Fire on the Beach by David Wright

Author:David Wright
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2001-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

However these men felt about Richard Etheridge, one thing was certain: all resented the Northern inspector Newcomb coming in, shuffling things around. With the close of Reconstruction three years before came an end to what Southerners saw as Northern tyranny—the national bureaucracy’s imposition of its will over local custom. Few whites would see a return to large-scale federal intervention without putting up some resistance. In the Life-Saving Service, appointing keepers was the district superintendent’s job and no one else’s. The district superintendent, a local political appointee, need not even consult the assistant inspector, if he preferred not to.

In fact, the district superintendent, Joseph W. Etheridge, had spoken against the black keeper’s appointment. He opposed the hiring of blacks altogether.

Of all people, Joseph Etheridge was the least likely adversary of black service. During the war and immediately after, J. W. Etheridge had championed black equality. He’d joined the Union army during the fight and served as an officer. Afterward, he became an agent for the Freedman’s Bureau. Horace James described him as being “thoroughly with us in respect to Northern ideas, even to the extent of free Negro suffrage.” In 1865, running on the platform of “negro suffrage,” Etheridge carried two counties in the race for the state convention and, in 1868, was elected on the Republican ticket as a legislator in the only North Carolina General Assembly ever to seat a Republican majority. They were a progressive, reformist assembly and included twenty black legislators; among other measures, they guaranteed public education for both black and white children and even tossed around the idea of woman’s suffrage. Etheridge served four years. If J. W. Etheridge disapproved, it wasn’t a matter to take lightly.

Specifically, his charge, as district superintendent, was to recommend keepers. He also had some say in whose names would line the duty rosters of stations and whose would not. As the civilian head of the district, J. W. Etheridge was accountable directly to Kimball and, through his various duties, served as an intermediary between the community and the service. His role consisted, in part, of interpreting the feelings and communicating the interests of locals to the bureaucrats in Washington, of making sure the federal authorities didn’t overstep their bounds and upset area customs and traditions.

The district superintendent never doubted Richard Etheridge’s qualifications for the job, nor those of any of the black surfmen. He was not anti-Negro. Conservatives, in fact, scorned his “negrophilia.” But he was a native of the region, and he knew his neighbors. He knew that, in 1880, just three years after the end of the unpopular Reconstruction, putting a black in a position that too many white men wanted was a risky business in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

He reported to Kimball that he had already “thoroughly canvassed” the subject of blacks in the service with the assistant inspector who had preceded Newcomb, a Revenue Cutter officer who had also apparently entertained the idea of elevating blacks to higher positions in the stations. “[A]fter mature deliberation, I stated my opinion,” J.

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