SEA, SAND, STRIFE AMERICAN BEACH A Saga of Race, Wealth, and Memory By Russ Rymer HarperCollins 337pp $25 The fragile barrier islands strung along the Southeast Atlantic coast are a natural museum of American conflict. English fought Spanish, slave ships deposited their hapless cargo, pirates pLundered the coastal traffic, Union fought Confederate. And on Amelia Island in Florida, that state's first black millionaire overcame virulent racism to build the first black beach resort. Today, the town of American Beach still reflects those struggles between black and white, memory and forgiveness, and more recent fights between developers and preservationists. In American Beach, journalist Russ Rymer uses the ''nearly fallen-down'' town of that name and the colorful characters of the two surrounding island communities to skilLfully chronicle these closely intertwined American conflicts. The central story of American Beach concerns the family of Abraham Lincoln Lewis, president and co-founder in 1919 of Afro-American Life Insurance Co., the first life-insurance company in Florida, black or white. Lewis' Christian rectitude and good works aimed at the African-American community served to define the black aristocracy and the way it did business. And so, in 1920, he established a resort with low rates that made it accessible to the working man. Black insurance premiums built a hotel, a housing development, a golf course, and a cemetery. But today, American Beach has become a victim of the successful struggle to end segregation, which opened competing resorts to African Americans, and of the neighboring recreation communities whose pseudo-plantation architecture presses in on all sides. However, American Beach is protected against developers' further encroachment by Lewis' great-granddaughter, MaVynee Betsch. An eccentric, she devotes herself to full-time political activism, attending every public forum on development. A former grand opera singer now in her early 60s, Betsch is an amateur historian and ecologist. Her ''great topiary circle of gray hair...is studded with buttons advertising liberal political causes,'' Rymer relates. She lives on a chaise longue in front of the house A.L. Lewis once built for himself. And she has given away all of her money and property. Yet in the context of what has become of American Beach, amid the wreckage of race and class and development, she appears a thoroughly articulate and rational figure. Rymer also focuses on Dennis Wilson, a brawny, obstreperous black construction worker, who, in 1994, was killed by white policemen attempting to arrest him. Rather than simply dismiss the incident as racism, Rymer places the tragedy in the larger commercial context--the need to maintain the feeling of a safe zone. ''Tourism must be defended from...even the appearance of anything unpleasant or complicated,'' he observes. The book doesn't end on a high note. Rymer finds that today's ''consumer capitalism...considers culture a product and history something to be merchandised.'' Nevertheless, even as Rymer occasionally gets carried away by such gloomy thoughts, it's always an interesting journey. BY PAUL MAGNUSSON RELATED ITEMS PHOTO: Cover, ``American Beach''

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