We often hear this refrain that marginalized communities weather the worst impacts of climate change. But for Charlotte-based filmmaker and community organizer Resita Cox, it wasn’t until she first visited Princeville in eastern North Carolina after Hurricane Matthew that she realized there’s a lot of invisible history surrounding the experience of climate change in Black communities in the South.
WFAE’s Zachary Turner spoke to Cox about her new documentary and Princeville’s struggles in a warming world. Cox’s film is called “Freedom Hill" and you can watch it on PBS Plus and YouTube.
This interview was edited for concision and clarity.
Zachary Turner: How did you first get involved with the Princeville community? And what is Freedom Hill?
Resita Cox: As a young person, I went to UNC-Chapel Hill and graduated in journalism. I came out of school as a television news reporter. My first year as a reporter [I was] sent to Princeville to cover flooding because we were in the middle of Hurricane Matthew.
I was just in awe — and also floored and angered — because I went to K-12 public school, then I went to what I believed to be the best public school in the state, UNC-Chapel Hill. And they didn't teach me this really significant Black history.
That was 2016. I left news because I wasn't really being accountable to communities in the way that I would have preferred. As a reporter, you talk to people on the worst day ever, and you don't really get sent back until it's the worst day ever.
“Freedom Hill” is the story of Princeville. It's the story of eastern North Carolina and our struggles with environmental racism. It also chronicles the resistance and the birth of the environmental justice movement, which also happened right here in eastern North Carolina.
People always ask me how we came about naming the film “Freedom Hill,” and I always jokingly say, “I didn't name it. The ancestors named the film.”
Freedom Hill is what Princeville used to be called before it was officially incorporated. The U.S. would not allow an all-Black town to call themselves Freedom Hill, so they had to find another creative way to honor their heritage. So, they went with Princeville, which is named after Turner Prince, one of the founding forefathers of Princeville.
Turner: Something you [mentioned] came up during our WFAE Carolinas Climate Summit: this idea of accountability when reporting on climate change in communities. Have you figured out for yourself what that looks like?
Cox: This is not something they teach us in journalism school. I often say that I learned how not to tell a story in journalism school. I was taught [that] the story itself is the act of resistance, right?
But as an independent filmmaker, and wanting to do something very differently than how I showed up as a journalist, I now say the story is just step zero. It's the way into a community, and you should leave the community in a better position than when you found it. I created Freedom Hill's Impact Campaign because I just literally said, “What did baby Resita need growing up poor with absent parents in eastern North Carolina, watching all of these hurricanes and these floods from our window?”
I needed someone to introduce me to why this was happening and teach me my history. I needed groceries — there were no groceries in the house. I needed someone to teach me how to be a storyteller and introduce me to film.
Turner: These two towns, Tarboro and Princeville, both sit along the Tar River. Tell me about this concept of racialized topography and how it manifests in the relationship to water in these two places.
Cox: Racialized topography is also something I learned in research for this project. Growing up as a young kid in Kinston, when it's a hurricane watch, you gather at grandma's house, turn the lights off, and that's the extent we talked about it. I didn't realize that these places were not just by chance. Because of [the] legacy of slavery in our country, my ancestors were given the opportunity to purchase land in the less desirable places of the state.
Fast-forward centuries later, we're still in these places because this is where we built up home.
Turner: Marquetta Dickins is a young Princeville resident. Dickens grew up in the town and has become interested in not only her town, but her own ancestry. Can you talk to me about that choice of Dickens as this guide figure in your documentary?
Cox: When she started this ancestry journey, she found the 1900 census for North Carolina. And her great, great grandmother, Maggie Lee Perkins, is the only woman — and she's Black — listed on that census as a property owner. She had acres. This is the 1900 census, so Black people just got free, right? So, what was this Black woman doing with all of this land?
When Marquetta discovered that part of her lineage, she's like, “Oh … OK. I stand on the shoulders of movers and shakers who were doing impossible things. So, let me go back home.”
Growing up in eastern North Carolina, you look around, it just looks rural. It looks country. It looks like there's nothing to do here. Also, because of the high poverty, you have high crime and violence, so you want to leave. I believe that when young people connect to their history, when they know what stood before them, similar to me, similar to Marquetta, they have a newfound and grounded agency.
I do believe that the way we guide ourselves to a better future is to go back to the past and bring forward what is useful.
“Freedom Hill” was featured in season 16 of AfroPoP: The Ultimate Cultural Exchange, a program that “brings stories about the global Black experience to public television and streaming.”
