America's oldest Black town is threatened by floods - and seeking a Plan B
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Sunday, January 28, 2024 • • General
January 28, 2024 - On a blustery January afternoon in Princeville, N.C., about 35 citizens met with their mayor, elected commissioners and the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers in their new flood-resistant town hall, built in 2020. Across Main Street, elderly residents were climbing two flights of stairs to enter their senior center, raised 14 feet above ground level in 2021. A quarter-mile away, the Tar River — Princeville's longtime nemesis — rolled on quietly, north to south. The Tar and its latent forces were the reason for this meeting. Princeville, the oldest Black-chartered town in the United States, has suffered through at least nine hurricanes and floods since it was established at the end of the Civil War. They're only getting worse. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd breached the town's levee and left 10 feet of standing water for two weeks, destroying nearly 1,000 buildings. Floyd was followed in 2016 by Matthew, which again breached the levee and demolished half the town.
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Sunday, August 17, 2025 • • General
As a society, we struggle with the concepts of death and loss. Once those realities touch our lives though, we tend to lean into remembrance: through familial altars, commemorative t-shirts, even memorial tattoos. We recognize our late loved ones through physical spaces, cemeteries, with touching gravestones, and bouquets lining the casket buried below.
But for an immeasurable number of Black families, even this basic respect wasn't extended to their ancestors. Many curious descendants, like Yamona Pierce, have to carry out search expeditions for their family members, constructing retroactive family trees to trace lineages that weren't carefully written down.
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Thursday, May 1, 2025 • • General
Historic Charleston Foundation (HCF) is proud to announce a generous $1.25 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to complete the rehabilitation of the historic Pine Tree Hotel and adjacent Skeeta Beach Lounge for the newly formed Historical Mosquito Beach Foundation.
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Saturday, April 19, 2025 • • General
CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - A sacred piece of Charleston's past is getting a 21st-century safeguard.
The Charleston Humane and Friendly Cemetery in the heart of the Holy City is now part of a cutting-edge digital project aimed not just at preserving graves, but also at honoring legacies and connecting descendants to their roots.
With headstones dating back to the 1800s, the Humane and Friendly Society Cemetery in Charleston is more than just a final resting place, it's a living archive of African American history. The cemetery was founded in 1802 and established its cemetery in 1856, according to the Preservation Society of Charleston.
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