SOUTH CAROLINA: Backfire

Behind the polite and expensive façade of its seaside resorts, South Carolina's famed Myrtle Beach is much like any other Southern coastal town. Negro tobacco hands, as well as tourists, invade it for entertainment and for years many of them have headed for Charlie Fitzgerald's place in a section locally known as "Nigger Hill." A man could get almost anything he wanted at Charlie's—whisky, a woman, food, or a fight.

By "cooperating" with the town police Charlie had done well in Myrtle Beach ever since 1937. But recently, members of the Ku Klux Klan began muttering about him; they swore...