Climate Change Has Forced America’s Oldest Black Town to Higher Ground

When the development is done, it will contain the seeds of a new town center for Princeville. There will be a fire station and a town government building, as well as 50 new subsidized apartments to replace a public housing complex that was destroyed during Hurricane Matthew. Town officials are hoping that private developers will build dozens of single-family homes and businesses on the tract. This would make the 53-acre development almost as large and well-appointed as the old Princeville, with as many stores and almost as many homes.

When he announced the new funding, FEMA administrator Robert Samaan praised “Princeville’s commitment to build outside of the floodplain and protect their community,” saying the decision to move to higher ground “is a testament to their resilience.” But this was somewhat misleading: Many residents and town leaders, including the mayor, have sought for years to stay put on the town’s original flood-prone site. In 2016, Jones even tried to turn down a federal program to buy out flooded homeowners in the old town.

“We’re open to expansion, but we are not going to leave,” said the town’s mayor, Bobbie Jones, in an interview with Grist. 

But that option looks less viable than ever. Those who wanted to protect historic Princeville have long held out hope that the federal Army Corps of Engineers would repair and expand the old levee that defends the town from the caprices of the Tar River, whose overflowing banks have long been responsible for Princeville’s woes. The Corps’s original levee contained critical flaws that caused it to fail during floods in 1999 and again in 2016, but it took the agency until 2020 to secure funding from Congress to build a new and larger levee.

Jones touted this new levee project as proof that historic Princeville could survive, but earlier this year the Corps told residents that it was going back to the drawing board to review the project. The agency had discovered that building the planned levee would inadvertently cause flooding in the larger nearby town of Tarboro, on the other side of the Tar River. Officials said they couldn’t reduce flood risk in one place only to increase it in another. This is a cruel historical irony: The founders of Princeville only got access to the low-lying land in the 19th century because the white residents of Tarboro deemed it too flood-prone to use.

“Here we are in the midst of hurricane season again, and we’re just praying,” said Jones. 

In response to questions from Grist, a spokesperson for the Corps said the agency is committed to flood protection in Princeville and is seeking funds that would allow it to commission a report looking at other options beyond the levee.

The setbacks on the levee project, combined with the sudden burst of progress on the new 53-acre development, seems to provide a bittersweet answer to the murky question of how Princeville will adapt to climate change. When it is complete, the new development will give Princeville a path toward long-term resilience, one that doesn’t require keeping most residents on land that’s destined to flood. But even this progress has come at great cost: Almost eight years after Matthew, many displaced residents have moved on for good, and even the promise of a new Princeville on higher ground may not be enough to draw them back.

“I understand the government moves slow,” said Calvin Adkins, a former resident of Princeville who took a government buyout and now lives across the river in Tarboro. “But when you’re talking about such a historic town, I just — in my heart of hearts, I was hoping that these things could have been done earlier.”

Jake Bittle is a free-lance reporter. This article was originally published by Grist. You can subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.