Ward's family p urse seined fo r menhaden in boats similar to these, ca. 1880- 19 00. (North Carolina Maritime Museum, Beaufo rt) duct of blacks and whites at Davis Ridge would have caused riots, lynching, or banishment in mos t southern places, including coas tal towns 20 miles away ... . The work culture of mullet fishing on the barrier islands near D avis Ridge both reflected and reinforced this blurring of conventional racial lines . Every autumn all or most of the Davis Ridge men joined interracial mulleting gangs of four to 30 men tending seines, gill nets, and dragnets along the beaches between O cracoke Island and Bogue Banks. During the 1870s and 1880s, that stretch of coastline had supported the largest muller fishery in the U nited States . M ore than 30 vessels carried the salted fish out ofBeaufort and Morehead C ity, and the Atlantic and N orth Carolina Railroad transported such large quantities that for generations local people referred to it as the "Old Muller Road." Out on those remote islands, black and white mullet fishermen lived, dined, and wo rked together all autumn , temporarily sharing a life beyond the pale of the stricter racial barriers ashore. They worked side by side, handling sails and hauling nets, and every man 's gain depended on his crew's collective sailing and fishing skills. For most, a lot was riding on the muller season. Local fish ermen were a hand-to-mouth lot, and mulleting was on e of the few fisheries that promised barter for the flour, cornmeal, and other staples necessary to fill a winter pantry, to say nothing of putting aside a little for Christmas or for a bolt of calico that might save their wives a fo rtnight of late-night weaving. Every fisherman hoped for the strongest crew possible, and nobody worked the mullet nets or knew how to SEA HISTORY 98 , AUTUMN 2001
survive the vicious storms on the barrier islands better than the men from D avis Ridge. On those secluded islands, away from the prying eyes of the magistrates of Jim C row, a man 's race might start to seem a little less important. Wo rk customs reflected this camaraderie and interdependen ce . Mull et fi shermen tradi ri onally worked on a "share sys tem," granting equal parts of their carch's pro fits to every hand, no matter his race. (Owners of boats and nets earned extra shares .) Often they also vo ted by shares to settle wo rk-related decisions. These we re the so rt of working conditi ons that mi ght attract even the independent-minded so uls of D avis Ridge to work alongside their white co unterparts. This frare rni ry of black and whi te fishermen on the islands off D avis Ridge comes across clearl y in a stunning engraving of a mulleting gang at Shacklefo rd Banks (page 15). T he original photograph on which the engraving was based was taken in about 1880 by R. Edward Earll , a fishety biologist who visited the local mullering beaches as part of the US Fish Commission's monumental survey of all of the nation 's fisheries . Look cl osely at the engraving and what stands out im mediately are the equal numbers of black and white fishermen, their intermingled pose, their close quarters, their obvious fa miliari ry-one might even say chummin ess-and the unclear lines of authority. All were entirely foreign to the standard racial attitudes of the American So uth in that day. I find it one of the most extrao rdinary images ever made of life in the Jim Crow era. One never sees anything close to that imimacy and equali ry in the portraits of black and whi te wo rkers in
cotton mills, lumber camps, coal min es, or agricultural fields, much less in the trades or professions. The notion ofblacks and whites sharing a fish camp whose design was inspired by a West African architectural tradition stretches the im agination even farther. A m uller fis herman from D avis Ridge may, in fact, have built the camp in this engraving. Sallie Salter, a white wo man who lived near the Ridge from 1805 to 1903, recalled for her grandso n th at Proctor D avis "lived in a rush camp" at D avis Ridge and later moved closer to her fa mily at Sal ter Creek "and built anoth er rush camp, and lived in it fo r a long time. " One must be careful nor to exaggerate the racial harm ony aro und D avis Ridge. No t a cross roads in th e American South escaped the reality of racial oppression. Cerrainly D avis Ridge did not. Afrer the statewid e white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and 1900 , local whites fo stered an atmosphere of racial in timidation that increas ingly dro ve Afri ca n Americans our of other parts ofD owneas t, as well as discouraged any new black settlement in the fishing villages easrofN orth Rive r. ... Seen in this light, Davis Ridge was an island in more than one sense; as the rest ofDowneast grew whiter and whiter afte r the C ivil W ar, this remote knoll was increasingly seen as a las t redoubt of African Ameri can independence and self-suffic iency. White fishermen co uld look ac ross Jarrett Bay and refer to the Mary E. Reeves or the Shamrock as "the nigger boats, " as I have heard Down east old-timers call them , but Sutton Davis's clan still had two of the only m enhaden boats Downeasr and rhe skills to make good money with them .
17