Called the "Black Pearl," Atlantic Beach is a strip of primarily black-owned coastal property in Horry County. Historically, African-Americans went there because they could not use the same beaches as whites in South Carolina. In the early 1930?s, defying Jim Crow laws in the segregated south, debunking black stereotypes, and broadening the enterprises of the Gullah/Geechee people, black men and women opened hotels, restaurants, night clubs, and novelty shops in Atlantic Beach. With desegregation and the development boom in greater Myrtle Beach, the town today is trying to preserve its early historical identity.