Raising a Phoenix from the Mud - Princeville, North Carolina gets rebuilt after flood

Black Issues in Higher Education, July 20, 2000 by Eric St. John

North Carolina's HBCUs help rebuild first town founded by Blacks

PRINCEVILLE, N.C. -- "Is this what it was like when God sent the flood? Marshall Harvey, the director of community relations and community development at Saint Augustine's College in Raleigh, N.C., says a student asked him that question after seeing first-hand the devastation left in the wake of Hurricane Floyd last September.

While the flooding from Floyd left much of eastern North Carolina under water, the importance of rebuilding one community in particular--the town of Princeville--has been placed at the top of the list for African Americans throughout the state and across the country. And historically Black colleges and universities have been at the forefront of those rebuilding efforts, which the federal government estimates will cost $80 million.

"We went down there to do some of the dirty work, to help with the cleanup. It was very enlightening to the students," Harvey says, noting that volunteers traveled more than 60 miles each way daily in their relief efforts. "They had never seen that kind of devastation before."

St. Augustine's was one of a host of HBCUs to offer help in the rebuilding of Princeville, a community of 2,000 that was the first town in America to be incorporated by Blacks. Those efforts got a boost from President Clinton last February, when he created by Executive Order the President's Council on the Future of Princeville, N.C.

"As the first city in the United States founded by former slaves, Princeville, N.C., holds a special and highly significant place in our nation's history," Clinton said in a statement announcing the Executive Order. "It is enormously important that as we ... honor the long and proud history of this uniquely important town, we also take steps to preserve it for the future."

The higher education community began taking those steps soon after the devastation occurred.

According to Dr. Gloria R. Scott, president of Bennett College, representatives from the state's 11 HBCUs joined officials from Pembroke University, a tribal institution for a meeting during the first week in October with State Health Director Dennis McBride. It was at that "organizing meeting," as Scott describes it, that the 12 institutions decided on a unified approach to help alleviate the distress caused by the flooding.

"We got packages of materials [about the devastation] and saw that the flooding had really disproportionately affected African Americans," Scott says.

Adds Harvey: "We [at St. Augustine's] embarked upon a drive shortly after we came back to school [last year] to aid in the plight of many of the folks down in that area. Because of the large African American population [affected by the flooding], we felt that we needed to take a very active role in the relief efforts."

The schools began by soliciting help from members of the community in which they were located.

St. Augustine's "started a campaign to get food, clothing, other necessities, toys, water," says Harvey. "We solicited many of the businesses in and around the Raleigh area for donations. Many of our students have jobs and they were soliciting their employers. We had a bazaar here on campus and some of the exhibitors donated their time and a portion of their receipts. It was a campus-wide as well as a community-wide effort.

"The best time I had [in Princeville] was the day we delivered toys to the children just before Christmas," he adds. "Toys R Us, Toy City, Value City -- they made the donations and we took those toys down and the kids were excited about that. Christmas was a little bit brighter."

That scenario was duplicated on other campuses and in other communities throughout the state. And it is the hands-on assistance and face-to-face giving that has meant the most to the communities getting the help.

As for the residents of Princeville, Harvey says, "they have been very receptive" to the relief efforts by the higher education community. "With all that devastation, they still have their chins high."

According to Princeville Mayor Delia Perkins, HBCUs have provided research engineers to study the effects of the flood on the area's ground water. The floodwaters carried waste products from the area's hog, chicken and turkey farms, leaving contamination everywhere.

Additionally, Perkins says, the institutions provided counselors to help deal with the psychological impact of the flooding and business advisors to help the local economy get back on its feet, among other things.

"It's been a wealth of information and knowledge that we've been able to pull from," she says.

But perhaps most importantly, the mayor says, has been the assistance the town has received from the students who have been cleaning the muck out of houses, working to return dislodged caskets to the cemetery and doing yard work.

"It's an advantage to have all these college students to come down here and be an example for our young people," she adds. "It helps us and it helps the town by showing our young people that they can make something of themselves."