Chestnut family found a home at Ocean City Beach

Opportunity knocked for Wade H. Chestnut II in 1949. He owned a car repair business in Wilmington, N.C., at the time, but he was hand-picked to move to Topsail Island and oversee the development of a beach community for African-Americans.

In 2021, Wade Chestnut’s son, Kenneth Chestnut Sr. told Pat Fontana of Topsail Magazine: “Dad was intrigued by the opportunity to develop this area. He left the business and dedicated his life to developing Ocean City Beach.”

Wade Chestnut’s primary partners in the formation of Ocean City Developers, Inc., were Edgar Lee Yow, a white attorney and former Wilmington mayor, and Dr. Samuel Gray, a black physician who had relocated to Wilmington from Jamaica.

After the U.S. Navy closed down its highly secretive “Operation Bumblebee” guided missile testing program on Topsail Island in 1948, Yow purchased about six miles of beach property. He wanted to use about a mile of the shoreline to provide housing and beachfront recreational opportunities for African-Americans.

“Not surprisingly, Yow faced some difficulties with his vision of encouraging black people to own oceanfront property and faced criticism for what he was doing,” Fontana wrote. It was Dr. Gray who recruited Wade Chestnut to provide the “boots on the ground.”

Wade Chestnut and his wife, Caronell Carter Chestnut, were the first to move in, and Chesnut’s siblings Bertram, Robert and Louise Chestnut Thompson soon had homes at Ocean City Beach, as did Dr. Gray.

 

A motel, the Ocean City Motor Court (with 11 sleeping rooms and a three-room apartment), was built in 1952. A restaurant, named Ocean City Terrace, opened in 1953, making use of Tower Six, which had been abandoned after the shutdown of “Operation Bumblebee.”

 

By 1954, there were 15 homes in the Ocean City community, but with the arrival of Hurricane Hazel, the majority were destroyed…only to be rebuilt.

In 1955, Camp Oceanside was established as the first Episcopal camp for blacks in the Diocese of East Carolina. St Mark’s Episcopal Chapel was built in June 1957. (It has since been renamed as Wade H. Chestnut Memorial Chapel.)

 

In 1958, the Ocean City Fishing Pier was erected at the site of the Ocean City Terrace tower. The 700-foot lighted pier was the only ocean pier on the South Atlantic coast open to BIPOC (black, indigenous, people of color) patronage.

 

Kenneth Chestnut told Chase Jordan of the Wilmington Star News in 2022 that some of his best memories as a youth involved the pier, which was run by the Chestnut family and became a very popular attraction. Kenneth recalled working there, selling sno-cones and doing odd jobs.

Fishing didn’t care about one’s skin color or what a person looked like. “People came together at the pier when the fish were biting with the common interest of fishing, without regard to race,” Kenneth said.

By 1979, Ocean City grew to about 100 homes of African-American ownership. In August of 1983, Ocean City Developers, Inc., was dissolved, and the Ocean City Beach Citizens Council was established to manage community affairs. The close-knit community of Ocean City became a part of the Town on North Topsail Beach in 1990.

In 1996, Hurricane Fran destroyed the pier and many of the beach homes. It’s a constant struggle, dealing with Mother Nature, but Ocean City became recognized as an important stop on the North Carolina Civil Rights Trail in 2022. 

Ocean City’s signature event is its annual Ocean City Jazz Festival, which occurs this year from July 5-7. Proceeds benefit the nonprofit citizens council. There is always an impressive lineup of performing artists.