Harley Week, Black Bike Week, and Two Rallies on One Coast

Every May and Memorial Day weekend, the Grand Strand fills with the thunder of motorcycles, but that thunder has always come in two separate waves, and the story of why is the story of this coast. The older, mostly white rally traces back to nineteen forty, when a group of Harley Davidson dealers organized a ride to Ocean Drive. It grew into the Myrtle Beach spring rally, Harley Week.

But in the era of segregation, Black riders were not welcome, and the only beach where they could gather freely was Atlantic Beach, the Black Pearl. So in nineteen eighty, a Black motorcycle club there founded their own event, the Atlantic Beach Memorial Day Bikefest. From about one hundred riders that first year, it grew into what is now the largest African American motorcycle rally in the country, drawing hundreds of thousands to the coast, an event often called Black Bike Week.

But the two rallies have never been treated the same. For Bikefest, the city has imposed a strict twenty three mile one way traffic loop and a heavy police presence not used for Harley Week. When the matter reached federal court, a jury in twenty twenty found the actions were racially motivated, but that they likely would have happened regardless of race.

Same road, same machines, two very different welcomes.