Sunday, Mar. 29, 2009

On 75th anniversary, a fragile peace reigns over the Black Pearl

ATLANTIC BEACHOn the first springlike Sunday in March, the beach of the Black Pearl lay nearly vacant, a bare four-block stretch of sand between bright umbrellas clustered on either side.

In the empty patch, beachcombers ambled in a thin trail through the Atlantic Beach surf from one crowded section of North Myrtle Beach to the other, while two white boys tethered a kite to a dune fence and threw a Frisbee in the sun. Three black women from Florence took photos of the ocean and talked about what once was.

Hours later, darkness fell, and Atlantic Beach slept, like a quiet little town should.

On the 75th anniversary of its founding, the town's landscape is returning to an empty canvas. Gone are the Ferris wheel and children's rides of its heyday - long lost to desegregation's diaspora - but the derelict buildings and their criminal inhabitants are also disappearing, leaving only grassy lots.

Now, new beachhouses are sprouting up - a handful along the town's four main streets - and optimists see them as colorful evidence of a long-awaited renaissance. But the town has reached hopeful points many times before, and if this new generation fails, their efforts will form just another chapter in Atlantic Beach's cyclical story of division, greed and dysfunction.

History and memory

The historical marker in the town nicknamed the "Black Pearl" notes that it was founded as a haven for black beachgoers by a businessman named George Tyson in 1934 who then sold it to doctors Seabrook, Gordon and Kelly in 1943.

The marker, however, does little to describe the racial climate of the time. In 1941, a black man named Bruce Tisdale was beaten to death by five white men in Andrews for replacing whites on the job. In 1950, an armed caravan of Ku Klux Klansmen descended on Atlantic Beach, but residents convinced the Horry County sheriff that the town deserved protection.

Its existence, they told him, kept peaceful blacks from demanding access to white beaches. But the oasis Tyson and his successors willed into being was more than a haven: It represented a sort of paradise.

Charles Williams, one of the town's former managers, grew up in Walterboro, 35 miles inland from any number of segregation-era "black beaches," undeveloped spits of sand where blacks could enter the ocean. But Atlantic Beach, he said, had a Ferris wheel and merry-go-rounds, hotels and restaurants - and, more importantly, basic amenities like bathhouses to change in.

"You came to Atlantic Beach because it had all this stuff," said Williams. "Black beaches in the lower part of the state didn't even have picnic tables. You had to travel with a potty and your own roll of toilet paper. You came to Atlantic Beach, you didn't have to do that."

Carmelia Skillern, a 42-year-old Army major stationed at Fort Bragg, grew up in Lake City. The 69-mile drive to Atlantic Beach was a routine every summer Sunday, her family staying until 10 p.m. for the rides and the bands.

Years later, as she and her husband, Elliott, made occasional trips to Myrtle Beach, Skillern started to share with him her childhood memories of Atlantic Beach.

The couple began scouting property in 2007, and recently bought a rundown house three blocks from the ocean. That structure is now demolished, and in its place they already have blueprints for their three-story dream home.

"This place has so much potential," Skillern said. "It came from being a great place back in the day, and that's why we're spending so much money here."

Separate and neglected

Back in the day, however, is several decades ago.

In 1966, as neighboring Crescent Beach, Windy Hill and other communities were contemplating their eventual incorporation as North Myrtle Beach, Atlantic Beach chose to incorporate on its own.

The decision placed political control in the hands of the town's residents, rather than diluting it with the predominantly white North Myrtle Beach communities. That move also wrenched leadership away from the men who had made the town great, leaving their landowning children - black doctors and lawyers in Manhattan, black college presidents, the first black president of the American Heart Association, the first black chief justice of the S.C. Supreme Court - with no voting rights in a town where they had never lived.

Meanwhile, desegregation was robbing Atlantic Beach of its captive audience, as black vacationers won the right to visit the oceanfront wherever they wanted. Soon, what remained was a small town with unsteady leadership of its own and an uneasy relationship with its larger neighbors. Crime and corruption began to flourish.

"It's been very easy to dismiss it, [as if to say] 'That's just Atlantic Beach, let them do what they want to do,' " said state Rep. Tracy Edge, whose distsrict includes Atlantic Beach. "That's permeated a lot of levels of government. I believe a lot of justice hasn't been done there in the past."

The Municipal Association of South Carolina has been one of the few organizations to take an active role in trying to help, spending $40,000 to pay for services to the town in 2008. Williams, who has been sent as temporary town manager by the association twice, said Atlantic Beach's decades of turmoil were ignored partly out of fatigue with the town's never-ending litany of woes, and partly by what might be termed the outsiders' "benign racism."

"They've sat on the sidelines for 40 years because they didn't want to be called bigots," Williams said.

National organizations have been slow to offer any help of substance as well.

The National Conference of Black Mayors made a cursory effort in 2008, but was rebuffed by Williams. Timothy McNeill, development director for the conference, said Mayor Retha Pierce recently attended its legislative summit in Washington, D.C. - even though Atlantic Beach is not a dues-paying member.

In an era of visibly changing racial attitudes, reaching out may be the key.

"I think the Grand Strand wants Atlantic Beach to become very positive," said former Town Manager Carolyn Montgomery, who served from 2001 to 2005, when an election cost her council support. "I think the state of South Carolina wants that for Atlantic Beach. I think Atlantic Beach has not yet wanted that for itself."

Failure after failure

Atlantic Beach has a history of thwarting outside efforts to help.

In the 1990s, the town was banned from receiving federal money for police officers because it misspent its grants.

In 1999, officials used $27,000 of a beautification grant on palm trees for the town's main street - many of which died immediately.

Its most recent state grant, $225,000 awarded in 2007 to be spent on a strategic plan, vanished in little over a month.

In 2008, the Municipal Association withdrew its help after eight months because the Town Council rejected its recovery plan - leading the association's director at the time to remark that it was the first time the Municipal Association had ever been rejected by a municipality.

Historically, law enforcement has been one of the town's great failings. Murders are rare, but seem to happen when the town's small police force has no officer on duty. Drug crime has reached the top level of town government, as in the cocaine trafficking operation of former Councilman Vander More Gore, which led to his imprisonment in 2001.

Montgomery said that when she was town manager the drug trade always found ways to thwart her attempts to improve the town. She said every time she suggested the demolition of a derelict building, opposition would mount throughout the town.

"Every time you talk about doing something positive in Atlantic Beach, you're handing out pink slips in their industry," Montgomery said. "You are always battling a shadow."

Still, optimism reigns eternal here: With every new election, every new administrator installed, the hope of a new beginning glows again.

Now, now the troublemakers are gone. Now the work will truly begin.

And every time, Atlantic Beach disappoints.

"How do you call it anything other than a failed effort? They haven't been successful at anything," Williams said. "They didn't take part in the terrific development taking place in coastal South Carolina. I've not ever understood why being dysfunctional or falling behind, why they find merit in that."

The government has been helmed by a succession of would-be saviors who pledged to bring development to the beach while preserving its history.

One after another, the town spit them back out, looking the worse for wear.

"I went in with rose-colored glasses," said Lea Moody, a Rock Hill attorney who worked for the town for about a year but quit because the council would not listen to her. "I wanted to do some good, just because I knew the history."

The town's voting base is divided into the residents of 40 or fewer permanent homes, the residents of about 40 public-housing units, and the transient voters who pass through the town's low-rent motels.

Most of the town's property is owned by absentee owners. Political factions swing with the introduction of every new arrival, and old enemies become allies as the constant power struggles trump the pursuit of progress.

Personal conflicts become institutionalized into votes and arrests, and meetings become forums for unhappy neighbors to air their grievances.

"They have lived together so long and so close, they cannot be expected to look at the bigger issues," Montgomery said.

The long-contested 2007 mayoral election provides one of the clearest examples. What began as a legitimate vote-counting issue over current Mayor Retha Pierce's 1-vote victory over incumbent mayor Irene Armstrong spiraled into absurdity when Armstrong was indicted and suspended from office, leading a new judge to call for a new election. After a series of court battles, new elections, a planned runoff against fellow Councilwoman Charlene Taylor and a final Supreme Court intervention, Pierce was named mayor in January.

Beyond the title, what was at stake? The ability to lead meetings - under Atlantic Beach's form of government, mayor is a ceremonial position with little more duty than any other council member. But the battle to get there may have cost the town a year of progress.

The bickering leaves landowners frustrated and disinterested. Manhattan attorney and longtime landowner Peyton Gibson showed up to a town meeting a year ago, convinced something was about to happen. Little came of it, and her interest has flagged again.

Gibson said the pattern is so familiar as to almost seem intentional - a lethargy intended to bore people into turning away.

"Every time I go back - even though it's been months - nothing has changed," Gibson said.

Transition to peace

Beneath the noise of the nonstop political drama, however, the streets of Atlantic Beach are quieter now. Most of the dive bars that served as gathering points have closed, and the derelict buildings where the dealers and customers flourished are disappearing.

In his stint as the town's newest manager, one of Kenneth McIver's first major triumphs was the demolition of a house on 31st Avenue, long known as one of the town's drug hotspots. Its removal left a ring of five dilapidated single-story buildings around an empty lot that still yielded ample evidence of their former use.

Their doors hung partly open, and inside each was typical squatter detritus: broken electronics, beer cans, ragged clothes, pornography, mattresses, condom wrappers. An empty bottle of Hpnotiq liquor still sat on one kitchen counter, and a profanity-laced note on the refrigerator exhorted the other squatters to keep the place "clean" or stay out.

On every street, McIver can identify more old buildings he is trying to speed toward demolition or repair. Another abandoned motel, he says, is caught in inheritance proceedings, but is at least secure and has not attracted squatters.

"Amidst all these derelict structures, these rundown dilapidated buildings - hopefully it'll emerge a cleaner, safer place," McIver said. "And then, that stereotype of Atlantic Beach as a blight will be eliminated."

The effort seems to be taking effect as more of the police's arrests stick. Earlier this year, 23-year-old Jackie DesHommes of Loris said he was visiting a relative in Atlantic Beach when police pulled him over and found marijuana and a stolen handgun in his car. After arresting him, they took his photo and told him he was "banned" from returning to Atlantic Beach, he said.

"I don't know what the police officers are doing, but I've been hearing around the street - they're stopping everything," DesHommes said after pleading to gun and marijuana charges in a mid-March court hearing.

So few buildings now stand near the water that North Myrtle Beach tourists unfamiliar with the story of the town's proud founding or sad decline do not recognize it as special, one way or the other.

Edie Eppich, a Canadian snowbird, said she made Atlantic Beach's First Avenue and beachfront part of a daily mile-long walk from her hotel for three months, and she was never interrupted by anything other than friendly "hellos."

"It's beautiful, peaceful - the blue sky, the water glistening," Eppich said. "I love it on the beach."

Realizing the beach's potential, however, has long been the challenge for the town.

The paths ahead

Like each wave before them, the town's newest generation of leaders - McIver, town attorney Steve Benjamin and Councilman Donnell Thompson - believe that their approach will be the one that rescues the town from its previous pattern of disappointments.

Their strategy involves an organic focus on improving conditions in the town to encourage individual new home construction, while seeking to repair old relationships and build new partnerships with outside entities.

One sign of new cooperation was the recent discussion over the Atlantic Beach Bikefest, which was started by town leaders in 1980 to reignite tourism in the town but in recent years has grown to attract crowds of 250,000 across the Grand Strand. This year, for the first time, officials from Atlantic Beach, Myrtle Beach and other governments initiated discussions about exchanging an end to promotion of the festival for a collaborative redevelopment effort in Atlantic Beach.

The discussions were not completed quickly enough to affect this May's Bikefest, but officials on both sides say the discussions are continuing.

"I think we're on the cutting edge of something that's never been done here before," Thompson said. "We've always had outsiders kind of involved, but now they're bringing resources."

Every new failure in Atlantic Beach's past has been followed by a clamor demanding that its state charter be pulled, but practically the only avenue for that in South Carolina is by a vote of the town residents - which is unlikely at best. Property owners may suffer the town's failings the most, because of its town's highest-in-the-county tax rates, but even they are reluctant to suggest the government be dissolved.

Instead, said Gibson, the Manhattan attorney, the town's need is "implementation."

"You need to start out with willing participants or a court order, some power greater than thou, to make this happen," Gibson said. "It would be a wonderful thing if there could be some urgency."

One common solution for failed institutions in America involves the notion of receivorship, whether for corporations or governments. No such concept for towns exists in S.C. law, but Rep. Edge is drafting a series of strict fiscal requirements towns must adhere to in order to maintain control.

The bill would create a list of basic financial requirements for every town, such as conducting audits, staying current on bills, making tax payments for its employees - all of which Atlantic Beach has failed to do to varying degrees.

Under the bill, towns that did not meet those requirements would be managed by an outside commission of state employees from the state treasurer and comptroller.

"Had this act been in place, everything happening now would never be happening," Edge said. "To me it's now a state responsibility."

With its clean beach, empty streets and vacants lots, Atlantic Beach has again reached a precipice.

If today's energy continues, the town may finally stake a new claim to yesteryear's shine. But the moment is fragile, always just a catastrophe away from the return of the blight that has for so long hidden the glory of the Black Pearl's proud founding.

View current and historical photos of Atlantic Beach, see a video and read more about the town at TheSunNews.com/atlanticbeach.

Questions surround former AB town manager, lawsuit over loan | Page 10A