WOMAN: The first flood, a hundred and some people came up out of this cemetery.

- Came up out of this... - Daddy came up.

WOMAN: Your daddy?

ANNOUNCER: Environmental injustice, traced in the footsteps of our country's history.

KOFI BOONE: The white folks claimed all the high ground for their towns and their cities.

DANIELLE PURIFOY: Black folks weren't intended to have property and land in the United States.

We were property.

ANNOUNCER: "Freedom Hill," directed by Resita Cox.

A special edition of "AfroPoP" and "Local, U.S.A." ♪ ♪ Hey!

♪ ♪ Hey!

♪ ♪ Hey!

Hey!

Hey!

(woman vocalizing) ♪ When I rise in the morning ♪ ♪ When I rise in the morning ♪ ♪ When I rise ♪ ♪ Oh, I wanna rise holy ♪ ♪ When I rise in the morning ♪ ♪ When I rise in the morning ♪ ♪ When I rise in the morning ♪ ♪ Oh, when I rise, wanna rise sanctified ♪ ♪ When I rise in the morning ♪ ♪ When I rise in the morning ♪ ♪ When I rise in the morning ♪ ♪ When I rise, oh, I wanna rise holy ♪ ♪ When I rise, wanna rise sanctified ♪ ♪ Wanna rise holy ♪ ♪ Wanna rise sanctified ♪ ♪ Wanna rise, wanna rise, when I rise ♪ WOMAN: I talked to the national weather station.

They told me, "I don't wanna tell you what to do, "but I think that we're gonna have a great deal of water that's gonna come into Princeville."

MAN: ♪ God's gonna trouble the water ♪ ♪ We singing... ♪ WOMAN: I left here in my pajamas and pajama top.

That was all I had.

MARQUETTA DICKENS: We were at Mr., Mr. Matheson's store.

The police came in and basically said everybody needed to evacuate because the river wasn't gonna hold up, and then the lights went out.

WOMAN: Caskets came up out of the cemetery, and they were floating in different areas.

And there was one that, it just, it just kept bouncing off of the curb.

WOMAN: Everything was destroyed, and we, we didn't get a warning, so we were not able to get anything out-- anything.

♪ ♪ MAN: ♪ Wanna rise holy ♪ ♪ Wanna rise sanctified ♪ DICKENS: I mean, all these houses were built, though, like, that was houses, like, almost everywhere you see trees were houses.

All of these were houses on this street right here.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, they just took, tore down this one.

Kind of where we coming up on, where my great-grandma property started.

So, from my understanding, kind of the ditch back there that we just passed, like, this area, so Princeville Housing Authority, like, all of that, like, Grandma owned all of this, and this is Great-Grandma's house right here, on the left.

That's Great-Grandma Maggie's house.

♪ ♪ SYLVIA: So there's a lot of memories.

A lot, a lot of memories in this house.

There, that's Maggie Perkins, our grandmother.

She always wanted to drive fast.

"I don't care about no ticket, I'll pay for the ticket."

(chuckles): You be going down the road trying to figure out why you going so fast, she been done got her, driving her cane and mash the accelerator while you drive!

BRENDA: Yeah.

SYLVIA: She was something else.

She was a pistol.

DICKENS: Yeah, they love her hat.

Let me show the people your hat.

If you're from Princeville, you know (inaudible) and her hats.

BRENDA: I love my hats.

MAN: Yes.

BRENDA: I lost one hat in the flood.

SYLVIA: So when it flooded the first time, it flooded the whole house, right?

- Yeah, my washing machine in the back was in here.

I don't know how it got in here.

'Cause I think it, like, it was in that room.

SYLVIA: Wow, so your washing machine float, flowed from back there to up here?

BRENDA: Uh-huh.

There was a man that came here, he said, "That's a good house, that.

Don't, don't tear it down."

(murmurs) 'Cause when they put a septic tank in, they said, "What in the world?"

It was made out of wood.

He said he never seen one like that-- right out there.

SYLVIA: Wow.

- It was wood.

SYLVIA: So this the regional, this is Perkin Women.

DICKENS: Seems like we have a very strong, like, very strong woman presence in our family.

♪ ♪ I was a shy, quiet kid, I kept to myself.

You, you would see people, you know, kids up and down the street, on their bikes.

I would go next door to my cousin's house and hang out with her when she was at her grandma's house, too.

Everybody knew everybody.

People would walk to one or two or three stores.

We knew we would go to Ernest's store to get the pickles.

We would go to Ms. Lila Bell's store to get the penny candy.

So, it was a community.

♪ ♪ I think that everybody from Princeville always will be from Princeville, and so in a sense, we have that community.

I just think, due to the flooding, we've been displaced in different places.

I feel that if the town was built up, I feel that people like myself, more people like myself, would come back and live here.

Because we love, we love Princeville, you know what I mean?

We love this area.

♪ ♪ LEE STATON: That was '99, Floyd, our biggest one ever!

RESITA COX: You lost everything.

STATON (laughs): What?

Everything?

(people laughing) I lost everything in 2016.

MAN: Only thing you had was what you had on your back.

STATON: Only thing you had was what you had on your back, that was it.

You know, we discuss this all the time.

I mean, we still in disbelief from '99.

From zero water to 17, 18 feet of water?

COX: Right.

STATON: '99 was our most hectic time that we can remember, you know.

But the thing about it was, we left, we left home, there was no water.

We didn't see any water.

Next morning, you know, we got 17 feet of water.

To our houses', you know, roof.

No way in hell we could have, should have got caught in that much water.

(people talking in background) CURTIS JONES: I'm cooking something-- what we cooking, Leroy?

LEROY JONES: We cooking some, some ribs.

CURTIS: Some, uh, yeah.

LEROY: Chicken.

And hamburger.

CURTIS: Hamburger.

LEROY: My mother's 106th birthday today.

She, she-- well, no.

They celebrating, the celebration's today.

Her birthday was actually on the 24th.

CURTIS: Yeah.

LEROY: So they gonna have a drive-by today.

And people... As a matter of fact, they'll be lining up in ten minutes, right over there by, on the other side of that wood there.

They gonna line, the cars gonna line up and come on by.

WOMAN: There many cars over there?

MAN: You got it?

MAN: Hey, hey!

MAN: All right, baby.

BOBBIE JONES: How you doing?

- Hi, how's it going, man?

BOBBIE: Good.

We're rolling.

So what we have is a drive-through celebration.

106 vehicles, 106 birthday cards, 106 hard pieces of candy, which is her favorite, 106 balloons, and $1,006.

WOMAN: Hallelujah!

Thank you, Lord.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

What a blessing, what a blessing.

MAN: Yes, it is.

WOMAN: What a blessing.

I tell you, that's a blessing.

That's a blessing.

(sirens blaring) (sirens continue) (airhorns blow) (sirens blaring) (sirens continue, electronic horn beeps) ♪ ♪ NEWS ANCHOR: More than three million people have been told to evacuate this storm.

METEOROLOGIST: Closer to North Carolina than it has been in the past few tracks.

NEWS ANCHOR: Floyd will continue to move west-northwest.

WOMAN: But we also have (inaudible) to find our children.

We don't know where they are, 'cause they been displaced.

We know that many of the rivers that have flooded have not yet crested.

(camera shutter clicking) REPORTER: These are people's personal items, on the side of the road now, all thanks to Hurricane Matthew.

It is a major hurricane, a category four, just on the verge of becoming a category five.

METEOROLOGIST: Tomorrow morning, winds still at 100 miles per hour.

♪ ♪ BOONE: There were some political geographers who did a study of over 100 Southern cities in the United States.

Across all these, those 100 cities, higher ground predominantly white, lower ground predominantly Black and brown, right?

And so they called that phenomenon "racialized topography."

So they can predict the racial makeup of certain landscapes, it's based on race.

♪ ♪ A lot of these cities and towns, particularly Tarboro, which is right across the river, right across the Tar River, dates back to, you know, the days of George Washington, really the foundings of, you know, the, the U.S. colonies.

The white folks, essentially, in the Southeast claimed all the high ground for their towns and their cities.

So you could buy land, but you kind of bought it knowing that it was land that was refused or undesirable to white folks.

Freedom Hill and Princeville-- Freedom Hill, ironically, "hill"-- they built up the land in a flood plain, in a valley that's designed to flood.

And it's not unique to Princeville.

There are many, many, many cities that are like that.

DICKENS: So, like, where those trees are, kind of, you see things growing over it?

There's actually graves under there.

And it's, like, all of this was kind of like those trees.

But we uncovered all of these graves, and since July 4, some of the grass has grown back up.

The town is supposed to cut the grass once a month.

So they probably haven't gotten the chance to, to do that.

But we'll come back out-- if it's not done by the time we come back out, we'll just, we'll take care of it, but our main thing is really uncovering some of these graves to see if we can get some researchers to come out.

WOMAN: Momma... WOMAN: Hello, girls.

WOMAN: Hi.

WOMAN: Girl, how you doing?

DICKENS: Hello, hello.

WOMAN: Which one is her daughter?

WOMAN: Huh?

DICKENS: Right here.

WOMAN: Now, this is Grandmama's...

This is Grandmama's daughter.

DICKENS: Right here?

Maggie Lee Perkins.

WOMAN: Oh, yeah, okay, all right, I got you.

DICKENS: What prompted me to get into my ancestry was, again, the African spirituality piece of, of understanding what that meant, of being connected to your ancestors and seeing your ancestors, and praying to your ancestors for guidance and those type of things.

I talk to my ancestors, I ask them for guidance.

If anybody knows what my family is going through or have gone through, they know.

WOMAN: The first flood?

WOMAN: The first flood, yes.

WOMAN: It was a hundred and some people came up out of this cemetery.

- Came up out of this... - Daddy came up.

WOMAN: Your daddy, okay.

- Uh-huh, and everybody had to, in the family, had to go back, tell what kind of operations he had.

WOMAN: Yeah?

- What kind of sickness he had.

WOMAN: Oh, my gosh.

- And all of that before they reburied them back.

WOMAN: I remember-- I didn't realize it was a hundred that came up, I knew a few came up.

I didn't realize it was a hundred.

- Uh-huh.

DICKENS: Wow.

WOMAN: Oh, my... DICKENS: So this is my grandfather's, my grandfather's brother.

Wow.

Yeah, like, my, almost my whole family is buried out here.

So, wow.

MAN (archival): We will not allow Warren County to become a dump site.

REPORTER: The State Highway Patrol began moving in on the marchers as they approached the entrance to the state landfill.

ERICA SMITH: I first gained my political consciousness when I was in the sixth grade, at the birthplace of environmental justice movement.

And that's Warren County, North Carolina.

PROTESTERS: ♪ Ain't gonna stop us now ♪ ♪ Ain't gonna stop us now ♪ I don't want this stuff throwed in my water.

SMITH: And so I can recall, as a middle schooler, being just so curious and involved about why, of all places, did the industry or the, the polluters decide to dump this toxic waste in a community that was predominantly Black, predominantly high-poverty, and rural.

REPORTER: State and federal officials defended the decision to stop protesters and to store PCB here.

We were hoping that we were gonna have, of course, just a protest.

(crowd clamoring) You witnessed the fact that there was an attempt to obstruct... (crowd clamoring) ...which we simply could not allow to continue.

(clamoring) PURIFOY: Environmental racism is the targeting of communities of color for various forms of environmental harm.

There's really an important component to environmental racism that I think is really critical to the stories of communities like Princeville, and that is this sense of land devaluation and protection of white property.

Black folks weren't intended ever to have property and land in the United States.

We were property.

WOMAN (on recording): To enable audio controls, please enter your audio PIN followed by the pound or hash sign.

If you do not have a PIN, just press pound or hash.

WOMAN: Do one, pound, please.

(phone buttons beep) (recorder chirps) BOBBIE: Good evening, lady and gentlemens.

We will go ahead and get started with our meeting.

We call our Board of Education, Board of Commissioners meeting to order.

(voiceover): What really pushed me to run was, every time I picked up a newspaper, it was something negative about the town of Princeville, uh, all over the media.

Um, and I knew we were better than that.

So I told them I'd, I'd put my name in the hat.

I started campaigning, and I won in the 2013 election.

And we ran on the platform of "Let US make Princeville great again," capital U, capital S, because I knew I couldn't do it alone.

And I knew that citizens couldn't do it alone.

(in meeting): Today is Wednesday, September the 30th, 2020, at 6:09 p.m. DICKENS: We need people in leadership who are great facilitators.

I do believe that if you think about small-town and rural communities, we would think about the education of those boys and the, and the experience.

A lot of people aren't, you know, aren't experienced in politics, at all, you know?

And you're talking about people who just live in their communities and they just want to see it better.

But sometimes they don't necessarily have the training or the education or the, or the life experience itself to bring new ideas.

Your vision is, is only as, as bright as your experiences are.

There was a group of Black community leaders and organizations and, and business owners that came out today, and just to have a conversation with, with lieutenant governor about his plans and his agenda for, you know, if he becomes governor and things like that.

DAN FOREST: I will really probably be relying on you guys to help me build this kind of team to talk about these kinds of issues, right?

There are offices and departments within government, within the governor's office, that do.

From a conservative Republican's perspective, there are just not a lot of African American conservative Republicans out there jumping up and down to get on your team.

MAN: Mm.

- You know?

So we have to reach, reach out across the aisle.

KENDRICK RANSOME: The politicians should be connecting with a group of young professionals and young leaders to say, "Hey, this is what we need-- how can you help us?

", you know?

"How can you help us and how can we help you?"

One of the things that, you know, I want to point out, you said that the government is not in the business of giving out money, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but... FOREST: Oh, I think they are in the business of giving out money.

- Yeah.

FOREST: I think the problem is, the government gives out money, you got to, you better have, like, lobbyists and lawyers and grant writers and all this kind of stuff.

Because it's a bureaucracy, that's what we're... - Yeah, I understand that.

I, I get that, that bureaucracy, bureaucracy part of it.

And that's not what we're necessarily here to talk about.

We're here to talk about the Black community and what makes us tick, and what, and, like you said, what we're facing day to day.

And what we're facing day to day is that we are resilient people.

You can take Princeville, North Carolina, as an example of that, and being isolated socially, um, being isolated financially.

FOREST: Surviving floods, yeah.

- And, and when we talk about flooding, we talk about lack of infrastructure.

Well, the federal government gave us $40 million, and that's probably maybe one-third of what we need to actually fix it.

I mean, even if we go back to there, how did we get in low-lying areas as Black communities in the first place?

When you say things like, um, "We want people to work hard," and things like that, we do-- we have been.

We have always pulled ourselves up by the bootstrap-- always.

FOREST: I don't think government can solve all our problems.

I don't think y'all think that here.

I think there are places where y'all think, hey, the government needs to come in and fill the gap... DICKENS: You've been a big part of the problem.

FOREST: ...because the government's best suited to stand in the gap where the need is, right?

Because there's, you're, you're saying...

I hear y'all going, especially when you're talking, "We've been standing here," right?

"And we've been waiting for other people to fill the gap and..." DICKENS: But we...

I don't want to be misquoted.

We haven't been standing here, and we haven't been waiting.

We have been doing-- we've been consistently moving.

However, where you saw the progress was the nine years of Reconstruction.

And I keep bringing up Reconstruction because maybe we should go back and look at what we did during those times.

And that's when the Black community was thriving.

(voiceover): I think at the point where you let men who were once slave owners become governors, become senators, become, you know, representative at House of Representatives, at that point, they represent your government.

Those are the same people who made it so that my ancestors had to live in low-lying areas.

That is the only land that we could purchase and be a part of.

We've been trying to change hearts for how many years now?

- Well, God changes hearts-- God changes hearts.

- Well, how many, how many years has God been trying to change the heart of the people in charge of the government of America?

- Since the beginning of time... - And he's still, and, and God's still trying to change hearts, right?

My people can't keep depending on changed hearts and words, you know?

Like, I, I get it, I think it... - Well, I agree.

It goes with action, too.

- It's like, it's like the chicken...

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?

(crickets chirping) (chickens clucking) (chickens clucking) RANSOME: You just take this and just cut it right here.

Simple.

And... Okra grows very fast, yo.

Sometimes you gotta harvest it twice a day.

And usually, you gotta go back down more than two times, 'cause you gonna miss some.

- Miss some-- I see a big one right there.

RANSOME: This is what our ancestors did.

This is how we was able to get okra here, actually.

You know what I'm saying?

By putting the, the seeds in our cornrows and things of that nature.

And actually being able to travel from different continents with these seeds.

So, yeah.

It's a very important part of the story of okra.

DICKENS: In terms of people that you know who've been here a while, I, I feel that they are still in, within the community, I just don't think there are as many organized community events.

(engine starts) Back in the day, you know, there was community gardens, and you would go to, to different people houses 'cause you knew they had things in their, in their garden that maybe you didn't, so, you know, I think that piece of the community is, is missing.

(engine rumbling) ♪ ♪ PURIFOY: I think it's really devastating to see Black towns be decimated in this fashion.

When Princeville is incorporated, the incorporation statute says that it is subject to all of the laws of Tarboro.

And so what that means is that it's not able to actually create its own ordinances.

Tarboro really controls Princeville.

Black towns always exist within this larger white governance regime.

We have not cracked the code, so to speak, on what it means to try to develop up against white propertied, moneyed interests that really are opposed to your existence.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - (grunts): I haven't been here since.

♪ ♪ The TV was right, right here against this wall.

I had my couch right there.

Getting on the couch with a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of coffee.

(chuckles): When I come from work.

'Cause I worked third shift.

Getting on the couch and watching my favorite show before I went to, back there to go to bed.

This was the, um, the breakfast nook.

That's the kitchen area over here, where we did all the cooking.

But you had, we had a table over here.

Then I had a dining room back there.

(voiceover): I moved to Princeville when I was 15 years of age.

I was at my sister's house.

She was down the, down the street from Main Street.

And every time it rained, we'd all stand and watch to see if the water was gonna rise.

It was just that scary.

♪ ♪ And it took me two years, two years dealing with FEMA and SBA, to get another home, to get this home.

I was on the phone and I cried 'cause I had lost everything.

I knew of people who had not lost everything and were getting FEMA assistant and SBA assistance.

I stayed on the phone every day-- every day.

Until they finally...

I, I don't know if they got tired of me or what, but they finally agreed to let me have money to buy another home, and I went searching.

♪ ♪ (breathes deeply) I ain't believe they left the fireplace standing.

Why is that?

(chuckles) Aw.

(sighs): Too many memories, so many.

So many-- I mean, the whole family gathered here.

And, and you can see that it's big enough for a lot of people.

(chuckles) I don't want to live here again.

Because it's changed a lot, and I don't trust the, the forecast or weather, like they say.

100-year flood, floods, it's gonna, it's only been 16 years, so... Before it happened again, so, I don't want to live here again.

♪ ♪ SMITH: As you look at the levee systems across this nation, you can compare the towns that are getting flooded with the towns that are not being flooded.

It's the towns where you have high poverty of Black, white, and brown.

Part of me believes that, well, if their community is flooded, then maybe we will see some different things and some urgency about addressing the issue.

But, because for the most part, it's an economic discussion.

Look, look who lives there.

It is cheaper to buy them out than to spend the money that it's going to take to put the infrastructure in place to protect these communities.

♪ ♪ We're the ones being disenfranchised by the decisions that are being made as to who gets flooded and who doesn't.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MAN: ♪ Wanna rise holy ♪ ♪ Wanna rise sanctified ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Wanna rise sanctified ♪ ♪ ♪ LEROY: Cleo's-- that's where we used to boogie down there.

Me and him.

He didn't do it, he just drove.

- (stammering) But I used to go... - You didn't!

- Yeah, I used to go to Cleo's!

- You didn't use to go to Cleo's, too!

- Yes!

- Little hole in the wall-- I think the building is still there, right on the other side of these woods here.

- Uh-huh.

♪ ♪ STATON: We don't have to catch them floods.

We just Princeville, we gonna catch 'em.

Black poor people's gonna catch 'em.

In America, they gonna catch it, I don't care where you go.

Look at, look at Katrina-- Black poor people.

And the government still feels that way about it.

MAN: Yes.

- They think we're ignorant and dumb.

But we're gonna keep going, see, 'cause we strong.

MAN: Sure.

- They know we are strong and, you know, resistant people.

MAN: That's right.

STATON: Yeah, you know, we love Princeville.

You gotta be born here to love it, you know?

♪ ♪ DICKENS: I want people to know the history of Princeville.

I want people to know not just the history, but I want people to know the stories of the people from here.

So you'll see why we're not letting our town die.

♪ ♪ I'm a very spiritual person-- I believe in energy.

I had a session with a medium, and some of my ancestors came forward, and so that really pushed me.

And I definitely feel my ancestors pushing me.

There's been plenty of times where I'm, like, "Forget this, these people don't care..." (chuckles): "These people don't care.

"You know, I'm here trying to give expertise, my... "You know, I'm, I'm literally volunteering my time.

I'm not making a dime."

You know, it's just, like, "Whatever, man, I, I'm done.

I don't have to do this."

But my ancestors are, like, "No, you do.

"You said you was gonna do this, "and we're gonna do this, and we support you.

And we're behind you."

I'm all about solutions.

I can't complain about something if I'm not gonna provide or be a part of the solution.

MAN: ♪ Wanna rise sanctified ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Wanna rise ♪ ♪ ♪ MAN: ♪ Wanna rise holy ♪ ♪ Wanna rise sanctified ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Wanna rise sanctified ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Wanna rise holy ♪ ♪ Wanna rise sanctified ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Wanna rise ♪ WOMAN: The first flood, a hundred and some people came up out of this cemetery.

- Came up out of this... - Daddy came up.

WOMAN: Your daddy?

Hi, I'm Tina McDuffie, host of "Local, U.S.A." You've just watched a very special episode of "AfroPoP" in partnership with "Local, U.S.A." "Freedom Hill" unveils the story of Princeville, North Carolina, the oldest town in the United States chartered by African Americans.

Founded by emancipated slaves at the dawn of their freedom, Princeville was once a beacon of hope named Freedom Hill.

Despite its significant history, the town has faced economic and environmental challenges, notably, recurring floods from storms and hurricanes.

- Aw.

(sighs): Too many memories, so many.

I don't want to live here again.

They say a hundred-year flood.

It's only been 16 years.

MCDUFFIE: The documentary immerses us into the lives of Princeville residents as they battle to save their community, striving to rebuild and safeguard Freedom Hill from being erased by nature and neglect.

With us are two distinguished guests.

First, we have Resita Cox.

She's the director and producer of "Freedom Hill."

An Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, Resita's documentaries capture her community's resilience and spirit in the face of systematic racism.

Also joining us is DeVante Hudson, chief organizing officer for the Chisholm Legacy Project.

His advocacy work deeply intersects with the themes of "Freedom Hill."

Through the Chisholm Legacy Project, he advocates for a just transition framework that empowers frontline communities through grassroots leadership and comprehensive support.

We are so happy to have both of you spending some time with us today.

Resita, tell us a little bit about what it was like growing up in North Carolina.

- Yeah, growing up in Eastern North Carolina is kind of like a summer country daydream.

(laughs) I remember, you know, riding bikes and being outside all the time, and I didn't realize the community, like, the communal, the small town, I didn't realize that was magic until I moved to a bigger city, I moved to the Midwest.

Another part of growing up in North Carolina was recognizing, living through, surviving all of these hurricanes and these floods.

As a young person, you know, we kind of, like, whenever a hurricane came, Grandma gathered us up, turned all the lights off, "Everybody, be quiet, let the Lord do his work."

And that was really the extent of the explanation of, like, the environmental stuff that was going around, going on around us.

I didn't have the words.

I didn't have the understanding or the connective tissue yet to describe that as environmental racism.

I didn't understand why all the Black neighborhoods and communities in Eastern North Carolina were the ones that were underwater after we have hurricanes.

WOMAN: Everything was destroyed, and we, we didn't get a warning.

So we were not able to get anything out-- anything.

- I grew up just a hour away from Princeville, in Kinston, North Carolina.

So when I came out of college, I started out as a TV news reporter.

I was covering Hurricane Matthew, which also had my hometown underwater.

I drove through my hometown, Kinston, on a National Guard boat.

You could only see the steeple of the church.

And I was doing round-the-clock flood coverage, and I was sent to Princeville, North Carolina, with no context, just, you know, this town is also underwater, we need to do a story on it.

So I go there, and that's when I see the, you know, the sign that says, you know, "Home of Freedom Hill, first town chartered by Black people in the country."

And I'm, like, "What?"

I thought I knew all of what it was to know about Blackness.

And then here I am, you know, and I always say, I Christopher Columbus-style discovered Princeville as a young adult, and I was just, like, instantly confronted with the history that they did not teach me as a Black person.

Went through all public schools, went through a public university, and no one ever kind of took us to Princeville, North Carolina.

So I discovered Princeville when it was already underwater.

And it wasn't just that Princeville is underwater, it's that the first town that, you know, freed Africans formed legally after the Civil War is underwater.

And I couldn't really present that in one minute.

And so shortly after, shortly after that, I left news and then I tried to transition, which I eventually did, into filmmaking with "Freedom Hill."

- And so in your news reporting, is that when you met Marquetta?

I met Marquetta when I was on research for the film, and when we connected, I just reached out and I was, like, "Hey, your name's been given to me a lot.

"I'm not from Princeville, but I'm from the 252, "so we probably have a lot of mutual folks, "and I've been wanting to do this story about "our environmental racism told through the lens "of Princeville, since it's the first town chartered by Black people."

- Like, Grandma owned all of this, and this is Great-Grandma's house right here, on the left.

That's Great-Grandma Maggie's house.

COX: And Marquetta was, like, "Wow, I have been wanting "to document what I've been discovering on this, like, ancestry-lineage journey I've been on."

And to bring this full circle, she told me that when she discovered, you know, Princeville's history, but also her great-great-grandmother owned... She was the only property owner listed on a 1906 census as a Black woman, which don't make no sense, right?

So when Marquetta got her hands on a 1900 census, she's, like, "Wait a minute, that's my grandma!"

And Marquetta didn't know that half of, basically, half of Princeville used to be owned by her great-great-grandmother, and so when she learned that, she, like, literally moved back home, and she was, like, "Okay, so this is worth-- like, if it wasn't before, "with just, like, the general history, "it even, it's more so personal now, "this is worth, like, fighting for, advocating for, and protecting."

- Wow.

Yeah, like, my, almost my whole family is buried out here.

COX: So, yeah, that's kind of, like, the genesis of me and Marquetta's relationship.

So it's a really gorgeous full-circle moment of how this, how film can be a connective tissue, as well.

- Film is a connective tissue.

And I want to ask you, as you started to get to know people in the town, that term "environmental racism," was that something that was something that people were familiar with?

Or was it just an attitude, like, "You know what, this just happens every time it floods," or, "This is just what happens here"?

Yeah, so, no.

(laughs) Nobody was really looking at it in those terms.

And that's why I made the film, because when I started connecting the dots of my history, the placement of Black communities, I learned the term "environmental racism" at, like, 23, through a hip-hop song.

Like, nobody taught me that.

I made it all throughout college, which is crazy.

I was a journalism and political science double major.

I had never heard that before.

Um, in North Carolina, which is the birthplace of environmental justice movement.

Our communities are actually now on the front lines of climate change.

And if, and if the government doesn't reckon with this racial history, we're going to continue to be on the front lines of climate change without the proper protections.

BOONE: The white folks claimed all the high ground for their towns and their cities.

PURIFOY: Black folks weren't intended to have property and land in the United States.

We were property.

- Marquetta was just organizing because she knew there was something worth protecting.

She didn't even really have the connective tissue yet of understanding that, like, the whole reason why we have to organize is a, is an example of environmental racism.

- And DeVante Hudson, I want to bring you into this, because Resita just talked about being able to break this down, how environmental racism works.

How does it work?

Environmental racism is speaking about an ecosystem that's created because of systems that are, that have been perpetuated, laws that have been enacted, value that has been placed on particular communities and not others.

Environmental justice is fixated at the intersection of racial and climate change, right?

America has created this term because of how segregated, how disenfranchised African Americans have been in the history of America.

So you have this conjunction, right?

This, this intersectionality of racial injustice and, and injustice that is brought by climate, but is infecting an ecosystem.

PURIFOY: Environmental racism is the targeting of communities of color for various forms of environmental harm.

There's really an important component to environmental racism that I think is really critical to the stories of communities like Princeville, and that is this sense of land devaluation and protection of white property.

HUDSON: Princeville is a narrative that is happening across many, particularly Southern, Black cities.

So you have, even when we talk about low country, right?

You have Black communities that were established or given land-- there were Blacks who were given land-- in less desirable areas.

So it's particularly, again, trace this back to 1865, during Reconstruction, where you have free Blacks who are now making and, and occupying land.

And more times than not, they were given land that was less desirable, lands that often flooded, that were lower, right?

Especially when we're talking about a place like Princeville, who, that is closer to the coast.

We don't even know about, about a place like Princeville because it seems as if American history and American topography wants to forget Princeville.

It's, it's literally being drowned out because of the factor that, that have contributed to its existence and its establishment.

- What do you think about the sentiment of, why don't people just move?

I think the question of, "Why won't you just move?

", is a question of privilege.

And I think to, to just simply pick up and move is to dismiss the wrongdoing of the federal government.

It's their responsibility to correct this.

They created slavery.

They're the reasons why, you know, our communities are where they are now.

The truth is, there are white communities, there are wealthy communities, we have beach towns with multimillion-dollar homes.

They somehow are protected.

They somehow have rendered some type of plan that prevents their, their multimillion-dollar houses from flooding.

We have houses in the, on the West Coast that are literally in wildfire land, like, and they somehow still be having the resources to rebuild and to figure out different ways to protect those communities.

STATON: Black poor people.

MAN: Yes.

STATON: They think we're ignorant and dumb.

But we're gonna keep going, see, 'cause we strong.

You got to be born here to love it, you know?

HUDSON: I think the honest part about that is that we just can't afford to continue to lose more lineage, more history, more land.

It was, I was always told me, I always understood, there's two things that God is not, is not making any more of.

That's land and time.

And if you invest into either of those, you have some type of wealth, whether that's spiritual, whether that's cultural, whether that's value that you have in this Earth.

And so, yeah, we can't, we don't have the luxury, unfortunately, to, to be somewhere else.

This is where we are.

- How do you deal with that pushback when you say, "This is happening, this is destroying our community in this way, this is what we need."

And the answer is, "Well, we've given you things.

Be happy for what we've done for you."

These politicians are using these things, these, these platforms, these opportunities as scapegoats, to say, "Well, hey, you know, Black communities, "'underprivileged communities,' you know, "we, we allowed y'all to vote, right?

"We allowed y'all to have a, a city, a charter.

You know, like, what, what happened?"

And unfortunately, those, those conversations aren't as informed, meaning they, they don't have the real legs to really support community-driven planning.

WINSTEAD: It took me two years, two years dealing with FEMA and SBA to get another home, to get this home.

I was on the phone and I cried.

I stayed on the phone every day.

HUDSON: To be able to really get on the ground level with these community members, with local stakeholders, with people like Q to say, like, "Actually, this is not where the resources need to go.

"This is actually where the... "We need to redirect resources.

"If we're gonna get funding, this is where we actually need it to go."

And these are conversations that I, I believe don't happen because of how we see our politicians enacting or working on behalf of communities.

- Community-based planning is, is one answer, but if you are someone who is in a community meeting and you're not heard by your local politicians, then what's next?

We have to form our own coalitions in order to navigate and maneuver the systems.

If no one else is going to do it, we'll figure out how to do it and we'll play the game.

So that way, we have the advantage of knowing, because we are the members of the community who have the knowledge, but we can also be able to better navigate the resources to where they need to go.

So I think a, a different response than just waiting on the politician, waiting on the election cycle, it's building coalitions.

- And so that leads me to my last question.

I can talk to you both all day, because this has been, you know, fantastic, but what do you want?

If there was one thing that someone, sit down, and they watched "Freedom Hill," what do you want them to walk away with?

Resita, we'll start with you.

- First of all, I made this film for Black people.

I made it specifically for Black people growing up in Eastern North Carolina.

Selfishly, I made it for Baby Resita.

Baby Resita really needed some, someone to come in and explain what was going on, why the poorest communities-- why we were the poorest communities to begin with, but also why we kept getting flooded.

And so I wanted Black people, when I learned myself why, I wanted to scream it to the rooftops.

We've done a lot with "Freedom Hill" as far as the impact campaign.

I often tell people I had my impact campaign written out before I had my film treatment.

I didn't even know what the film was going to do, but I want, like, to be, but I knew what it wanted to do.

And so from "Freedom Hill," we started a youth media camp, which is now annual, it takes place in Princeville, where I'm teaching them Black history in Eastern North Carolina to let them know there was something here.

You're not growing up in nothingness.

And then also giving them the tools to record it and to document it, so they don't grow up like me, not knowing my history.

And I hope through that connection that we're, we're breeding the next group of organizers.

Um, so, to, so if it's, if the work, if the solution hasn't been found in my lifetime, you know, the ones coming after us may have the solution, and we got to make sure they have the, the knowledge and the tools to do so, to work, right?

And so, my, my, my long ideal overhead goal was to, of course, do something about the flooding in Eastern North Carolina and to educate people about what really was going on and why.

And I think that we've, we've done the education part, and, you know, organizing is a long game, but we have a, we have a really nice 30-minute piece that, that we can really showcase what we're going, what's, what we're going through.

And instead of begging someone to believe us, we can show them-- we've documented it, and you can't really walk away from "Freedom Hill" arguing that there's, there's, that there's not a problem that needs, that needs to be fixed.

- I hope it agitates you to organize.

I hope it agitates you as much as it agitated me.

Even though I knew the gravity and understood it, it was agitating, because it's still happening.

And this is the reality that many of our communities are facing every day.

And so I hope people leave agitated to enter into deeper organizing and narrative work, so that we can understand not just what happened in Princeville, but it's happening in Athens, it's happening in Sand Branch, it's happening in Irontown, it's happening in Africatown, in James City, it's happening... We, we can go down a list of all these Black communities that it's happening in, and this is our call.

This is our, this is our organizing moment.

- Thank you very much, Resita Cox and DeVante Hudson.

Thank you for spending some time with us to talk about the film "Freedom Hill."

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