Richard Etheridge, 1842-1900

Richard Etheridge, 1842-1900. “In Behalf of Humanity”. , The U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson accepted the separate-but equal pretense used to justify racial segregation by the states. Two years later, white supremacists regained control of the North Carolina legislature and imposed "Jim Crow" laws almost as restrictive as the pre-Civil War slave code. After the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot overthrew the elected biracial government of the state's largest city and killed or drove out more than 2,000 African-Americans, North Carolina's ethnic minorities were politically powerless for 60 years., Pea Island was the only all-black station in the Lifesaving Service, and Etheridge's death left it more exposed to shifting political winds. Even so, all the Outer Banks crews placed duty above differences, worked together to save lives, and sheltered survivors of every description. Despite prejudice and double standards, Etheridge, the keepers who succeeded him, Benjamin Bowser, Lewis Wescott, William Irving, George Pruden, Maxie Berry, Sr., and Lonnie Gray, and their men served with distinction, rescuing some 200 people and achieving a 94-percent success rate. Local men waited years to serve at Pea Island, and the station became a source of pride and a beacon of hope for African-Americans around the country., How would you handle significant change?, In 1915, Congress merged the Lifesaving Service and the Revenue Cutter Service to form the U.S. Coast Guard. The new agency enlisted minority personnel, often as cooks, and took on others when it absorbed the Lighthouse Service; but it barred nonwhites from most career paths. It even installed a white keeper at Pea Island in the 1930s and removed him only when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and members of Congress took notice., Progress toward equality quickened in the 1940s, when a war for national survival, a universal draft, and executive orders by Presidents Roosevelt and Truman made segregation of the armed forces unsustainable. In 1943, the Coast Guard became the first American service to put a black officer in command of an integrated unit. By then, the black Pea Island crew was training black and white enlistees, separately, in beach operations., Despite the lessons of World War I, the United States entered World War II unprepared, and German U-boats ravaged Allied shipping along the Atlantic coast for months. Offshore fires and explosions kept the Outer Banks on edge. Wreckage, cargo, and bodies frequently washed up on local beaches. With expanded wartime missions, the Coast Guard merged temporarily with the U.S. Navy., The Pea Island Station closed in the aftermath of World War Il, a casualty of budget cutting., The third and last Pea Island Station, built in 1931, was integral to coastal defense in World War II. In 2006 its combined kitchen and storage building, shown at left in the photograph and the construction drawing, was moved to Collins Park in Manteo to become the Pea Island Cookhouse Museum, which commemorates the Pea Island lifesavers and their accomplishments., In February 1991, the Coast Guard Foundation placed this marker to honor the Pea Island lifesavers. In his keynote address, author Alex Haley, a retired Coast Guard chief petty officer, put himself in their place and quoted the television adaptation of his own best-selling novel Roots: "There's going to be a better day." That day had finally dawned. , (captions) , Pea Island Coast Guard Station in World War II. , Left: Readying the surfboat. , Right: Reuben Gallop on beach patrol., Cookhouse construction drawing courtesy of the National Park Service. , 1930s photograph of the Pea Island Station courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.