Qualla: Princeville, North Carolina

Princeville, North Carolina: Introduction

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

They called it Freedom Hill. As the Civil War sputtered to its end in 1865, formerly enslaved African Americans gathered at a Union encampment south of Tarboro, North Carolina, along the Tar River. The freedmen chose the name in honor of a small rise of ground where a Union soldier had first read the Emancipation Proclamation aloud. The land belonged to two white planters, John Lloyd and Lafayette Dancy, who never tried to remove them -- partly because federal troops were nearby, partly because the low-lying ground flooded so regularly that no one else wanted it. On that unwanted floodplain, the residents of Freedom Hill built the first town in American history chartered and governed entirely by Black citizens.

Princeville, North Carolina: Carpenters, Laundresses, and Blacksmiths

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Freedom Hill defied the assumptions white America held about freedmen's communities. Located in an agricultural region, it was not an agricultural settlement. The 1880 U.S. census recorded 379 inhabitants, of whom only 12 were farmers and 43 were farmhands. The rest worked in tra...

Princeville, North Carolina: Chartered in the Name of Turner Prince

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The push for incorporation came from both sides of the color line. Black residents wanted self-governance. White residents of Edgecombe County wanted Black workers available as a labor force but socially separated from their own communities. Both interests converged in February 1...

Princeville, North Carolina: The River That Gives and Takes

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Tar River was Princeville's reason for being and its recurring curse. The low elevation that made the land available to freed people in the first place guaranteed that floods would return, again and again. In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd delivered the worst blow. The storm...

Princeville, North Carolina: What Remains on Freedom Hill

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Princeville today is a town of about 1,254 people, sitting across the Tar River from Tarboro, with Rocky Mount a short drive to the west. Its historical significance draws visitors and scholars. In 1999, students from North Carolina State University created a mobile museum to sho...