Princeville, North Carolina originated in 1865 as a resettlement community for freed people.
Michael Hill explains in his essay at NCPedia.org:
At the close of the Civil War, Union troops occupied the area around the town of Tarboro. Many of the people who had been enslaved in surrounding counties left the plantations and came to the Federal encampment seeking freedom and protection.
Photographed By Mike Stroud, 2011.
Although the soldiers advised them to return to the plantations and work for their old masters, a sizable number of freed people remained encamped at the site after the troops had departed.
They called their new village Freedom Hill, a name adopted from a nearby hill or knoll where northern soldiers had announced that the Union victory in the war had made them free.
The formerly enslaved who remained encamped on the river soon erected makeshift shelters. (Continue reading at NCPedia.org. Note we have adapted some of the wording in this post.)
Read PRINCEVILLE AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL LANDSCAPE OF RACE by Richard M. Mizelle Jr.
Learn more in the Zinn Education Project national report, “Erasing the Black Freedom Struggle: How State Standards Fail to Teach the Truth About Reconstruction,” and find teaching resources on Reconstruction below.
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