The historical marker for Freedom Hill where Princeville was first founded by freed, formerly enslaved Black people, on land in the Tar River floodplain that was sold to them by white planters. Princeville is a testament to Black liberation.
Heavy rains in November in 2020 caused the Tar River between Princeville and Tarboro, N.C. to flood. The river had crested to 28 feet, and it crept up the railroad tracks (far right) that cross the Princeville levee 33.6 feet above the river, and nearly spilled into Princeville.
Kendrick Ransome, who runs a Golden Organic Farm, and former N.C. State basketball player Marquetta Dickens who runs a Freedom Org, a nonprofit that plans community pride events designed to draw people back to Princeville, in the Tar River at Shiloh Landing where slaves where brought ashore to be sold in Edgecombe County.
N.C. State students and professors with the new mobile museum they built.
Detail of the mobile museum.
Princeville Mayor Bobbie Jones, who was mayor during Hurricane Matthew in 2016, and Delia Perkins, who was mayor during Hurricane Floyd in 1999, stand at the town hall which, during Hurricane Matthew, was flooded up to the vinyl siding behind them.
Princeville Town Commissioner Milton Bullock, who was a member of the R&B group The Platters in the 1960s.
The new mobile museum in front of the old museum.
N.C. State University College of Design professors Andy Fox and Kofi Boone in the Princeville Museum and Welcome Center which flooded during Matthew.
Roger Southerland, who helps mow and tidy the town’s vacant lots.
A tombstone uncovered beneath years of growth in the historic cemetery in Princeville during a pruning and cleanup day.
Milton “Sweet Pea” Cherry, 68, poses in the tree line with some graves that he and others uncovered with axes and chainsaws and sweat during a recent cemetery cleanup in Princeville, NC, the oldest town in America founded by formerly enslaved Black people. Cherry was born in Princeville and has lived here all his life.
The Tar River at sunset.