Film Spotlights A Historic Town’s Fight To Survive Environmental Pressures

AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, the signature series from Black Public Media and WORLD, closes out its 16th season this month on Earth Day with a documentary film exploring the urgent effects of climate change on one North Carolina community.

“For generations, Black people have been on the receiving end of environmental racism. Climate change is intensifying this situation, jeopardizing our health, our property and our very lives,” says Denise A. Greene, director/producer of the AfroPoP series.

Set in Princeville, N.C., the oldest town in the United States chartered by Black people the film, Freedom Hill, captures the plight of residents in their struggle against the effects of frequent “100-year” floods that threaten to wash away their town.

The low-lying plains along the state’s Tar River were prone to flooding and deemed inhabitable by white people. After the Civil War, formerly enslaved Africans settled the area and initially called it Freedom Hill. The town was incorporated in 1885 and its name was changed to Princeville in honor of Turner Prince, an ex-slave carpenter who was involved in building many of the community’s homes.

Flooding has plagued the town since its founding, often forcing residents to evacuate. But they always returned and rebuilt. Today, however, Princeville is still recovering from the devastating floods of 1999 caused by Hurricane Floyd that left parts of the town submerged.

Produced and directed by filmmaker Resita Cox, an award-winning, North Carolina-based filmmaker who grew up an hour away from Princeville, Freedom Hill debuts on AfroPoP on April 22, 8:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, on WORLD and streams on the WORLD and Black Public Media YouTube channels and on the Public Broadcasting Service App.

“Resita’s film brilliantly uplifts the daily struggles facing our people, ensuring that our voices are heard and the plight of our people is centered in the conversation on climate,” Greene says.

Through milestone events, everyday life in the town and the work of Marquetta Dickens, a Princeville native who has returned to her hometown and taken on the mantle of saving it, the documentary explores the history of Princeville and its uncertain future. In the face of environmental injustice that leaves many of their calls for change unanswered, the people of Princeville provide an intimate look at a community on the knife’s edge of climate change.

Three other films are presented in season 16 of AfroPoP, which showcases stories and lives from across the African diaspora.

Commuted, by Nailah Jefferson, explores a woman’s efforts to rebuild her life after having her triple life prison sentence commuted by President Obama. The second and third films are narrative feature films from Kenya: Supa Modo by Likarion Wainaina, a magical tale of a village that helps a terminally ill young girl achieve her dream of becoming a superhero; and Mbithi Masya’s Kati Kati, an award-winning, supernatural film following a woman with amnesia on an exploration of life and death.

Season 16 films are re-aired on local WORLD and PBS stations.