travel opportunities. Sharpe agreed and 

 transferred the land in 1950, with 

 certain stipulations for use and develop- 

 ment and provided the Sharpes could 

 share the property while they lived. 



But the teachers did not have 

 the resources to fulfill their plan of 

 development. They lacked adequate 

 transportation and could ill afford the 

 million-dollar price tag for building 

 a bridge. 



"The whole idea was a very good 

 one at the start," says Bland. "But 

 unfortunately, they didn't realize their 

 dream of developing it." 



In 1958, the association agreed to 

 donate the island and a few acres of the 

 mainland to the state for a park on the 

 condition it dredge a channel and 

 operate a ferry. The sudden, grave 

 illness of Sharpe in 1958 complicated 

 much of the transaction since he had 

 placed contingencies on the use of the 

 land and his family maintained dual 

 rights of ownership. Sharpe died in 

 1960. By the time blacks had a beach to 

 call their own, the Civil Rights Act of 

 1964 outlawed segregated facilities and 

 the park opened to everyone. 



Today, vestiges of the arrangement 



remain. The Hammocks Beach Corpora- 

 tion, the nonprofit group set up by the 

 old teachers' association, still owns 

 about 300 acres of land adjoining the 

 mainland park. The corporation stayed a 

 separate entity when the association 

 merged with the white teachers associa- 

 tion in 1970 to form the existing North 

 Carolina Association of Educators. It 

 leases land to two camps, one for 4-H 

 youths and another for vocational 

 educators. Other land is retained by 

 heirs of the Hurst and Sharpe families. 



In 1988, the Hammocks corpora- 

 tion sold the park 30 acres. The park 



8 JULY/AUGUST 1996 



