This tiny North Carolina community is America’s oldest Black town. Now everyone might be forced to move

Princeville, North Carolina, is the oldest town in the U.S. founded by formerly enslaved people. But climate change might demand that everyone relocate to higher ground.

Princeville, North Carolina, the oldest community in the United States founded by formerly enslaved people, has been trapped in a cycle of disaster and disinvestment for decades. The town of around 1,200 people sits on a plain below the banks of the Tar River, and it has flooded more than a dozen times in the last century. The two most recent hurricane-driven floods, in 1999 and 2016, have been the most devastating in the town’s history.