Imagine if everywhere you go there’s Black folks. In the stores, at the gas station, the barbershop, the restaurants, up and down the street and all around you, all the townspeople and business folk are Black people.

Most folks can’t imagine this now, but there are several small towns in America that are either all Black or more than ninety-five percent so. On Tuesday, Feb. 28, a documentary, This Side of the River, will premiere at Durham’s Hayti Heritage Center about one such town.

Princeville, North Carolina was the first town in America to be chartered by Blacks and is still a Black town. Princeville was founded by freed slaves and built off what was once swamp land. The film tells the story of Princeville’s beginnings, and how the town has had to struggle against racism, economic hard times, and a devastating flood in 1999 (caused by Hurricane Floyd) followed by an attempted FEMA buyout which would have erased Princeville from the map.

My family is from the area, and everyone in the town, including several of my family members, lost everything. Old family photos from the late 1800′s, family documents, everything. An uncle nearly had a nervous breakdown, and several townsfolk eventually passed from grief. I contributed music research and some let’s say “logistical support” for the film, and I appear in the film briefly with my mother and grandmother and my 80 something year old cousin (unless that was edited out). In one of my interviews with my cousin when I was gathering research for the film she told me all about my great-great-great-grandfather Cage Carney, a slave to a rich doctor.

She told me that Cage was also the doctor’s driver, and that when the doctor would do house calls in the winter he would bring a blanket. Upon arriving to his patient’s home he’d put the blanket on the horse and instruct Cage to go get under the house and lie with the dogs to keep warm. This was of course in the old times in the South where a lot of the plantation homes and other homes were wooden structures with spaces under them. This cousin also told me about other members in my family who had been owned by one of NC’s governers, Elias Carr.

Before I started working with the producers of this film, I had been working on and am still working on documenting my family history for my children, and this is certainly important stuff to me and very close to my heart. I am using some of Elias Carr’s papers to continue my family research. I believe his home still stands, and I plan to go there, soon. The director is giving me copies of all the footage with me and my family members, and I can’t tell you how much that means.

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE working on projects like the Princeville movie, and my second book, which I have been working on side by side with the “Fear” book — I have trouble concentrating on one project at a time — is a historical novel about Princeville with Black heroes and heroines…and a lot of intrigue. Like “Roots” mixed with “Patriot Games”. I look forward to doing more score and soundtrack consulting type work too. That was fun.

I highly encourage everyone in the Triangle and surrounding areas to support this film! The producer told me that the owner of Tribes Magazine, a teacher is encouraging her North Carolina history class to go see it for extra credit. Wow, what great support! And if you are a Black person I encourage you to find out more about your family history. If you need help just ask me how to get started. It’s infinitely enriching.