Princeville, North Carolina – On a one-lane road in eastern North Carolina, surrounded by farmland, the congregation of Mark Chapel Baptist Church listens to a sermon about faith – and the importance of their vote as part of the “Black Belt,” a majority group. Black congressional districts in the South.
The 1st Congressional District hasn’t elected a Republican since 1883, and African Americans have represented the district since 1992, but this year that could change.
Residents here find themselves in a new political reality. The crucial swing state has sixteen electoral votes at stake, and while a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won the state since 2008, Republican margins have narrowed in the past two elections. Donald Trump won by 3.6 points in 2016 and narrowly defeated Joe Biden by 1.3 points in 2020. The First District features the state’s only competitive congressional race after North Carolina’s redistricting.
Currently, there are seven Democrats and seven Republicans in North Carolina’s congressional delegation. The new map According to the Cook Political Report, this is expected to result in 10 Republicans and three Democrats, with the 1st District being a toss-up.
Vice President Kamala Harris on Sunday visited East Carolina University in Pitt County, which was redistricted from the Democratic-leaning 1st Congressional District to the 3rd Congressional District, which is expected to elect a Republican. Incumbent 1st District Democratic Rep. Don Davis spoke shortly before Harris took the stage.
CBS News
“The young man who now sits in the 1st Congressional District ended up on the old map,” said former Rep. Eva Clayton, who represented the district. “Now he’s creating the new map, and that is — he has some challenges.”
The 1st Congressional District is home to some of the oldest Black communities in the US and a centuries-long legacy of political organizing. Princeville is the nation’s oldest chartered city by African Americans, formed at the end of the Civil War. In nearby Warren County, a 1982 protest is said to have spawned the term “environmental justice.” The neighborhood is also home to Soul City, a utopian project inspired by the 1970s civil rights movement.
Princeville regularly suffers from flooding that has threatened residents for decades. One of Mayor Bobbie Jones’ biggest challenges is protecting the historic city from increasingly severe flooding.
“I feel disappointed and frustrated by it, but at the same time it’s the hand we’ve been dealt,” Jones told CBS News. “There is nothing we can do about that, except move, and that is not an option.”
CBS News
Princeville has benefited from the Biden administration’s focus on climate infrastructure. In 2024, the city was awarded $11 million to build flood control infrastructure Bipartisan infrastructure bill. The funding is also part of President Biden’s Justice40 initiative, which aims to provide 40% of federal climate grants to underserved communities like Princeville.
And this year, Jones sees his community strengthened in ways he hasn’t seen in more than a decade.
“I’m excited to see the enthusiasm of our young people wanting to vote and talking about voting. I haven’t heard this much lately since President Obama,” Jones told CBS News.
In nearby Warren County, community leaders are focusing on educating younger generations about historic political movements that began in their backyards. The Rev. Bill Kearney’s family lived next to a landfill where the federal government dumped PCB chemicals. In the 1980s, demonstrators gathered at nearby Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church to march to the landfill to protest the ill effects of dumping toxic soil in a predominantly black community. Five hundred people were arrested and the protest is considered the beginning of environmental justice as a movement.
“They’re about two or three generations down the road, and they’re looking elsewhere for heroes, and we have so many heroes here doing great things,” Kearney told CBS News.
The PCB protests also brought about changes in race relations. Wayne Mosely, who is white, joined the protests and believes it has changed the province’s political landscape.
“It was rare to see blacks and whites socializing together, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen blacks and whites eating together, joining hands, marching together, singing together,” he told CBS News.
He believes the protests marked a turning point, as the predominantly Black county began electing more Black elected officials, including Clayton.
Clayton, the first black woman elected to Congress from North Carolina, was elected in 1992. She believes turnout in the Black Belt’s rural Black communities, which have been overlooked by Democratic campaigns in the past, is key to winning both the 1st District and the state. for a Democratic presidential candidate.
“You can’t just do it on the urban front,” she said. “You shouldn’t ignore the fact that the blacks who live in the countryside are there too.”
CBS News
In rural eastern North Carolina, organizations like Woke Vote, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing voter turnout and community involvement in politics, are working to win votes.
One Sunday this summer, the group visited Mark Chapel Baptist Church to speak to the community. Tilda Whitaker-Bailey, Edgecombe County Lead at Woke Vote, helped register voters and inform them of the identification they need to vote and a plan to get to the polls.
“They’re becoming aware that they need to be involved,” she said. “They have to do something to change those numbers. They are aware that they have not shown up well because they have not gotten the results they want to see.”
As a result, church leaders have urged their congregants to register. Some, like Pastor Douglas Leonard of Mark Chapel, coordinate transportation.
“We just want to educate people about the importance of voting, how important it is, and why we as people of color should always go to the polls,” he told CBS News. “In fact, so many of our ancestors have died that we have the right to vote, and we don’t want their deaths to be in vain.”
