page_title: Pea Island Life-Saving Station
section_title: First African-American crew
hierarchical_section_title: Pea Island Life-Saving Station / First African-American crew
caption_attribution_description: English: Pea Island USCG station, circa 1942, showing lifeboat, boathouse, and crewmen. From USCG historian's office website at http://www.uscg.mil/history/uscghist/African_American_Photo_Gallery.asp
context_page_description: Pea Island Life-Saving Station was a life-saving station on Pea Island, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. It was the first life-saving station in the country to have an all-black crew, and it was the first in the nation to have a black man, Richard Etheridge, as commanding officer. On August 3, 2012, the second of the Coast Guard's 154-foot Sentinel-Class Cutters, USCGC Richard Etheridge, was commissioned in his honor.
context_section_description: Richard Etheridge was the first African American to hold the rank of keeper of a life-saving station. This meant that, under the racial standards of the times, the entire crew under his command would have to be black. Although other black men had served as surfmen at Pea Island and other stations, Pea Island Station came to be manned entirely by a black keeper and crew. The other LSS stations, in North Carolina as well as throughout the nation, would be manned and run by whites.
  Five months after Etheridge took charge, arsonists burnt the station to the ground.
caption: Pea Island USCG crewmen in 1942, showing lifeboat and boathouse
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