04:46 PM EDT on Monday, April 25, 2005

Associated Press

FLORENCE, S.C. -- South Carolina's biggest tourist town discriminates against blacks by imposing one-way traffic along Ocean Boulevard during a biker festival each Memorial Day weekend in Myrtle Beach, an attorney for the NAACP told a federal judge Monday.

"The city has one plan for white tourists and a completely different plan -- a more oppressive plan -- for black tourists," Paul Hurst told U.S. District Judge Terry Wooten. "This is the 21st century and 50 years since this country ended racial segregation."

Wooten heard arguments for about three hours on the civil rights group's request for an injunction blocking the city from using the plan next month.

James Van Osdell, representing the city, countered that the civil rights group is using "a lot of innuendo and dots they are trying to connect to say the city of Myrtle Beach is racist."

He said the one-way pattern was put into effect in 1999 after the festival grew and "the numbers overwhelmed the police department."

The black bike festival "basically became a three-day street party" and the problems were because of the younger age of those attending, not their race, he said.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sued two years ago, alleging the city discriminates against blacks during the weekend.

The suit alleges those attending the Atlantic Beach Bikefest are treated differently from those attending the Carolina Harley-Davidson Dealers Association Myrtle Beach Rally, a predominantly white bike event held the previous week.

Atlantic Beach is a small, predominantly black town north of Myrtle Beach.

The lawsuit is not expected to go to trial until this fall but the NAACP wants an injunction blocking the one-way pattern from being used next month.

Wooten promised a decision "just as soon as I can." Hurst said the city used the same one-way traffic pattern for both festivals four years ago but, in 2002 after complaints, returned to two-way traffic for the Harley event while keeping the one-way pattern for the black bikers.

"Discriminatory intent was a motivating factor," Hurst said, adding the one-way pattern along 60 blocks of beachfront is used only on Memorial Day, the only weekend of the year when most of the visitors to Myrtle Beach are black.

While the city contends crowds are bigger and the average age of visitors younger during Memorial Day, the city has no objective numbers to back that up, Hurst said.

Mayor Mark McBride said in a deposition that visitors to the black festival "want to disregard the law, sit on top of their cars and smoke dope," Hurst said.

McBride asked then-Gov. Jim Hodges to send in the National Guard for the 1999 weekend, a request that was rejected.

Hurst said the one-way pattern, which limits the number of turns bikers can make, denies blacks access to the city by moving them along the beachfront street and then out of town.

"It was Thank You, Thank You for coming and we'll see you on the way out," he said

Van Osdell said the rallies are different. While Harley attendees are older and attend events in various places "the activity of the Memorial Day weekend consists of cruising the boulevard in bikes and cars."

"It became a situation in which the city lost control of the street," he said, adding that emergency vehicles couldn't get in and out. "It became gridlock, chaos."

The traffic pattern has nothing to do with discrimination and everything to do with safety for both residents and festivalgoers, he said.

"The festivals are different, that's what it boils down to," he said. "We didn't do it for racial reason."

In recent years, two lanes on the four-lane street have been closed for use by emergency vehicles while the adjoining lanes are one-way. The pattern prevents motorists from meeting vehicles coming in the opposite direction.

"The bikes and the SUVs would stop and people would get out and party. It would only make it worse," Van Osdell said.

He said Atlantic Beach uses the same traffic pattern during the event and Myrtle Beach has worked with the U.S. Justice Department's Community Relations Service on handling the festival crowds since 1999.