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Episode 5: All Costs
In Episode 5 of 'Charlie's Place,' titled 'All Costs,' the chilling events of a KKK motorcade in 1950 unfold, revealing the harrowing impact on the local community and the tra...
Episode 5: All Costs
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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It was the spring of 1988, Northwestern Alabama.
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A preacher commits a sin.
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A deeply personal transgression.
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And from there, everything spirals out of control.
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The amount of damage this man did is incalculable.
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It's still damaging all of us.
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It still hurts us to think about it.
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From revisionist history, this is the Alabama murders.
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Listen to revisionist history, the Alabama murders,
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anywhere you get podcasts.
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Pushkin.
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A quick warning.
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Some of the language and imagery used to describe this period of time may be upsetting.
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Please take care while listening.
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I remember my mother was getting ready to go to the movies with my cousin.
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And they came back.
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She said, they're riding.
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And when they say they're riding, that means the KKK was riding.
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You know, once you knew they were riding, you had to stay home for protection.
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My grandmother was sitting in the shop, yo, and the police still wants to go in the house and make sure all the lights was out.
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And every light on that corner, 21st was out.
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You couldn't see nothing.
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My aunt was scared.
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She had her young baby and their crying and shaking up baby, keeping up baby from crying.
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And nobody said a thing.
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This is Charlie's Place.
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I'm Riem Gise.
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Episode five.
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All costs.
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While much of Charlie's life is shrouded in mystery, this moment is different.
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We actually have documentation, including very detailed FBI records of what happened that night.
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It was a Saturday night, August 26th, 1950.
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Around 8 o'clock, the cars rolled into town like a funeral procession.
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Slow and bumper to bumper.
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There were men inside the cars, in white robes.
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Twenty-six carloads are driving through slowly.
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People are walking beside cars.
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Some of them have rifles on their shoulders, some are carian pistols.
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And they slowly, slimed through downtown.
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And people are terrified.
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These white robe clansmen fitted every category.
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That there were professionals.
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There were doctors.
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There were pharmacists.
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And there were policemen.
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There were law enforcement officers riding with the clan.
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So now they come right in front of the carousel corner.
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I remember my mom was crying.
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The grand dragon of the KKK in North and South Carolina was a man named Thomas Hamilton.
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He'd led the group into town that night.
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So this Thomas Hamilton, grand dragon of the KKK, he wanted to be a super big shot.
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He started pushing this thing because blacks and whites were partying together.
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And the young black kids were learning how to dance and taking it back to the community, calling it the shake.
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But in hell, the rumor was spread that Charlie was running a prostitution ring over there.
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White girls and black men.
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They always use a sixth thing as a cat call to bring up the lowest elements in their own people.
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To bring out the clansmen looking for an excuse for violence.
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By August, the grand dragon Thomas Hamilton had launched a full clan recruitment campaign in Myrtle Beach.
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A local judge had helped him organize the clan motorcade.
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The grand dragon's car was a Lincoln continental.
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And on the front of his bumper, he had on the four-foot high cross.
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And it was punched out with light bulbs, red light bulbs, and electrified to his battery.
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And he had a little red light inside like a siren.
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He could turn on occasionally.
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So it was a frightening looking thing.
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It was typical to see cars lining Carver Street outside Charlie's place on a Saturday night, the busiest night.
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But not like this.
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Charlie had a good crowd of people in his club and that wouldn't be a wife looking there.
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Strangely enough.
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And people that were there said Charlie came out and stood on the porch.
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And he said he just stood there and some of his people were standing there.
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A lot of people were afraid and ran.
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As the KKK rolled by, they sent Charlie a message.
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Somebody had a bull horn and said, we'll be back to see y'all.
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They end work.
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And they announced that they will be back at 12.
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They intimidated everybody and they left.
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They promised they would be back.
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Then the lines of cars snaked away and drove 12 miles up the coast to Atlantic Beach, the Black Beach.
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The one place Black people could put their feet in the water.
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It's busy, it's August, it's summer.
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Probably 4,000 people are there.
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They scattered them from fear.
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People just saw them and just ran.
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What happened next has different accounts.
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People always believed that they came back because Charlie dared them to.
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That's not the truth.
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I've seen the files.
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What did happen was this.
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He called the chief of police.
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Charlie called the chief of police because he knew him.
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He knew him well.
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Several sources mentioned that Charlie and Carlisle Newton had had his special arrangement.
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Charlie allegedly paying off Carlisle so he could sell illegal liquor.
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Charlie called Carlisle because he thought as a chief of police he could help.
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But when he called the station, chief Newton wasn't there.
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So Charlie left a message with the radio man.
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He told him a plan has been over here.
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They said they're coming back and the people are not going to sit back and be slaughtered like dogs.
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They will fight as they come back and they'll be some bunch of it.
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In other words, you're saying do something about this before it happens.
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Before the people at Charlie's place would have to defend themselves.
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The radio man said he'd tell the chief.
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And those days they used two-way radios like the military did.
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And this is where things got tricky because there were police officers in white hoods in that clam parade.
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In fact, some think the head car with a siren blaring and the grand dragon Hamilton inside was a police car.
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And some think that car picked up the message meant for the chief.
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And when it was radio to him that Charlie said what Charlie said.
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Hamilton decided that was the excuse he needed to go back.
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The clam cars turned around and headed for Charlie's place.
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As soon as they came back people ran and some people say it was 30 cars.
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But they were saying 4 and 5 in each car.
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In other words, you're talking about 100 people.
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They formed a skirmish line.
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They actually lined up kind of like soldiers in front of Charlie's place.
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This is right after World War II.
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So you could be a large number of them with probably military veterans.
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Now these are good old boys. Probably all grew up hunting.
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They knew how to use weapons. They liked to carry bats.
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Few of them had wits. That's one of their symbols.
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They started to move forward.
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And when they did they got this guy. His nickname was 230 because he always carried a 32 pistol.
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They grabbed him and they started beating him as to where Charlie was.
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He wouldn't tell. At first I think they eventually did.
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According to one report, a man yelled, get your guns ready and everybody get in line.
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The clansmen lined up like soldiers. They started walking toward the club.
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Anyone who tried to leave was driven back into the restaurant.
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This one Charlie played hero.
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Now he knew he could have been killed.
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But he also knew if they had been a straight out gun fight with 100 men who shot guns and pistol it would have been a slaughter.
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So Charlie walked out.
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He had his weapons on him. He had two weapons on him.
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One of the clansmen asked who runs this place and Charlie revealed himself.
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I run the place he said. My name is Charlie.
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He's the one we want the clansmen said.
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And then they knocked him out cold.
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Three of them approached him. One got him from the back and hit him upside the head with a gun on a bat or something and knocked him down to the head of the gun.
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And rendered him unconscious temporarily.
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The clansmen picked Charlie up and they threw him in the trunk of one of their cars.
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But they weren't ready to leave yet.
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The clansmen started shooting.
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I'll place this here right here. Walk across street just like that.
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I mean, just like a straight bullet, our house is pointing straight into Charlie's door.
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And when the gun starts shooting and stuff like that, my mom grabbed this out of the bed.
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So, y'all, come on, let's go. We didn't know what we were saying. She said, come on, let's go.
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We got to go get out of here. We got to go hide.
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So, y'all go under the house, hide upon the house.
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And we did. And we was my brother and I, two years old, I mean, we were just laughing and looking at people running and shooting.
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We didn't, you know, we were young then, you know, when he came through.
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And she came back again and got us and took us back behind there.
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The house and we went through the bushes, you know, stood out there for a while.
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People were running all through the woods and different places when they were shooting.
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And it was running all in the woods. I had my own my uncles and aunts and stuff when we'd come to Charlie.
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They were in the woods, running from them right behind Wisson Pie.
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When the clan members got into the club, they started to destroy the place.
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They roughed Cynthia Harrell. A lady we called, they roughed her up.
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People said that she sort of confronted a few of them so they roughed her up and probably heard her.
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Mischag grabbed a cash register. They had to be here in order to get where they want.
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Mischag didn't let them do it. They were trying to take the cash register and all this.
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Trying to take everything from him. They were trying to destroy the place.
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A waiter from the Pinc House restaurant was wounded in the leg.
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Some other people received shrapnel from glass flying and things like that.
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The newspaper reports said they shot from 300 to 500 shots into his place.
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One person was killed and it was a clansman who was shot, left in the park and bleeding.
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Under his clan sheets, he was still wearing his Conway policeman uniform.
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He was shot dead. No one knows who shot him.
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Many people think he was shot by one of his own since he was shot in the back.
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Now, Charlie was in the back of a trunk and a police officer had been shot on his property.
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The men and robes got back in their cars and drove Charlie away.
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On Sunday morning, the people on the hill woke up to a terrible realization.
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The clansman had taken Charlie.
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They said they got Mr. Charlie and they took him someplace.
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We didn't know where he took him at that time.
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When it was so sad, it was one sad day in Murdovich.
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Because nobody could do nothing about it. They didn't do nothing about it.
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They thought he was dead.
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When Miss Pat went to work that day, she saw her boss's white KKK robe lying out on the bed.
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And then the little girl she babysat came in.
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And the little girl told me, you see that thing on that bed?
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I said, what was she talking about?
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You're talking about the soup, how daddy wear the KKK.
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They had the soups and everything, the clansuits laying on the bed.
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So if anybody go in there, they don't know how daddy was a clanman.
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And the little girl told me, if you hit me, he will kill you too.
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And all I could do was cry.
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It was the spring of 1988, Northwestern Alabama.
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A preacher commits a sin.
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A deeply personal transgression.
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And from there, everything spirals out of control.
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The amount of damage this man did is incalculable.
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It's still damaging all of us.
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It still hurts us to think about it.
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From revisionist history, this is the Alabama murders.
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Listen to revisionist history, the Alabama murders, anywhere you get podcasts.
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I had an aunt, the oldest sister of my mother had.
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Ever since then, she was never let any white person or anybody
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chose me anything into the house.
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My mother had let a man one time, the rightness, get the receipt.
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And she ran them out.
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She said, don't let them come in this house.
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Don't let them do it.
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Because she experienced that night in Charlize.
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Yeah, she said, don't let them come in any place you got.
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She was made there to write the receipt in the car in the rain
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and then bring it.
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Because that night must have traumatized her.
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Yeah.
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You know, that incident was what many of us consider the ugliest black molar
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in our local history, you know, just pure evil and ugly.
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And I learned from that, you know, don't take anything for granted.
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You just don't, you don't know when it's going to happen.
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I was going to happen to go do it to you.
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Everybody was traumatized.
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But a lot of blacks, they were strong, man.
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They destroyed everything.
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But they didn't take a lot of heart from a lot of people.
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People thought Charlie was dead, but they didn't know the whole story.
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About a month and a half after the clan attack on Charlize's place,
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Charlie turned up in Washington, D.C.
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He was very much alive.
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He was there to give his testimony to the FBI,
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to tell the story of what happened that night.
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This is the only record I have of Charlie talking at length about this time,
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beside a brief quote in the newspaper.
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The statement he gave is just Charlie in his own words, no speculation.
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Just what he says he saw and experienced after the clansmen threw him in that trunk.
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Charlie said they drove me around for about an hour and a half,
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and about three or four times during this hour and a half, they stopped.
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And I heard them say, this is too public.
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Too many civilians passing.
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Lots of the driving was done on bumpy dirt roads.
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When they finally stopped, I did not know where he was.
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Charlie tells the FBI agents that the leader told the men to take off their hoods
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and put them away.
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He says, when I was taken out of the trunk, I was between two cars,
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and the only light was the tail lights of these cars.
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I saw that I was encircled by men.
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I lay on the ground, face down.
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Someone stood on each hand, and someone stood on my feet,
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and somebody else stood on my neck.
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At this time, my wrists and ankles were cut as a result of their standing on them.
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The men then took turns in beating me with what felt like a bowl whip.
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I counted over 80 licks before they began to ask me anything.
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I heard them say, come on now, it's my turn, and say, you haven't hit him hard enough. Hit him.
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Charlie says they asked him about his connections to the county sheriff.
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His connections to the chief of police, Carl L. Newton.
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They asked about the police officer who was shot at his place earlier that night.
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He heard somebody say he couldn't have done it as I had him covered.
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The men searched him.
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He had a men's diamond ring, eye glasses, and $235.
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They took his belongings.
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Then Charlie said, they asked me to swear that I would go to church every Sunday,
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and I would take an oath to leave South Carolina, and not even go back to my place.
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Not go back to my wife and leave now.
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Don't go to Georgia because we got coup-clots men there, one man said.
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He better not stop in North Carolina, said another.
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That's when Charlie says they decided to mark him.
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Somebody said, we ought to swing him to a rope.
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Charlie heard a guy say, I've got a pin knife, just the thing.
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Let's not his ear.
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It was something Klansman were known to do.
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Charlie says he looked up at the man and saw that he had a small badge pinned inside his shirt pocket,
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and a revolver in his holster.
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He says when the man saw me look up, he kicked me on the side of the head,
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which still swells and still requires medical attention.
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When the man notched my left ear, it apparently bled,
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and I had an opportunity to jump up, and I jumped toward a nearby ditch.
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The ditch was about four and a half feet deep.
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I carried two men with me into the ditch.
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In the scuffle, I got away and rushed into the nearby bushes.
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I fell behind a log in the bushes.
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As I was escaping, they shot 15 or 20 times in my general direction.
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I then heard them say, let's go.
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The Klansman left Charlie for dead.
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But later that night, one of the drivers from his cab company spotted him on the side of the road and picked him up.
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From there, Charlie got in touch with police chief Newton,
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who told him that he never got the message to send help.
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Newton called the doctor.
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The doctor came and gave Charlie a shot to put him to sleep.
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Then the county sheriff came by to see him, a man named C. Ernest Sasser.
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Many people call Sheriff Sasser, this white officer,
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a friend and an ally to Charlie during this time.
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Charlie once said about Sasser, quote,
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I've never known a straighter white man in my life.
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Sasser told Charlie it wasn't looking good.
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The clan was after both him and Charlie for the death of a police officer.
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The robed officer who had been shot at Charlie's place earlier that night had died.
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Sasser said the best thing for him to do was lock Charlie up until he could get it straightened out for his own safety.
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For over a week, Charlie was moved around to different jail cells throughout the county.
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Meanwhile, Sasser went on the radio to try to clear Charlie's name.
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In the broadcast, he said Charlie had no part in the shooting.
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Sasser instead blamed the clansmen who, quote, left him on the ground to die.
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Sasser continues, he dispels the prostitution rumors.
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That's not why the clan attacked Charlie's place, he says.
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Instead, he suggests another reason.
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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.
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I have on many occasions told them it was not a good policy.
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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.
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The very station where Sasser broadcasts this message, but then quickly adds, quote,
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I happen to know a few men that are members, some are from good families.
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They were led into this unfortunate thing with no intention of committing a crime.
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This is so revealing, County Sheriff is a political position.
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Sasser can't completely denounce the clan if he wants the votes.
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They're that powerful, but he also can't stand for what they did to his friend.
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He has to say something, and he'd pay for that.
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Sasser lost his seat as a County Sheriff in the next election, by a lot.
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He lost to a known clan synthesizer.
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There was one area though where Sasser dominated.
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He carried the precinct known as the Race Path, which included the Hill neighborhood.
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The black residence there voted 343 to 6 for Sasser.
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All this time, parents in Myrtle Beach had tried to shield their kids from the details of what happened to Charlie.
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Ms. Pat said years passed before the adults began to talk about it.
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So the kids were left with a lot of assumptions.
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We had heard different stories.
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Some people said he was dead. Some people said he was beaten to death.
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As a child, I heard his ears were cut off.
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And I remember one day, I don't know, eight months later, nine months later,
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he walks into the cozy corner.
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Dino had grown up watching Charlie E. Club sandwiches at his dad's restaurant, the cozy corner.
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Dino thought Charlie was gone for good.
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And now here he was, walking through the door as if nothing happened.
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And I remember everybody, everybody knowing that black came out to see him,
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and the waitresses all knowing.
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And I remember I was staring at him because I thought his ears had been cut off.
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And I'm thinking knew what I was doing and he'd swoop me up and he said,
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you're looking at my ears, boy. No, sir, no, sir.
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And he said, I got ears and he did. You couldn't tell.
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You know, that his ears were cut at all.
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I'm sure it affected him and changed his thinking and perspective of life.
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But he seemed normal when Howard said, watch Dad sitting, shooting the breeze.
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And he still came in the cozy corner.
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He still went to the Broadway theater, sat in the white section.
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He still did what he wanted to do.
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Eventually, five plan members were arrested for the 1950 attack on Charlie's place,
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including the Grand Dragon, Thomas Hamilton.
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If anything, these arrests only embolden the clan.
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They continued to rally around the Carolinas, and they ditched the hoods.
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They stopped hiding their faces, no shame, no fear of being recognized.
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And almost immediately, after Charlie leaves jail, he's picked up again for having a gun and an obscene film.
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Not that it really matters, but Charlie said the film wasn't his.
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It was collateral for a $3 loan he had made to a friend who was short of cash.
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But the gun was for protection.
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Charlie spoke to the newspaper that covered his arrest.
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He said, quote, I know it was against the law to have that gun,
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but it was right in my conscience because my life has been threatened and I'm still in danger.
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He added, I'm a free man and I'm not a free man.
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I don't know who is or who isn't a member of the clan.
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It's this last line, I don't know who is or who isn't a member of the clan that sticks out.
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I think that's a strategic lie on Charlie's part.
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I think he was trying to send a public message to his attackers that he wasn't a threat.
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All five clansmen are cleared of all charges.
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Charlie left Mertle Beach for a while.
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He spent time with friends in Philly and New York.
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He went to DC and gave that testimony to the FBI, but nothing came of it.
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And eventually Charlie came home.
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Even though Dino couldn't see the difference, Charlie had changed.
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Some said he got a little meaner.
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Some say he faded into the background.
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The club may have been called Charlie's Place, but it was as much Sarah's Place as it was his.
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Sarah had always had a hand in its success.
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And all of their business, they were true partners.
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After the clan rate to that place closed, she had to manage that place.
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He was there often, but he wasn't the same.
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Everybody says Charlie wasn't the same.
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But she had to be tough in a man's world.
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So she didn't take no foolishness.
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When Charlie took a back seat, Sarah kept it going and she booked some of the most famous music acts the club ever saw.
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And she ran it with a iron fist on the velvet gloves, so to speak.
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Ruth Brown and those they loved her.
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Bill Pintney, the last of the original drifters, he loved her.
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When I'm oldest reddened and kissed like that would come, that was my Sarah doing.
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She had Charlie's old contacts.
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There was some guy down in Texas.
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They called him the peacock.
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I think it's a gangster, black gangster, but he controlled all the black artists.
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And he was a friend of hers, so I'm thinking she got it to him.
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But she had all the artists there.
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She told me the only person that she didn't get there to play.
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And he'd come there.
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But the only person that she didn't get there to play was James Brown.
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Everybody says James Brown was there.
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And they see his bus outside.
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The bus, he parked the bus there.
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And I think some of his players would stay there.
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James was most likely, I don't go up to the landing beach.
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Because you could be oceanfront up there.
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But she said James would come, so he was just as nice as he could be.
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He sat down, we'd talk and talk.
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But he just wanted too much money.
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And I couldn't afford him.
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Sarah came and held him all of it.
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I think the fact that Sarah rebuilt the club and ran it as long as she did
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helped solidify Carver Street and the minds of its residents.
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1950s Carver Street is the symbol of the glory days for many in Mertle Beach.
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The people on the hill remember it as this thriving time when black people
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ran their own businesses for black people.
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The fact that Charlie's place survived and lived on, even after the KKK attack in August 1950.
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The fact that the big artist kept coming, it meant that the clans terrorism wasn't the end of the story.
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Instead, the attack was a moment of defiance, of resistance,
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a testament to the strength of the community.
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Professor Bobby Donaldson says Charlie Fitzgerald's actions sent a message.
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So here is someone whose business is riddled with bullets.
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Here is someone who has thrown in the back of a card kidnap who has stripped and beaten.
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Here is someone whose ear is slashed with a knife of a clansman.
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And I guess an ordinary person would say the hell with it.
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I'm going to the Promised Land. I'm going elsewhere.
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But Charlie was not ordinary.
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And I think the defiance is probably what motivated him to stay right there.
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That he had already built a business and he was going to rebuild and stay.
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And he did.
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And so Charlie Fitzgerald returns the very space where he defied the clan and stayed there until his death.
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It encouraged the community to defend their home at all costs.
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Clyde Foster gave me an example of this.
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He's lived in Myrtle Beach his whole life, where everyone knows him as Frankie.
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Almost everybody overbindes his own that bullet box.
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You know about me.
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You know, because I'm that type of person, I'm a public man.
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Frankie hadn't been born when the KKK attacked Charlie's place in 1950.
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But he heard the story.
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His family members and friends had been there and he saw how it had traumatized them.
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Frankie's aunt never let a white person enter her house again after that night.
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So Frankie grew up expecting that there would be a time when he too would have to fight.
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When he'd also have to defend his community.
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And in the 1970s, he thought the time had come.
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It was a night when the temptations came to town to play on Carver Street.
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A rumor got out that the clan was planning an attack.
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Frankie was a teenager and he and his friends wanted to be prepared.
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We were young.
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On Carver Street there, almost all the young people, we were in trees and stuff waiting on them.
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We had Molotard cocktails.
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We were young.
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We weren't going to let that happen again.
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We never let them come through it.
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The older people, they couldn't do it.
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They already went through that experience.
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We were in trees and in the woods on Carver Street waiting on them to come.
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We were going to destroy them.
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We were going to blow them up.
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But Frankie says the word got out that these kids were ready.
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He thinks the store where they bought bullets let the clan know that the community was armed.
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And the way we figured out, they warned them.
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They said, don't go back in that neighborhood.
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There were no people ready for you.
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And they didn't come.
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They did not come back.
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Charlie died on July 4th, 1955.
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Five years after that night in August,
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he had lung cancer.
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Because if we used to go over there and he used to be in the bed, he had a tank.
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He used to walk around with a breathing tank, you know, and stuff like that.
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According to his death certificate, he died eight months from diagnosis.
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He returned to Tacoma, Georgia to be buried, where he was born.
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He returned home as Lucius Rucker.
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And they were cremated.
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She was devastated.
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And she cried a lot.
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But she tried to keep the place open.
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And a lot of the childhood friends made sure she had the support for the whole family.
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The whole yard where nobody could get her out of that language she was in.
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Because she was upset.
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Finally, in 1965, Sarah decided it was time to close Charlie's place.
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Then she took what seemed like a hard pivot.
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She left the nightclub life and became a Jehovah's Witness.
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Sarah found religion and she not only gave up that life,
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but she didn't want anything to do with it.
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She never wanted to talk about it.
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I remember I tried to chat with her and everybody told me she will not talk about it.
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She walked away from that part of her life, never again spoke of it or involved herself in it.
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And she closed the bin and she left and she tore it down.
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And people were really upset with her for tearing the building down.
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But no one who had been there, including Miss Sarah, would forget.
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Herbert says Sarah told him that she knew exactly who was in the KKK in town
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and who rated their club that night.
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But she would never tell for fear of being taken.
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She told me something that stuck with me.
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She said, you know what?
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I'm not going to die until I know every last one of them is dead.
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And she wasn't playing because I got a picture of her with me.
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She was 94 and still I can't be.
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And she died about three years later than that.
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She was working the day she died. She didn't have to work.
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She had money, but she liked the work.
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In the ocean time is long.
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The Atlantic Ocean has existed for over a hundred million years.
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The thundering waves and friction beat rock and glass into pebbles and eventually into sand.
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A human life in this game of things is a blip, like a grain of that sand.
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But all those grains add up to something.
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Still, the physical geography of Myrtle Beach is fragile.
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The beach erodes.
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In 1954, Hurricane Hazel hit Myrtle Beach and wiped out 80% of its oceanfront properties,
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virtually erasing the shoreline.
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Charlie and Sarah Fitzgerald were once fixtures of Myrtle Beach.
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But decades after they died, people started to forget.
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I miss Sarah. I miss her to this day.
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I think Miss Sarah, I told her to one day I'm doing something with that property.
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I made her a promise and I was determined to keep it.
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I pushed and pushed and pushed.
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And the biggest problem was getting people around here, the younger people,
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the ones that's 40, 50 years old, getting them on board,
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because they didn't know anything about it.
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That clan raid, it's a gay black people.
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So this is what terrorism does.
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This is how terrorism wins.
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It's not about killing somebody.
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It's about putting fear in somebody.
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And it frighten the people in this community so badly that they didn't tell their children.
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Because they felt like their children, some of them may wonder retaliate.
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Because they knew who did what.
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They don't think they didn't know who did what.
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They knew who did what.
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So when I started talking about Charlottes Place,
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nobody knew what I was talking about, none of the young ones, the 40 and 50 years old.
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In 2016, all that was left of Charlottes Place was a house Sarah and Charlie lived in.
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The city decided to knock it down.
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They were having a demolition party at Charlottes Place.
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They built it as a demolition party.
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That's where they planned up there.
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City Councilman Mike Chestnut says he had a sledgehammer in his hand
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when he got a call from a neighbor who said,
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don't you know the history of this place?
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And my phone started ringing off the hook.
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You know, hey, y'all don't need to tear that place down.
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And y'all don't really know what you got there.
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We need to save it.
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And talk about the history.
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You know, the early black community here in Mertle Beach.
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And I kid you not, we stopped the demolition that day.
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He halted the demolition and fought to preserve the building instead as a landmark, which they did.
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Today, there's a small business incubator in the old inn.
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And the Fitzgeralds house still stands as a museum.
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A love letter to that time.
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And every year, jazz and R&B artists from all over come here for the Mertle Beach Jazz Fest.
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In the exact same spot where the whispering pines once stood.
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It's a very beautiful place where we are today.
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Charlie's place.
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It's a very historic landmark here.
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And I just found out today about just the history here.
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So...
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On my last trip to Mertle Beach, I went to Jazz Fest.
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I looked up towards the sky full of stars,
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at those pine trees swaying above me.
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I thought about Billy Holiday and Count Basie, Sarah and Charlie.
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And I noticed a crowd.
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People from all walks of life.
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Hundreds of people.
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Just soaking in the music together.
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It can be hard to pinpoint how Sarah and Charlie left their mark.
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Beyond the lessons and memories they left with the people that knew them personally.
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But on nights like this, it's clear.
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This is what Charlie and Sarah fought for.
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A place where everyone could experience the music,
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no matter who you are or what you look like.
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In Mertle Beach.
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These grounds remain a special place.
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An echo of what they built is here.
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For anyone who wants to come and experience it.
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I thought to myself, if Charlie and Sarah could see it,
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they'd really be pleased.
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There's a memory of Charlie that Roddy Brown shared with me.
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It's how I pictured him at the end.
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It surpasses the cut earlobes and the breathing tanks.
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Roddy remembers seeing Charlie.
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It's an image of him on the beach, the sun kissing his skin.
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To me, it's an image of defiance.
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When I came here in 1951 in December when we moved in,
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Charlie was back on the beach.
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Yeah.
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Going straight.
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Yeah, Charlie was going strong.
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Charlie was doing fine.
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Roddy had never known Charlie before the clan attack.
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He only knew this version after.
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And to him, it looked good.
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It's interesting was lost to history and what remains.
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I had to go digging to find the fragments that were still there.
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The stories people held on to all these years.
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The story of Myrtle Beach.
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And in Roddy's case, the memory he was left with
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was a lone black man on a crowded white beach in summer,
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flagrantly defying the rules.
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An image of what might be possible, what they all deserved.
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As for Miss Pat, she's still here too.
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I feel so lucky to have spent time with her and hear her stories
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about Myrtle Beach and her life.
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It was nice growing up in Myrtle Beach and I never wanted to leave home.
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Everybody left home and went to New York and went to Florida.
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I love Myrtle Beach.
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I love Myrtle Beach over my life.
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I go visit when I love Myrtle.
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Never's why then you'll add a water to leave.
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You can find her in the same spot in Myrtle Beach,
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like a beacon just inside her front door in her lazy boy,
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ready to call out to visitors, waiting for whoever wants to come in
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and hear a story about a time gone by.
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Thank you for listening.
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That's it?
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Yeah, that's it.
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Oh, where do we spot out?
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Baby say it, baby say it, baby say it, baby say it.
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Charlie's Place is a production of Atlas Obscura and Rococo Punch
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in partnership with Pushkin Industries and presented by Visit Myrtle Beach.
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It's written and produced by Emily Forman.
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Our story editor is Erica Lance.
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Our team at Atlas Obscura is Doug Baldinger, Chris Nakka,
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Johanna Meir, Linda Lowe Bell, and Emily Yates.
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You can follow us on Instagram at Atlas Obscura.
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Please head to Charlie's Place Show.com for more information
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about the locations mentioned in the series and how you can visit yourself.
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I'm Reen Giusei. Thanks for listening.
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Baby say it, baby say it, baby say it.
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Who's your baby say it?
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Baby say it, baby say it, baby say it.
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Who's your baby say it, baby say it.
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Baby say it, baby say it, baby say it.
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Baby say it, baby say it.
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In early 1988, federal agents race to track down the gang
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the suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin
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into New York from Asia.
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We had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and unit.
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But what they find is not what they expected.
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Basically your stay at home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin.
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They go, is this your daughter? You may not see her for like 25 years.
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Caught between a federal investigation and the violent gang who recruited them,
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the women must decide who they're willing to protect and who they dare to betray.
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Once I saw the gun I try to take his hand and I saw the flash of light.
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Listen to the Ten of Townsting anywhere you get your podcasts
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and binge the entire season now,
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add free with a Pushkin Plus subscription.
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Head to the Ten of Townsting Show page on Apple Podcasts or Pushkin.fm slash plus to sign up.