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Concept
Princeville, North Carolina
Summary
Princeville is a town in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, United States established by freed slaves after the Civil War. It was established in 1865 and known as Freedom Hill. It was incorporated in 1885 as Princeville, the first independently governed African American community chartered in the United States.
Princeville is part of the Rocky Mount, North Carolina Metropolitan Statistical Area. As of the 2020 census, the town population was 1,254 residents. The town is on the opposite bank of the Tar River from Tarboro. The city of Rocky Mount is to the west.
As the American Civil War reached its conclusion, formerly enslaved African Americans sought refuge at a temporary Union encampment south of Tarboro, North Carolina along the Tar River. These inhabitants developed their own makeshift settlement at the site and chose the name Freedom Hill in recognition of a small raised area where a Union soldier first announced the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1873, community member Turner Prince joined his companions in purchasing portions of the land and used his carpentry skills to begin building permanent homes. This created a kind of racialized topography with the black community on a swampy floodplain and white citizens on safer land above. White land owners made no effort to protest the black residents' presence, since they found the swampy terrain to be of little use, and preferred to have them kept away from white residents in Tarboro. Some of the landowners eventually sold their holdings to the black residents. Viewing state recognition as an important next step in establishing their identity as free citizens, the community successfully petitioned the North Carolina Legislature for incorporation in 1885. Despite requests to choose a name memorializing President Garfield, the new town instead called itself Princeville to honor its founder.
During Reconstruction, the town pursued educational opportunities and worked with Henry C. Cherry, one of the first black representatives serving in the North Carolina Legislature, to request a schoolteacher from the American Missionary Association.
Official source
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