Black Bike Week , also called Atlantic Beach Bikefest and Black Bikers Week , is an annual motorcycle rally at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, held on Memorial Day weekend. It is also sometimes called Black Fill-in-the-Blank Week , because it has evolved to attract many non-motorcycling visitors who come for music, socializing and enjoying the beach. Events include motorcycle racing, concerts, parties, and street festivals. Called a "a one-of-a-kind event" and "an exhibitionist's paradise" by Jeffrey Gettleman, Black Bike Week is "all about riding, styling and profiling," in the words of Mayor Irene Armstrong of Atlantic Beach, South Carolina.
It is the largest African American motorcycle rally in the US. Attendance has been variously reported as 350,000, 375,000, and as high as 400,000. It is considered the third or fourth largest motorcycle rally in the United States. Around 10–15 percent of motorcyclists in the US are women, while at major African American motorcycle rallies, such as Black Bike Week or the National Bikers Roundup, women make up close to half of participants.
From 1940 until 2008, Myrtle Beach had also hosted a predominantly white motorcycle rally, called Harley-Davidson Week , also called the spring Carolina Harley-Davidson Dealer's Association (CHDDA) Rally. The two rallies have run back-to-back in the past, and some have charged city government and local businesses of racial discrimination because of different treatment towards the black rally, citing different traffic rules and levels of policing. In 2002 Black Bike week had 375,000 attendees, versus 200,000 for Harley-Davidson Week of the same year. The city of Myrtle Beach has used new ordinances to push the 2009 and upcoming 2010 motorcycle events, both black and white, out of the city, where they have been welcomed by other municipalities and businesses, and bikers still came in spite of the official efforts to discourage them.
"Black Bike Week" can also refer to a side event to the motorcycle rally Daytona Beach Bike Week at Daytona Beach, Florida that happens two months earlier, in March. Like the South Carolina event, the Daytona rally also has its origins in racial segregation, when blacks created their own parallel event after being excluded from the main white festival.
Origin
During the 1960s and 1970s, many black motorcyclists visited Atlantic Beach, South Carolina, some riding Harley-Davidsons, but also riding many Japanese Hondas, Kawasakis, Suzukis, and Yamahas, which, along with race, distinguished them as riders from the white event's participants who preferred the Harley-Davidsons. During the segregation era Atlantic Beach was the only beach in the South where blacks were permitted.
The Black Bike Week rally, originally called the Atlantic Beach Memorial Day BikeFest, was founded in Atlantic Beach by the Flaming Knight Riders motorcycle club in 1980. The first rally drew about 100 participants. Though one reason the Flaming Knight Riders worked with the City of Atlantic Beach to create the event was to make money for the town, it was not actually franchised by Atlantic Beach, and the city did not benefit financially; instead, bikers would, over the years, congregate more and more in Myrtle Beach rather than Atlantic Beach. In 1982 the Flaming Knight Riders was renamed the Carolina Knight Riders motorcycle club.
By the 1990s the event had grown to include the entire greater Myrtle Beach, or Grand Strand, area. In 2002, Atlantic Beach, hired a public relations firm "to make the rest of the country aware of Atlantic Beach, its uniqueness as a predominantly black beach town and its potential as a vacation spot." This was part of a larger effort to promote the motorcycle rally by the Bike Week Task Force, a group of business owners and public officials from around the Grand Strand area.
The white rally dates to May 1940, when a group of Harley-Davidson dealers created The Piedmont Harley-Davidson Dealers Association which became The Carolina Harley-Davidson Dealers Association when South Carolina dealers joined. The group's first event was a ride to Ocean Drive in Myrtle Beach, and included a drag race and dirt track race and other festivities. In subsequent years the rally was held in Cherry Grove, Jacksonville and Wilmington, North Carolina before returning to Myrtle Beach. The 2009 event was at New Bern, North Carolina, and the 2010 rally is planned for the same location, two weeks before Memorial Day weekend.
Charges of racial bias
In 2003 a group of black motorcyclists, and the South Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, sued the city of Myrtle Beach and some businesses there for discrimination. The city was accused of abusing traffic law enforcement and of excessive force by the police to harass black bikers. Many businesses closed their doors or cut back their hours during Black Bike Week, and 28 of them, including Red Lobster and Denny's were named in the suit. A Baltimore, Maryland police detective who is also a motorcyclist told The New York Times , "I've seen it myself. When the white bikers come to Myrtle Beach, the town rolls out the red carpet. When the black riders come, they roll it right up." City officials said that the much younger crowd, and nearly double attendance, of Black Bike Week justified the difference in the city's response to the two events.
The pattern of black social and party events growing ever larger in stature and then having the "cops come down hard core", particularly in the Southern United States has occurred before with Freaknik in Atlanta, Georgia, spring break in Biloxi, Mississippi, and various festivals in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Virginia Beach, Virginia. Myrtle Beach Mayor Mark McBride said in 2003 that the Black Bike Week crowds are "bigger and rowdier," although that year the white Harley rally saw eight motorcycle traffic deaths, while the black rally had only three killed in accidents.
In 2006, the NAACP claimed success in concluding every federal discrimination lawsuit they had filed in Myrtle Beach for complaints during bike week events from 1999–2003, against the City of Myrtle Beach, and restaurants that included Damon's Oceanfront and Barefoot Landing, J. Edward's Great Ribs, and Greg Norman's Australian Grill, as well as the Yachtsman Resort Hotel. In a settlement with the city, the police department was required to use the same traffic pattern on the city's main boulevard for Black Bike Week as they did for Harley Bike Week.
From 2005 through 2008 the NAACP carried out "Operation Bike Week Justice" in which a complaint hotline was operated, and teams monitored police treatment of African Americans, and the reaction of local businesses, as well as monitoring traffic patterns. There were two undisclosed settlements with businesses and the NAACP in 2008. Friendly's Ice Cream Corporation and Myrtle Beach Friends Boulevard LLC was sued in 2008 by the NAACP for closing their indoor area and only offering inferior outdoor service during Black Bike Weeks from 2000–2005.
The Yachtsman Resort Hotel had required Black Bike Week guests to sign a thirty-four rule guest contract, prepay for their hotel bill and show photo ID. The NAACP won a US$ 1.2 million settlement, and in addition to the monetary payment, the hotel agreed to future discounts and a mandate for policy changes including yearly anti-discrimination training for employees.
Myrtle Beach ban
In 2008, the Myrtle Beach City Council announced it would no longer host motorcycle rallies, and approved a set of ordinances on September 23, 2008 that attempted to make Black Bike Week impossible. Fifteen laws were passed, restricting muffler noise, requiring helmets within city limits, limiting parking to two bikes per space, restricting loitering in parking lots, and more. In spite of this, Black Bike Week 2009s' attendance was only reduced slightly. Vendors, hotels, biker groups and promoters are attempting to schedule events for Black Bike Week 2010 despite the Myrtle Beach governments' ban.
The Myrtle Beach budget to fight lawsuits was $350,000 in 2004, increased from $250,000 to $275,000 in previous years because the city knew it would be defending itself against the NAACP lawsuit.
In anticipation of the 2010 Harley Bike Week rally, a local Harley-Davidson dealership has said events would still take place for their bike week event, but on a reduced schedule of only 5 days, May 11 to 16, while the web site Myrtle Beach Bike Week, LLC says a full-length rally of May 7–16 will take place. Both sources say there will be no vendors inside the city limits of Myrtle Beach during the Harley Bike Week, and they both encourage attendees to boycott the city and patronize those communities and businesses outside the city which do support Harley Bike Week.
The Myrtle Beach Convention Center has ceased attempting to find a replacement for the Carolina Harley-Davidson Dealers Association, wh
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