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

By the 1880s, the residents of Freedom Hill were becoming better educated -- not only academically (the town's first permanent Black teacher arrived in 1870), but economically and politically as well. Influenced by the teachings of Booker T. Washington, the town saw advantages in maintaining a cohesive African American community. Aside from protection against White hostility, having a town full of Black merchants, farmers, teachers and lawmakers could belie the myth of Black inferiority.

The move to incorporate also was welcomed by the county's White population as a way of maintaining a Black labor force while keeping it at a respectable distance. So on Feb. 20, 1885, the North Carolina General Assembly passed an act incorporating the town of Princeville -- named after Turner Prince, a carpenter and former slave who was one of the town's earliest residents and leading citizens.

Prince died in Princeville in 1912.