Historic Black Belt congressional district could elect first Republican since 1883

Princeville, North Carolina — On a single-lane road in Eastern North Carolina, surrounded by farmland, the congregation at Mark Chapel Baptist Church listens to a sermon on faith — and the importance of their vote as part of the “Black Belt,” a stretch of majority-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 key swing state has 16 electoral votes at stake, and though a Democratic presidential candidate hasn’t won the state since 2008, the margins for Republicans have diminished in the past two elections. Donald Trump won in 2016 by 3.6 points and in 2020, just eked out a win over Joe Biden by 1.3 points. The First District has 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 is expected to result in 10 Republicans and three Democrats, with the 1st District a tossup, according to the Cook Political Report.

On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited East Carolina University in Pitt County, which was redistricted out of the Democratic-leaning 1st Congressional District to the 3rd Congressional District, which is expected to elect a Republican. The 1st District’s incumbent Democratic Rep. Don Davis, spoke shortly before Harris took the stage.

“The young man who’s now in the 1st Congressional District went in on the old map,” said former Rep. Eva Clayton, who used to represent the district. “Now he’s doing the new map, and that’s — he’s having some challenges.”

The 1st Congressional District is home to some of the oldest Black communities in the U.S. and a centuries-long legacy of political organizing. Princeville is the oldest town chartered by African Americans in the country, formed at the end of the Civil War. In nearby Warren County, a 1982 protest is credited with originating the term “environmental justice.” The district is also home to Soul City, a utopian project inspired by the 1970s civil rights movement. 

Princeville has suffered frequent flooding that has threatened residents for decades. One of Mayor Bobbie Jones’ biggest challenges has been protecting the historic town from increasingly severe flooding.

“It makes me feel disenchanted, frustrated, but by the same token, it’s the hand that we’ve been dealt,” Jones told CBS News. “There’s nothing we can do about that outside of moving, and that’s not an option.”

Princeville has benefited from the Biden administration’s focus on climate infrastructure. In 2024, the town was awarded $11 million to build flood reduction infrastructure through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The funding is also part of President Biden’s Justice40 initiative, which aims to give 40%  of federal climate grants to disadvantaged communities like Princeville.

And this year, Jones is seeing his community invigorated in ways he hasn’t seen in over a decade.

“I’m excited to see the enthusiasm from our young people who want to vote and who are talking about voting. I haven’t heard this a lot lately, since President Obama,” Jones told CBS News.

In nearby Warren County, community leaders focus on teaching younger generations about historical political movements that began in their backyards. Rev. Bill Kearney’s family lived next to a landfill where the federal government dumped PCB chemicals. In the 1980s, protesters gathered at the nearby Coley Springs Missionary Baptist Church to march to the landfill to protest the adverse effects of dumping toxic soil in a majority-Black community. Five hundred people were arrested, and the protest is considered to be the beginning of environmental justice as a movement. 

“They’re about two or three generations moved from that, and they’re looking somewhere else for heroes, and we got so many heroes right here who are doing great things,” Kearney told CBS News. 

The PCB protests also propelled change in race relations. Wayne Mosely, who is White, marched in the protests and believes it changed the political landscape of the county.

“You rarely saw Blacks and Whites socializing together, but this is the first time I had ever known Blacks and Whites to eat together, join hands, march together, sing together,” he told CBS News. 

He believes the protests represented a turning point, when 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 the1st District and the state for a Democratic presidential candidate. 

“You can’t do it just on the urban front,” she said. “You should not ignore that the Blacks who are in rural areas are there.”

Across rural Eastern North Carolina, organizations, like Woke Vote, a nonprofit working to increase voter turnout and community engagement in politics, are working to get out the vote. 

One Sunday this summer, the group paid a visit to Mark Chapel Baptist Church to speak to the community. Tilda Whitaker-Bailey, Edgecombe County Lead at Woke Vote, helped register voters and inform them about the identification they’ll need to vote and a plan to get to the polls. 

“They are waking up to the fact that they need to get involved,” she said. “They need to do something to change those numbers. They are aware that they haven’t shown up well because they haven’t gotten the results that they want to see.”

As a result, church leaders have been urging their congregants to register. Some, like Pastor Douglas Leonard at Mark Chapel, are coordinating transportation. 

“We just want to educate folk on the importance of voting, how significant it is, and why we as people of color should always go to the polls,” he told CBS News. “So many of our ancestors even died that we will have the right to vote, and we don’t want their death to be in vain.”