Charles C. Richards

In the record (4)

1. 1938 · 1938-04-04

   In April 1938 a man applied to Ocean City for a permit to build a Colored Recreation Hall, and the neighbours objected before the council had said a word

   The minute of Monday evening 4 April 1938 reads: 'Application of Chas. C. Richards for permit to build Addition to Sam Ludlam property for Colored recreation Hall was presented and being that Trimper Bros. Mrs. Charles Hudson and Mrs Nancy Truitt objected the Council instructed the Secretary to write Mr. Richards that the Surrounding property owners objected and if he still wanted to obtain permit all owners would be notified & time set for a hearing on same, provided he made new application on blank form which would be supplied by Secretary.' It is the second Black institution the campaign has ever found in Ocean City, after the colored dance hall of 1937, and the first it can watch from the beginning. Richards was not building from nothing: he proposed an ADDITION to a standing building, Sam Ludlam's property, which means a hall was to be made out of something already there. And the objection arrived with the application. Three neighbours are named before the council has taken any view of its own, and one of them is Trimper Bros., the boardwalk amusement firm that is still in business today.

   The council's answer was procedural and it was not a refusal: fill in the proper form and we will notify everyone and hold a hearing. That is the machinery of a fair process. What it produced, seven months later, was a unanimous no.

   Sam LudlamMrs. Nancy TruittMrs. Charles Hudson

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

2. 1938 · 1938-11-22

   On 22 November 1938 Ocean City's council unanimously refused a permit for a Colored Recreation Hall, after six named white neighbours objected

   The application ran seven months and three meetings. On 4 April the council told Charles C. Richards to apply again on the proper form and it would notify every owner and set a hearing. On 10 November his application was 'Continued'. On the evening of 22 November it was the first item of business, and the minute is exact: 'Mr. Richards was present and explained he want to use the property for Colored Recreation Hall. Property owners objected by letter were Nancy Truitt & Ida Corey. And the following were present in Person Objecting to Granting of permit, Will Quillen and Windsor Resort. Council promised Mr. Richards they would decide on application within a week and before adjourning unanimously decided to Refuse permit.' Two letters, two men in the room, and a company. Counting the April objectors, six parties are named against the hall across the year - Trimper Bros., Mrs. Charles Hudson, Mrs. Nancy Truitt, Ida Corey, Will Quillen and the Windsor Resort - and not one person is recorded as speaking for it except Richards himself. The council did not even take the week it had just promised. — 1938 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: THE SILENCE IS NOW MEASURED ACROSS A SECOND COMPLETE NEWSPAPER. The 1938 pass established that the refusal appears in none of the 588 pages of the Democratic Messenger. It appears in none of the 704 harvested pages of the Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise (sn89060127) either: the phrase 'recreation hall' returns ZERO pages, 'colored hotel' ZERO, 'colored dance' ZERO, 'Henry Hotel' ZERO, and the only 'Ludlam' in the 1938 run is a white Charles Ludlam of Ocean City whose wife was a Red Cross chairman for the town in November 1938. It also appears nowhere in the 1939 Ocean City minute book, in any of the 25 documents and 47 pages read: Charles C. Richards is not mentioned once in 1939, there is no second application, no appeal, and no permit for any recreation hall to anybody. AND IT IS ABSENT FROM THE BLACK PRESS TOO: a sweep of 59 located 1939 issues of the Baltimore Afro-American with 2,537 queries returns ZERO hits for Ludlam, Sam Ludlam or 'excursion Ocean City', and the seven Charles C. Richards hits spot-checked were column-break false positives.

   This is the clearest thing the campaign has ever found about how segregation actually worked in Ocean City, and it is not a sign on a door. It is a building permit, a hearing, a list of neighbours, and a unanimous vote - the ordinary machinery of a small town's planning power, turned on a Black social hall and used to stop it.

   Windsor Resort CompanyMrs. Nancy TruittIda CoreyWill QuillenEdmond H. JohnsonClifford P. CropperHarold J. RayneE. Raymond Bounds

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

3. 1938 · 1938-11-22

   Ocean City granted at least twenty-two building permits in 1938 and, for the first time in the campaign's record, refused four

   The permits, as the minute book lists them: Atwood & Lynch, Collins Ayres and one other at Philadelphia Avenue and Fifth and Third Streets (23 February); John W. Burbage on Twelfth Street (14 March); Magee Oil Co. on Somerset Street, Chas. W. Purnell at the Post Office, and Ruth Kubit on Eighth Street (4 April); Mr. and Mrs. Salvatore Rousevalle at Baltimore Avenue and Ninth, Edward Evans on the west side of Philadelphia Avenue at Seventh, and Dr. C. W. Purnell at the Boardwalk and Wicomico Street (12 April); L. W. Farlow in the Ninth Street alley and Collins Ayres a small house behind his own on Fifth (10 May); Joe H[eckmott], Mrs. Jane B. Townsend, Clarence Carey a garage, Charles S. Powell an addition to a hotel, J. P. Whaley a garage, and Raymond Bounds to remodel a garage into stores and apartments (14 October); Parker Smith and Evans Development (10 November); an addition to a restaurant building and a bungalow (22 November). What is new is the refusals. Thomas Shill's shed at the corner of Ninth was rejected on 10 May after six neighbours objected. Sam Ayres withdrew an application for a chicken house on 14 October rather than have it voted on. On 22 November the council refused Charles C. Richards's Colored Recreation Hall, refused Nathan Rapport's application to move a building opposite South Division Street on Atlantic Avenue, and refused Edward Evans a wood shingle roof.

   Clarence CareyE. Raymond BoundsDr. Charles Washington PurnellEdward Evans

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

4. 1940 · 1940-11-29

   Measured negative: for the first year since 1937, no Black person, business or institution appears anywhere in Ocean City's council minutes

   All twenty page images of all fifteen 1940 documents were read for any reference to a Black applicant, resident, business or institution. There is none. Charles C. Richards, refused a permit for a Colored Recreation Hall on 22 November 1938, does not appear; nor does any successor application, appeal or sequel. The colored dance hall of South Ocean City does not appear. The Henry Hotel does not appear. The Jackson Mission, which took the last permit of 1939 to raise its building twenty-four feet, does not appear - the only Jackson in the year is a man refused leave to put a windmill east of the Boardwalk, of whom the clerk records nothing but the surname. William Miller, 'an old colored man' the council discussed in 1939, does not appear. By contrast the year records four building hearings, five named election judges, three delegations, an advertising committee of eight and roughly seventy other named people. — 1942 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Confirmed, and its argument is now much better supported. This fact's theTake says the absence 'is not evidence that anyone left; the 1940 census is the instrument for that, not the minute book.' The census has now been read in full, and it settles the point: in the same twelve months in which the council's book named no Black person, federal enumerators walking the same streets wrote down ten Black households on one sheet of the town proper and a dozen sheets of them across the bay. The silence is a property of the record, not of the population.

   1937, 1938 and 1939 each put at least one Black name or institution into this book - a hotel on the mayor's own building list, a refused recreation hall, an old man the council had to decide what to do with, a mission raising its roof. 1940 puts none. The absence is not evidence that anyone left; the 1940 census is the instrument for that, not the minute book. What it is evidence of is that the only way a Black resident of Ocean City reached the town's written record was by needing something from it, and in 1940 nobody asked.

   The Henry HotelWilliam Miller

   Source · checked 2026-08-11