South Carolina: Sex, Race, And

WELCOME TO SOUTH CAROLINA: SEX, RACE, AND THE RISE OF TOURISM IN MYRTLE BEACH, 1900-1975 by RICHARD R. HOURIGAN III A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA 2009 Copyright Richard R. Hourigan III 2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT Though scholars have long focused on the impact traditional industries had on the development of the South, few have looked at the role tourism played in the economic and cultural transformation of the region. Even in South Carolina, tourism, not textiles or agriculture, is the state’s number one industry. This work discovers how Myrtle Beach, the Palmetto State’s biggest tourist attraction, developed and adapted to the nation’s changing cultural mores, all the while trying not to deviate too far from southern values. The study examines the impact of the tourism industry on the development of the city during a period of immense social and cultural turmoil in the United States, 1954 to 1973. Myrtle Beach leaders, concerned with keeping and expanding the tourism industry, contended with the ramifications of the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, along with the opening of the interstate highway system. All the while, boosters tried never to waiver from their support of the town’s family beach image. What they created though, was a white middle- class men’s vacation paradise complete with golf courses and strip clubs. The city became a place to get away from the racial unrest and growing women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Myrtle Beach was caught between a mythic pre-1960s South of racial harmony and innocence and a modern, racially and sexually open society. Finally, this project discovers how South Carolina leaders used city boosters’ tourism promotional strategies in marketing the state. Between 1945 and 1970, Southerners began to realize that tourism was an economic force. Southern governors meticulously crafted strategies ii to attract tourists to their states, working like their predecessors had before them to obtain northern smokestack industries. South Carolina was no exception. Governors McNair and West treated tourism in much the same fashion. The two leaders hired the most experienced people in the Palmetto State to head up the promotion. Many of these people came from Myrtle Beach. They helped impose the city’s promotional strategies upon the state’s efforts. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all of the individuals that made the completion of this project a reality. I am most thankful for the guidance of Kari Frederickson. From the moment I stepped on campus until my last revision she was a source of wisdom, advice, and comfort when I became discouraged. She patiently helped me improve my writing while encouraging me to dig deeper to discover new sources. Without her I would have been lost. I also would like to thank the History Department at the University of Alabama. Without the fellowships and the Gary B. Mills Dissertation Support Fund, I doubt this project would ever have been completed. Special thanks goes to all the librarians I met in archives and universities. Herb Hartsook and Kate Moore at the South Carolina Political Collections were invaluable to my research on Governor McNair. The librarians at the South Caroliniana Library made sure that I had perused through every document the library owned on Myrtle Beach and Horry County. Steve Tuttle and James Lessor at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History went out of their way to provide me access to all documents I asked. Finally, the librarians at Coastal Carolina University were a constant source of help. Though they only knew me as “microfilm boy,” they made the months I spent there enjoyable. I am grateful to my friends Maria Vaughn and Becky Miller. These two women gave me a place to stay in South Carolina, close to my sources. I am forever in debt to them. Special thanks go to Eric Cheezum. Although, he had never met me before, Eric let me stay in his guest room. The conversations we had over pizza was the part of this process I enjoyed the most. iv Most importantly I must thank my family. My beautiful wife Aimee saw me at my highest and lowest and still chose to stay married to me. I will never know how she did it. For the last four years I have unwillingly took her along on my journey. She sacrificed much of her time listening to me ramble about Myrtle Beach. Her patience is commendable. I hope to one day be as good of a husband as she has been a wife. Sadly, my grandfather never lived to see this day, but he always expressed interest in my scholarship and I could count on him for support. The day before he died I told him I was nearing completion of this project and asked him to attend my graduation. Knowing his time was short, he shook his head, smiled and told me he would not be attending but that “He had faith in me.” His faith pushed me through. v CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………………....ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS………..………………………………..……………………………iv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS…………………………………………………………………….vii INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………...1 1. THE FAILURE OF ARCADIA AND THE CREATION OF A WHITE MIDDLE CLASS FAMILY RESORT: 1897-1948…………………………………………………………………14 2. THE MYTH OF THE FAMILY BEACH……………………………………………………43 3. HAZEL’S WRATH AND THE RESURRECTION OF MYRTLE BEACH………………..77 4. AMATEURS ARE MESSING UP THE BUSINESS: USING WOMEN TO SELL THE BEACH…………………………………………………………………………………………..99 5. SELLING SOUTH CAROLINA……………………………………………………………130 6. HIDING THE RACIAL PROBLEM………………………………………………………..162 7. PAVED PARADISE………………………………………………………………………...189 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………………213 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………217 vi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Map of Horry County, 2009………………………………………………………….…..17 2. South Carolina Road Map, 1951…………………………………………………………45 3. Illustration of Black Sharecroppers in the Ocean Hiway Brochure, 1942……………….50 4. Atlantic City Postcard, 1905……………………………………………………………109 5. South Carolina Women at the State’s Travel South Booth, 1966………………………140 vii Introduction That’s not how a family vacation works. We do things together while your father has fun without us – Marge Simpson to her son, Bart 1 It was an interesting idea, but entirely unfeasible. On January 27, 1967, South Carolina Lieutenant Governor John West received a four-page memorandum titled, “Proposed Program: Tourist Procurement for South Carolina” from an unknown resident. It was the first letter that he and Governor Robert E. McNair received since McNair announced the creation of the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism (PRT) just three days earlier. “Very Important,” the memorandum read. “Many Southern states have the reputation of having their patrolmen and county officers pull any car with an out-of-state license.” The letter writer hoped that South Carolina could avoid this unfortunate practice. When stopping cars with out-of-state plates, the officer was to approach the car and say, “You were exceeding our speed limits, however, I note that you are from out-of-state. I would like to welcome you to South Carolina and make known to you our speed limits.” The officer then would wish the speeder a pleasant stay in the Palmetto State before offering the law-breaker a pamphlet showing the points of interest in South Carolina. The speeder would not receive a ticket. “I believe that this above all 1 The Simpsons , Season 20, episode 14, first broadcast March 22, 2009 by Fox, written by Matt Marshall. 1 else will make South Carolina a place that tourists will remember and want to visit.” Palmetto State residents had gone tourist crazy. 2 While appealing to tourists was a new practice for most South Carolinians in the 1960s, Myrtle Beach boosters had a long history of attracting visitors. In the 1890s, Franklin Burroughs funded the construction of the first railroad line to the barren strip of sand that would become Myrtle Beach, hoping to mimic the successes of Henry Flagler and Henry Plant in Florida.3 Developers founded the city in 1900 as a resort for white families. The town grew slowly. Less than one thousand residents called the area home in 1930, primarily because of the difficulty reaching the beach. Few roads led to Myrtle Beach and, for much of the first half of the twentieth century, those routes were not paved. Yet, by the 1940s, the city attracted roughly sixty thousand to its shores, many of whom came for family fun. For youth, Myrtle Beach in the 1940s and 1950s was heaven. The beach provided salt water pools, roughly one foot deep at low tide, in which small children could frolic. Older children could not only swim, surf, and climb the dunes, but could dance and roller-skate at the pavilion, which opened its doors in 1948. More fun for children and families alike was the pavilion’s amusement park. In 1948, Myrtle Beach Farms, the city’s developers, convinced a traveling carnival in nearby Conway to make Myrtle Beach its permanent home. Small at first, the park added attractions yearly, eventually including a wood and steel roller coaster dubbed “Hurricane Category 5,” a carousel with twenty-seven hand carved animals, and a German organ first shown at the Paris World 2 “Proposed Program Tourist Procurement for South Carolina,” January 27, 1967, Lieutenant Governor John C. West Papers, Box 6, South Carolina Political Collections, The University of South Carolina. 3 David Leon Chandler, Henry Flagler: The Astonishing Life and Times of the Visionary Robber Baron Who Founded Florida (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1986), 126-136. For a detailed look at the business side of Henry Flagler see Edward N.

Load more