Historic Black town established by freed slaves struggles to survive after devastating hurricanes

“It is sacred to me,” says Bandy, 65. “We got roots in this town.”

Yet Princeville, on the banks of the Tar River in eastern North Carolina, is just one hurricane away from disaster. The land has flooded many times. Two hurricanes 17 years apart created catastrophic flooding in the town, which was built on swampy, low-lying land in a bend in the river.

And weather is hardly the only force that’s buffeted Princeville over the decades. It has endured racism, bigotry and attempts by white neighbors to erase it from existence.

Gerry Broome / AP

Gerry Broome / AP

Now, with a changing climate, the future is more uncertain than ever. Hurricanes are likely to be more intense. Melting glaciers are causing sea levels to rise. And that makes more flooding inevitable.

With each calamity comes a suggestion: Maybe the town should pick up and relocate to safer ground.

Many who live here, though, say Princeville should — must — stay put.

On this land, they see connections — to a shared history and a continuing fight for survival.

“These are sacred African American grounds,” says Bobbie Jones, Princeville’s two-term mayor, words that echo Bandy’s. “How dare we be asked to move our town?”

Incorporated in 1885, Princeville calls itself the oldest town chartered by Black Americans, though other towns also make that claim.

Princeville is named in honor of Turner Prince, an African American carpenter who was born a slave and became one of the town’s first residents.

When the freed slaves settled the land that’s now Princeville, they didn’t choose the site because it was the best land. It was all the former slaves could afford.

“It was absolutely worthless,” says Jones, who grew up just outside the town limits. “Nobody wanted it. Nobody could see anything positive for the future of the swampland.”

Gerry Broome / AP

Despite the poor location, the town thrived, growing from a population of 379 in 1880 to 552 at the turn of the 20th century. It had a school, churches and numerous businesses.

The 2020 U.S. census put the town’s population at 1,254, a steep decline from a decade earlier.

Princeville has survived multiple attempts by its white neighbors to have its charter revoked.

But the biggest threat to its existence today is its unfortunate location. The town sits in a bend in the Tar River 124 miles from the Atlantic Ocean at the edge of North Carolina’s coastal plain. When slow-moving storms move inland, drenching rains drain into the rivers, flooding towns along the banks.

Gerry Broome / AP

Gerry Broome / AP

Alan Marler / AP

Steve Earley / The Virginian-Pilot via AP

An earthen dike surrounds the town on three sides. It held nature at bay for more than 30 years. Then, in September 1999, Hurricane Floyd hit. Swollen by rain, pushed by winds, the Tar River surged over, around and even under the dike. The floodwaters washed homes right off of their foundations and the dead from their graves.

“When Floyd came, it seemed like the end of the world,” says Navy veteran Alex Noble, 84, whose house took several feet of water despite being about a mile from the river. “It seemed like you just were turned outdoors.”

Firefighter Kermit Perkins, whose mother was mayor at the time, remembers floating past utility poles, the power lines within reach of the wooden stick he was carrying.

“In that moment, in that boat, you didn’t know what the future was going to hold,” he says. “You didn’t know whether there was going to be a Princeville or not.”

Gerry Broome / AP

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers made plans to expand the levee to better protect the town. Then, in 2016, Hurricane Matthew struck, bringing more devastating flooding that left an estimated 80% of the town underwater, according to the Coastal Dynamics Design Lab.

And flooding is likely to get worse. Hurricanes will be “wetter and are likely to be more intense,” according a summary of the state’s climate written by N.C. State University, and melting glaciers are likely to increase sea levels.

Now, with a nearly $40 million plan to improve the levee, people hope for respite from the flooding. But, as another hurricane season approaches, work has yet to begin. Updated computer modeling revealed that the original plan would have caused flooding in other areas. The Army Corps is trying to come up with a better design.

Gerry Broome / AP

The delay has frustrated Jones.

“If they can do it in the 1800s, certainly we can do it in 2022,” he said during the town’s recent Founders Day virtual celebration. “Our forefathers didn’t quit. Therefore, we can never quit.”

Jones thinks the town’s compelling past could be a lure for tourism. Promoting a community around its history has proved lucrative and restorative for many places.

But after so much flooding, very little of historic Princeville is left.

There’s nowhere to bank. The last grocery — called New Beginnings — closed in 2017, two years after it opened. There’s a Dollar General store. Though the firehouse was rebuilt, the town no longer has its own police department, relying on the Edgecombe County sheriff’s office.

The clapboard, double-chimneyed town hall stands next to the rebuilt fire station, with bits of tattered insulation flapping in the breeze. There’s talk the building can be converted into a museum.

Mt. Zion Primitive Baptist Church, with its two front doors and original stained-glass windows, was restored after Floyd but inundated again during Matthew. It remains shuttered, its walls still ripped out several feet high, its congregation worshipping at a nearby sanctuary.

In front of the church stands a marble monument to co-founder Abraham Wooten, whose house on Mutual Boulevard is believed to be the oldest structure in town — with parts of it thought to date to the 1870s. But it remains exposed to the elements, vines creeping along the eaves and choking the old stove pipe on the roof.

Historical consultant Kelsi Dew says the town is seeking funding to preserve the house and would like to see it placed on the National Register of Historic Places. But, in another sad irony for Princeville, Dew says raising the house above flood levels would make it ineligible for a listing, “as it would compromise the historical context.”

Luring new business to Princeville likely would necessitate offering incentives such as tax breaks, the kind offered by state governments seeking to land a major manufacturer.

Housing is an issue, too.: While some homes are being elevated, other homeowners have taken buyouts from the North Carolina Hazard Mitigation Grant Program

The town has bought two tracts totaling 141 acres where, its leaders hope, new homes and businesses might rise and also perhaps a hotel and a truck stop — all near the proposed Interstate 87, which is set to connect the state capital of Raleigh to Norfolk, Virginia.

Even with an improved levee, no one can guarantee the town won’t flood again. It would cost $200 million, according to a 2014 Army Corps draft study, to truly protect the town from a Floyd-level storm — “more than can be justified and more than the state or community can afford.”

Betty Cobb, 74 and a lifelong Princeville resident, knows that young people graduate from high school or college and aren’t looking to come back.

“Now, my grandson and my granddaughter, who’s graduating this year, have grown up over here,” Cobb says. “Anything they want to do, they had to leave Princeville. So I’m thinking, as long as we don’t have things of that nature in place, they’re not going to, people are not going to come back here and raise their children.”

Gerry Broome / AP

Gerry Broome / AP

Deborah Shaw, 61, has lived her entire life in Princeville, including 31 years working for the sheriff’s office.

“You always get an itch to go other places,” Shaw says. “But you’re always going to return back to your original spot. And Princeville is my original spot.”

Tracey Knight was in Princeville in 1999 when her family’s trailer park was flooded. Knight moved to Georgia in 2005 and came back to the area in 2013. When she opened Tray-Seas Soul Food on Main Street last November in “one of the failing-est” spots in town, people thought she was crazy.

“They said that no one ever makes it here in this building,” Knight says. “And I was, like, `Wow. Well, I’m going to be the one that makes it here.’ ”

Why take the risk?

“Faith,” she says. “You’ve got to keep the faith.”

Noble, who came to Princeville with his wife in 1963, thinks of the freed slaves who built Princeville.

“You know, they always said, ‘Don’t give up, don’t give up,’ ” he says. “And that’s what we got to do. Stick with it.

“You know, we didn’t come this far to turn around.”