An integrated "checkerboard" crew on the Outer Banks around the turn of the century 



The first all-black 

 Pea Island crew battled more 

 than the ocean's tempests. 



They fought amid a sea 

 of prejudice and waves of 

 hostility in the local community. 



came ashore two miles south of the Pea 

 Island station on what appeared to be a 

 clear morning. Inexplicably, aid from 

 the station arrived late. Four men were 

 lost; the three survivors found their 

 way ashore 

 unassisted by 

 the lifesavers. 

 Inspectors from 

 Washington, 

 D.C., already 

 troubled by 

 incompetency 

 in the Carolina 

 service, found the keeper's report of 

 the incident misleading. 



Upon further investigation, 

 inspectors learned that the Pea Island 

 station keeper and other surfmen may 

 have been absent from the station when 

 the Henderson came ashore. The 

 keeper and his men frequently left the 

 station understaffed, often to go 

 hunting. 



Kimball realized that district 

 incompetence might compromise the 

 fledgling Lifesaving Service as a 

 whole. So he approved radical changes 

 to ensure adequate service in North 

 Carolina. In January 1880, he autho- 

 rized the transfer of Richard Etheridge, 

 a black man who held the number six 

 surfman position at the Bodie Island 

 station, to Pea Island as keeper. 



Although the appointment of a 

 black man to a position of authority 

 was becoming increasingly unpopular 

 in the post-Reconstruction South, the 

 choice of Etheridge as keeper was a 

 natural one. In his report, Frank 

 Newcomb, one of the two Northern 

 inspectors, described Etheridge as 

 follows: 



"Richard Etheridge is 38 years of 

 age, has the reputation of being as good 

 a surfman as there is on this coast, 

 black or white, can read and write 

 intelligently, and bears a good name as 



4 MAY I JUNE 1995 



