Established by freed slaves in 1885, Princeville is the oldest town in the U.S. incorporated by African-Americans.
As Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas in late August, a group of architects, landscape architects, designers, emergency management professionals, first responders and community members huddled into a county administration building to talk hurricane recovery. The group wasn’t in Houston — they were more than 1,000 miles away, in Princeville, North Carolina. In 2016, floods that followed Hurricane Matthew devastated the small town, and the designers and residents were gathered for a five-day workshop on strengthening Princeville’s resiliency in the face of future storms, both through infrastructure changes and economic development.
The timing was coincidental, but the news coming out of Texas was another reminder of how critical their work was. The people in Princeville are well aware of the impacts of a hurricane, and what happens after the national television cameras turn away.
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Established by freed slaves in 1885, Princeville is the oldest town in the U.S. incorporated by African-Americans. According to the 2010 census, its population is 96 percent black. Though it’s more than 100 miles inland from the coast, the town is built on low ground south of the Tar River. Flooding has been an unavoidable part of the town’s history. In 1999, flooding from Hurricane Floyd nearly destroyed it, but Princeville’s 2,000 residents rebuilt. Last summer, Matthew overwhelmed the watershed, the Tar River rose, and the town was once again devastated by flood waters.
“There is an acceptance that flooding was a part of life. People felt that we built it with our bare hands and we’ll rebuild it over and over. There’s a strong attachment to place, a strong sense of community,” says Kofi Boone, associate professor of landscape architecture at North Carolina State University and one of the lead organizers of the August workshop.
Princeville was one of six communities selected for the Hurricane Matthew Disaster Recovery and Resilience Initiative, an effort of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Coastal Resilience Center, which is housed at the University of North Carolina. Researchers there are studying the impacts of Matthew, advising North Carolina emergency management services, and helping communities plan for future disaster recovery.
The August workshop, which Gavin Smith, a UNC professor and head of the Coastal Resilience Center, and Andrew Fox, an NC State landscape architecture professor, helped Boone to lead, grew out of that work. They brought together a diverse group of experts and community members to tackle the question of how to prepare for the next major storm.
In addition to many Princeville residents, the workshop also included experts on African-American history and heritage, federal agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Park Service, and state representatives.
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