Sandridge Country Club
The Sandridge Country Club or Sand Ridge Country Club was a private club on a 30-acre site on Wenonah-Oxmoor Road, near Oxmoor School in the Oxmoor or Sand Ridge community. It hosted gatherings, picnics, and regular live music, dancing, and other entertainment for Black patrons. It opened in November 1962. Samuel Wiggins Sr was manager.
The club's picnic grounds, barbecue pavilions, horse trails, fishing pond, softball field and badminton courts were open during the day. The air-conditioned clubhouse included the "Starlight Room" ballroom, and a "Peppermint Lounge" with live music and dancing nightly.
The club was a popular venue for private gatherings and events for the Contractors Association Inc., Club Clique, the Angelia Mia Club, the Progressive Social and Savings Club, the Tenco Club, the Club Les Elites, and the Sandridge Deep Sea Fishing Club. In August 1963 V. L. Harris hosted an all-day outing for the families of his employees at the Protective Industrial Insurance Co.. Also that summer, Unitariam minister and civil rights activist Ed Harris organized an interracial summer camp which was held at Sandridge Country Club.
Early on the morning of Sunday, November 15, 1964 three males broke into the club through a basement window and attempted to rob patrons. An employee saw one of the robbers, Henry King, holding a rifle and retrieved a .38 pistol from a drawer and shot him three times. The other two fled. One patron, Joe Sanks, a private detective employed by A. G. Gaston, was robbed of a .45 pistol and $1.
At its late-night parties and entertainments, the Sandridge Country Club had a reputation for flouting segregation laws and was also welcoming of gay patrons.
According to testimony offered by Thomas Rowe to a 1975 Senate hearing on FBI intelligence gathering, he participated in a raid coordinated by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office and the Eastview 13 faction of the Ku Klux Klan, which he had reported to his FBI handlers two weeks prior to it taking place. According to Rowe the Klan members were provided with moonshine to place at various designated locations in the club during the raid. The result of the raid was that the club was shut down.
In 1970 Paul "Tall Paul" White formed Tall Paul Enterprises and reopened the former country club as "Fun Land."
The Peppermint Lounge was fictionalized as "Alleysax" in Howard Cruse's semi-autobiographical graphic novel Stuck Rubber Baby.
References
- "New Country Club Offers Rainbow Of Entertainment." (November 24, 1962) Birmingham Mirror, p. 1
- "Sandridge Center of Events During January." (February 16, 1963) Birmingham Mirror, p. 3
- "Company ends its 40th year." (September 1, 1963) The Birmingham News, p. C-7
- "Negro Shot In Theft In Critical Condition." (November 17, 1964) Birmingham Post-Herald, p. 4
- Lytle, Stewart & Bill Cornwell (December 3, 1975) "2 policemen let Klan attack protesters here, ex-FBI operative says." Birmingham Post-Herald, p. 1
- Dickel, Simon (2011) "'Can't Leave Me Behind': Racism, Gay Politics, and Coming of Age in Howard Cruse's "Stuck Rubber Baby"." Amerikastudien / American Studies. Vol. 56, No. 4, pp. 617–635
- Thorne, T. K. (2021) Behind the Magic Curtain: Secrets, Spies, and Unsung White Allies of Birmingham's Civil Rights Days. NewSouth Books. ISBN 9781588384409