A motorcycle mecca stirs up questions of race

For the two weeks leading up to Memorial Day in this kitschy beach town, bikers rule.

Motorcyclists burn rubber, throw "smoke shows," and flaunt their American choppers and Japanese "rice rockets," all with the Atlantic's thrumming breakers in the background, washing away the last of winter's spell.

In the wake of last week's Carolina Harley dealers' rally, which drew hundreds of thousands of mostly white bikers, a massive crowd of mostly black motorcyclists is arriving for this weekend's Atlantic Beach Memorial Day Bike Festival. It's one of the biggest black street parties in the nation, and the mood in Myrtle Beach abruptly shifts.

Despite their reputation for mayhem, the Harley riders are left largely alone during their 10-day festival. During "Black Bike Week," however, the city blocks streets, adds 300 officers, and makes 60 blocks of Ocean Boulevard one way.

To defenders of the arrangement, it's a sensible response to a festival known for its rowdiness, even in a famously rowdy town. But as the US Fourth Circuit Court attempts to resolve whether the city's actions amount to racial discrimination, many of the bikers say their treatment amounts to being cordoned in, one more insult in a region with a history of racial splits.

"In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois predicted that the problem of the 20th century would be the 'problem of the color line,' " says Bobby Donaldson, a history professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. "This lawsuit ... is just one episode in a long-standing critique of racial disparities."

Twenty-five years ago, the Atlantic Beach Motorcycle Club sponsored its first "Black Bike Week" in Atlantic Beach, one of the country's few historically black beach towns. In the late 1990s - when black festivals were exploding, from Atlanta to Daytona Beach - it swiftly grew from its four-mile stretch of Atlantic Beach southward into Myrtle Beach proper. In 1999, police made Ocean Boulevard a one-way street for the event and beefed up their presence on the roads.

The NAACP filed its suit against the city in 2003, on the heels of a successful campaign to have the statehouse lower its Confederate flag. Traffic restrictions, the lawsuit alleged, were discriminatory, as were aggressive police tactics that bullied black tourists. The NAACP has also filed lawsuits against several restaurants and a hotel that close down during the weekend.

Black bikers won their first victory when a 4th Circuit judge granted an injunction, barring the city from making Ocean Boulevard a one-way street - unless it did the same for the Harley riders. Last week, however, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., overturned that injunction, allowing the city to set up its barricades. (The trial is set for 2006.)

"The only difference between these two festivals is the race of the participants," says Michael Navarre, a lawyer in Washington who is helping prosecute the case.

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