Clarence Carey

In the record (10)

1. 1937 · 1937-07-13

   Ocean City held its tax rate at a dollar on the hundred for a fourth straight year, and exactly one taxpayer turned up to complain

   On 29 June 1937 the council listed the year's new and increased assessments and sent notice to every owner on it of a meeting on 13 July 'for to hear any complaints of why the property should not be assessed as listed for year of 1937 taxes'. Among them: Wallace & Jarman, improvements on restaurant and apartments, $3,000; S. Dodd Shuster, bungalow and garage, $4,000; Clarence Carey, dance hall, $1,000; Samuel and Belle Adams, house, $4,800; John Lambros, personal, $8,000 - the largest personal assessment on the page; W. C. Pool, floating houses on lots, $100 each, $600 in all; 'Royalton (Kelly)', personal, $2,000; Rudolph Dolle, body shop, $650; Harry J. Cropper, work shop, $1,000; and Elizabeth Hufford's apartments raised from $3,000 to $4,800. A shorter list of property 'marked off for 1937' cut the Jester, Kelly, Magel, Mumford and Massey books. On 13 July, 'Sam Ayers was only one appeared asking for reduction of 100 on personal in small house and reduction was made.' The council then made 'tax levy for 1937 ... 10.00 Thousand' - one dollar on the hundred, unanimously, the same rate it had held in 1934, 1935 and 1936. — 1938 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: And then it did not. The run of four years at a dollar on the hundred ended on 21 June 1938, when the Ocean City council passed the 1938 levy at 85 cents per $100 on Dr. Townsend's motion seconded by Preston Laws - a cut of fifteen per cent, after a discussion on 31 May of cutting twenty that reached no decision.

   W. Preston LawsWilliam H. ScottJohn LambrosHarry J. CropperRudolph DolleW. C. PoolEthel Kelley

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

2. 1937 · 1937-10-14

   A second Black hotel was being prepared on Baltimore Avenue for the 1938 season, and the paper located it by the colored dance hall next door

   'Mr. William Brittingham has sold his house and lot on Baltimore avenue in South Ocean City, to Clarence Carey, who will move the house on his lot south of the colored dance hall, and will use it as a colored hotel during next season.' Twenty-eight words in the Ocean City column of 14 October 1937, and they double what the campaign knows about Black Ocean City in the 1930s. They put a second Black hotel in preparation on the same street as the Henry; they show one built by moving a white owner's house onto a Black owner's lot; and they attest, in passing and as a landmark so familiar it needs no explanation, a colored dance hall already standing in South Ocean City. The town's own assessment book of 29 June 1937 assessed a Clarence Carey $1,000 for a dance hall. — 1938 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [corrected]: ⭐ THE FACT'S EVIDENCE IS UNCHANGED BUT ITS PEOPLE ARE NOT WHO THE CAMPAIGN SAID. The 1937 quotation is exact and stands; what must go is the characterisation of Clarence Carey as a Black property owner, which no source states. The 1938 run of the same newspaper shows Carey as an Ocean City theatre manager, a taxpayer who argued navigation at a War Department bridge hearing, and a member of a residents' bridge committee sitting with Dr. Charles W. Purnell - and never marks him as colored, in a paper that marks race in every instance where it applies. AND THE 1938 SEASON DID NOT PRODUCE A HOTEL IN THE RECORD: Carey appears in the town's whole 1938 minute book exactly once, on 14 October, taking a permit for a garage. The headline's claim that a second Black hotel was 'being prepared' is what the source says and stands; whether it opened is now a measured non-answer rather than an open question. — 1939 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: NO NEW ATTESTATION, AND THE SEARCH FOR ONE IS NOW MEASURED IN THREE CORPORA. 'Colored dance hall' returns zero across: the 704 harvested pages of the Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise for 1938; the 1939 Ocean City minute book, all 25 documents and 47 pages; and a 2,537-query sweep of 59 located 1939 issues of the Baltimore Afro-American. ⚠ ONE INDIRECT 1939 FINDING BEARS ON IT AND IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR ONE: the licence ordinances of February and June 1939 both price a 'Dance Hall, Ball Room, Cabaret or Night Club where there is an admission charge, a cover charge or a minimum charge, and which is not a part of a hotel' at $150, and 'Dance Hall where there is no admission, cover or minimum charge' at $25. From June 1939 onwards every dance hall in Ocean City had to hold a numbered, named, displayed municipal licence specifying the holder and the location. THAT REGISTER, IF IT SURVIVES IN THE CITY CLERK'S OFFICE, WOULD NAME AND PLACE THE COLORED DANCE HALL.

   The dance hall is the find. A newspaper uses as a direction-marker only what its readers already know — which means that by 1937 there was a Black social institution in South Ocean City substantial enough to navigate by, and this is the first the campaign has heard of it.

   The Henry Hotel

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

3. 1938 · 1938-07-28

   Ocean City residents formed a Bridge Committee in the summer of 1938 to keep Worcester Street, and asked the state to survey North Fifteenth Street instead

   'The Ocean City Bridge Committee, recently chosen at a meeting of residents favoring Worcester street for a new bridge and whose membership includes L. Franklin Purnell, Dr. Charles W. Purnell, Clarence Carey, Edward Gray and William H. Purnell, secretary, said today that a written official request for a new bridge survey for North 15th street would be sent immediately to the State Roads Commission in Baltimore.' Their case was that approval for a bridge at North Fifteenth Street, together with the improvement and maintenance of the present Worcester Street span, 'would not only build an economical bridge at North 15th street, where rights of way can be secured at low cost, but also re-build the present Worcester street bridge.' It was a committee formed after the town council had already given the state North Division and Caroline Streets, and its members are the same men who turn up three weeks later at the War Department hearing.

   Ocean City Bridge CommitteeMaryland State Roads CommissionL. Franklin PurnellDr. Charles Washington PurnellEdward GrayWilliam H. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

4. 1938 · 1938-08-15

   Three hundred people packed the Ocean City Pier convention hall in August 1938 for a War Department hearing on the bridge, and twelve of them spoke against it

   Capt. H. T. Miller, District War Department engineer, and Col. John S. Doyle, Senior District Engineer, presided over a public hearing in the Ocean City Pier convention hall on Monday 15 August 1938, 'held to ascertain opinion on the application of the State Roads Commission for a War Department permit to construct a new $450,000 bay bridge at North Division street in Ocean City'. Around three hundred people came, mostly from Ocean City and its neighbourhood. The count was lopsided: 'Two speakers and four documents in favor of granting the State a permit for a North Division street bridge were offset by opposition expressed in ten documents together with verbal statements made by twelve speakers.' Navigation was the only argument that counted. Letters and petitions came from boat captains of St. Martin's River and Isle of Wight Bay, from Ocean City boat captains who offered a petition, and from Trimper's Marine Railway, The Farms Company, Glen Riddle Farms, Peninsula Packing Company, the Beach Gunning Club, the Nordica Hotel, W. Preston Laws and Capt. Thomas T. Moore. Don Harmon, an Ocean City seafood dealer, and Capt. Gilbert of Florida, a party-boat captain, spoke against; so did Capt. Granville Taylor of Crisfield and State Senator Milton L. Veasey. Clarence Carey argued that a North Division Street span 'would be too close to the present Worcester street bridge a few blocks south and would be a menace to navigation'. On the other side, Grice Long, a boat owner and Ocean City summer resident of five years, said 'a bridge at North Division street would be a boon not only to navigation but to traffic'. And Capt. Miller made the ruling that mattered: the State Roads Commission 'must definitely decide whether or not it intends to maintain the present Worcester street bridge at Ocean City, before any permit will be issued by the War Department for a new $450,000 bay bridge at North Division street or any other location.'

   The referendum had been overruled and the town's own council had signed the streets away in June. So the fight moved to the only forum left that had not yet ruled - the federal permit - and the argument stopped being about where Ocean City wanted its bridge and became about what would happen to the bridge it already had.

   Maryland State Roads CommissionW. Preston LawsThomas T. MooreCapt. H. T. MillerCol. John S. DoyleMilton L. Veasey

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

5. 1938 · 1938-08-18

   Correction: Clarence Carey, who was preparing Ocean City's second colored hotel, was a white theatre manager - the campaign had made him Black

   In October 1937 the Democratic Messenger reported that Clarence Carey had bought William Brittingham's house on Baltimore Avenue and would move it onto his lot south of the colored dance hall 'and will use it as a colored hotel during next season'. The 1937 pass recorded Carey as a 'Black property owner, Ocean City'. The 1938 run of the same newspaper shows that reading was wrong. On 31 March 1938 he is 'Clarence Carey, Ocean City theatre manager'. On 13 January he drives to Wilmington in the same social note as Dr. C. W. Purnell and his wife. On 28 July he is named to the Ocean City Bridge Committee alongside L. Franklin Purnell, Dr. Charles W. Purnell, Edward Gray and William H. Purnell. On 18 August he is 'Clarence Carey, Ocean City tax payer and one of the twelve speakers who opposed the North Division street permit application', arguing navigation before two Army engineers. And in October the town granted him a permit for a garage. In none of it does the paper mark him as colored - and this is a paper that marks race in every instance where it applies, describing parties to a land suit as 'Minnie Walter Ryder, colored' and 'Laura H. Ryder, colored' and a defendant as 'the negro'. What the 1937 sentence establishes is that Carey was building a colored hotel. It never said he was Black, and the campaign added that.

   The correction makes the 1937 story harder, not softer. Ocean City's second hotel for Black visitors was not Black enterprise; it was a white theatre manager moving a white neighbour's house onto a lot next to the colored dance hall and letting it out for the season. The Black institution the record can actually see remains the dance hall - and the campaign still does not know who owned that.

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

6. 1938 · 1938-10-14

   Clarence Carey, who was preparing a Black hotel on Baltimore Avenue for the 1938 season, appears in the 1938 record exactly once - taking a permit for a garage

   In October 1937 the Democratic Messenger reported that Clarence Carey had bought William Brittingham's house and lot on Baltimore Avenue in South Ocean City and would move the house onto his own lot 'south of the colored dance hall' to use as a colored hotel 'during next season'. Next season was 1938. The town's minute book for the whole of 1938 names him once, in the permit list of 14 October: 'Clarence Carey garage.' No hotel permit, no hotel opening, no hotel of any kind under his name. Whether the building he moved opened as a hotel in 1938 is not established by the town's own record, and a garage is not evidence either way - it may be the outbuilding of a working hotel or it may be all that was ever built.

   One word in a permit list is the entire 1938 trace of the man who was going to give Ocean City its second Black hotel. The campaign asked whether Carey's hotel opened. The town's books do not say, and they are the books that would have had to say.

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

7. 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.

   Charles C. RichardsE. Raymond BoundsDr. Charles Washington PurnellEdward Evans

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

8. 1939 · 1939-06-21

   The Henry Hotel added six hundred dollars' worth of building in 1939, and the town's new-assessment list is the only place it is written down

   The Mayor and City Council assessed the year's new building at the meeting of 21 June 1939 and sent notice to every owner. In the middle of the list, between 'Harrison, Public Lots' and 'Joe & Edith Hickmott', the clerk wrote: 'Chas Henry add Hotel 600'. Four lines above it stands 'Clarence Carey garage 200'. The list runs to about seventy entries and is the town's whole year of construction in one page and a half: Calvin Pruitt's Admiral at $25,000 is the largest single item, John and Minnie Lynch's new cottage at $9,000 the next, Ulmer S. Evans's log cabin $4,500, the Yacht Club $12,000, Alton Purnell's Brighton Hotel, T. J. Cropper's shanties $500 and Emma Farrell's beer joint $500.

   This is the third document in the whole campaign that names the Henry Hotel, and all three are the white town's own paperwork - a permit in 1937, the mayor's building list in 1937, and now a line in an assessment book. The hotel that existed to serve Black visitors is legible to us only through the ledger of the people who would not house them.

   The Henry HotelChas. HenryCalvin P. PruittJ. M. Mumford

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

9. 1940 · 1940-05-14

   Ocean City's advertising was to be paid for by taxing the charter boats - ten dollars for a local boat, twenty-five for an outsider - and the town spent the rest of the year trying to find the legal power to do it

   On 14 May 1940 the Advertising Committee came before the council: Dr. C. W. Purnell as chairman, C. D. Savage, J. D. Jarman, John B. Lynch, Talbot Bunting, C. Parker Smith and Preston Laws, 'and Clarence Carey, a visitor.' Purnell 'outlined a plan for licensing the sport fishing boats of $10 for native and $25 for foreign, and stated they could collect from outside dealers several hundred dollars, so with the licences and what they could get outside they would have $2,000 for advertising.' The council agreed to pay the committee's advertising man not more than $800, and heard two candidates for the post, Joe Pancoast and a Mr. McKimmon of Salisbury. The power to levy the licence did not exist. On 16 April the mayor had already asked the attorney 'to study the Licences and see if there was any way City could licence the fishing boats.' On 2 October the council settled it by voting the Chamber of Commerce the $2,000 outright for the fiscal year 10 September 1940 to 10 September 1941, advancing $350 in cash at once against it, and resolving 'to try to get an act through the Legislature empowering the City to licence the fishing boats, the licence if collected to be given over to the Chamber also.' — 1941 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The scheme's ending is now dated. On 30 July 1941 Capt. Crawford Savage came before the council 'asking that fishing boats be relieved of any lisence for this year', and the council's recorded response was to vote the Chamber of Commerce a further sum not exceeding $500 to settle its deficit, on terms that it cut its budget to the money it had. Fifteen months after the advertising committee proposed to raise $2,000 by licensing the charter fleet at $10 and $25 a boat, the town was still covering the Chamber out of its own funds. ⚠ THE MINUTE DOES NOT SAY WHETHER THE BOATS WERE RELIEVED, and nothing about the licence's fate should be inferred from it.

   The white marlin fleet had made Ocean City famous and the town's answer was to make the fleet pay for the advertising that made it famous - at two and a half times the rate for a boat from somewhere else. It could not, because a Maryland municipality cannot levy what the General Assembly has not authorised, and the Assembly was not sitting. So the town paid the two thousand out of its own pocket and put the licence on the list for Annapolis in 1941. The whole resort economy is in that sequence: an idea in May, a lawyer in April who had already said no, and a bill for the next session.

   Ocean City Chamber of CommerceOcean City Advertising CommitteeDr. Charles Washington PurnellJohn B. Lynch

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

10. 1945 · 1945-05-22

    Clarence Carey came before the Ocean City council about the Colored dance hall in May 1945 and was told the town "were not after the Colored places any more than the White, but wanted better order at both".

    The sentence is the whole of the exchange as the clerk recorded it. Carey is not marked as Black anywhere in the record — the 1938 and 1939 passes established that at length — and the town's 1937 assessment book charged a Clarence Carey $1,000 for a dance hall, so what this minute most likely shows is a proprietor speaking for his own house. That is the point worth holding onto: the one time in two years of minutes that the Colored dance hall reaches the council, the voice at the rail is a white theatre manager's. No Black resident of Ocean City is recorded speaking to the Mayor and Council in either 1944 or 1945. Read against what the same council had done, the assurance is narrower than it sounds: six months earlier it had asked Chas. J. Jackson to withdraw an application for a Colored rooming house and refile it for white only, and eight months earlier it had granted the 1945 rolling-chair concession "for White people only". Neither was rescinded. What was offered here was even-handedness about enforcement, not about access. The same meeting instructed the secretary to have the attorney write an ordinance on broken glass and drinking on the bathing beach.

    Source · checked 2026-08-12