and do it.
- [33:47]
Reem Gise
You washed and ironed the white KKK suit?
- [33:50]
Ms. Pat
Mm.
- [33:53]
Reem Gise
Although her friends and family had a good life on the hill, they knew that the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere. White clad ghosts that threatened all their lives. And here it was again in the house of the white family. She babysat for a KKK robe. As she looked at the Klan uniform laid out on the bed, the little girl she was watching turned and threatened her. She said, you see this?
- [34:22]
Ms. Pat
I said, yes. She said, if you don't do what I tell you to do, my daddy will put this back on and he'll do you like he did Mr. Charlie. And I just let it go.
- [35:02]
Reem Gise
Coming up on Charlie's Place. It is a feeling that says you belong.
- [35:08]
Unnamed Interviewee
This is home.
- [35:09]
Leroy Brunson
The slop. And then there was the bump. Boogie woogie.
- [35:13]
Ms. Pat
Yeah, I did the shag. That was the main thing.
- [35:19]
Leroy Brunson
Charlie was an example of power. No one told him what to do, what he wanted to do. That's what he did.
- [35:27]
Ms. Pat
When you come in here and stir up trouble, you're gonna be trouble. When you think somebody making more money than you make, they're gonna stir up trouble.
- [35:35]
Unnamed Interviewee
We was in trees and in the.
- [35:37]
Ms. Pat
Woods on Carver street waiting on them.
- [35:52]
Reem Gise
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 Forman. 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 lassobscura. Please head to charliesplaceshow.com for more information about the locations, men mentioned in the series and how you can visit yourself. I'm Reem Gise. Thanks for listening.
- [36:34]
Nate DiMeo
I hope you enjoyed this preview of Charlie's Place. Find Charlie's Place wherever you get your podcasts, and if you want the full story right now, you can binge Charlie's Place ad free with a Pushkin plus subscription. Sign up on the Charlie's Place Apple show page or at Pushkin FM plus Radiotopia from prx.