Whitewash: A Journey through Music, Mayhem and Murder Book

A compelling new book that destroys carefully constructed myths to reveal three extraordinary events that many influential Southerners would just as soon forget.

Charlie's Place

In "Charlie's Place," for the first time the true story is told of the Ku Klux Klan's violent attempt in South Carolina in the post World War II years to stop dirty dancing and kill the emerging black music behind it—rhythm & blues.

The author describes how a handful of adventurous young black & white dancers—with the help of a fearless black nightclub owner—risked life and limb in an era of racial segregation to create a bold new dance and an enduring Southern musical legacy.

The story evolved from a series of recorded interviews by the author with many of the key figures credited with the creation of South Carolina's state dance, the shag, and the state's music, a sub-genre of rhythm and blues now called Carolina "beach music."

In a vivid description, he reconstructs the violent armed assault in 1950 by the Ku Klux Klan in an attempt to shut down "Charlie's Place," an influential Myrtle Beach night club where white and black dancers shared the dance floor and helped create what is now called the shag. The violence sprang from the aftermath of one of the state's most openly racist political campaigns, the 1950 U.S. Senate election between Strom Thurmond and Olin D. Johnston.

"Young black and white South Carolinians—in a time of segregation—put their lives on the line to defy the state's white establishment and create a genuine musical legacy," said Frank Beacham. "An irony is that South Carolina's government officials made the shag and beach music the official dance and music of the state without even understanding or noting it's remarkable historical significance."

The Legacy of the Orangeburg Massacre

An act of racism in a small college town leads to peaceful protest by frustrated black students. The governor, elected on a platform of racial moderation, responds with a vast show of armed force. Each side misreads the other, escalating the conflict. Then, in a peak of emotional frenzy, nine white highway patrolmen open fire on the students. In less than ten seconds, the campus turns into a bloodbath.

Over four days in early February, 1968, this scenario played out in Orangeburg. On the final day, three black students were killed and 27 others wounded when the lawmen sprayed deadly buckshot onto the campus of South Carolina State College. Most of the students, in retreat at the time, were shot from the rear—some in the back, others in the soles of their feet. None carried weapons.

The killings occurred in a southern state heralded for its record of nonviolence during the civil rights era. In attempt to preserve its carefully-cultivated image of racial harmony, a web of official deceptions was created to distort the facts and conceal the truth about what happened in Orangeburg. The state's young governor, Robert E. McNair, claimed the deaths were the result of a two-way gun battle between students and lawmen. The highway patrolmen insisted their shooting was done in self-defense—to protect themselves from an attacking mob of students.

At first, the state's cover-up worked. Later, it unraveled. Now, after more than 40 years, the story of Orangeburg continues to simmer unresolved in a twilight zone of blame and denial.

The Secret of Honea Path

On the morning of September 6, 1934, in the tiny town of Honea Path, South Carolina, friends and neighbors came to blows in a labor dispute. When it was over, seven people were dead and 30 others wounded.

The bloody riot at the town's cotton mill on that warm Thursday morning shaped the lives of two generations to follow—not because of the shock of what was known, but by what was unknown. Fear, threats and intimidation were used to silence the story of the greatest tragedy in the town's history.

For 60 years, the story of a mass killing in a small town was successfully erased, not only from the history books, but from the public consciousness of those people most affected by it. An instrument of fear—so powerful that parents were afraid to tell the story to their own children—formed a lifelong social contract for entire community's survival.