Qualla: Tarboro, North Carolina

Tarboro, North Carolina: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. When Congressman George Henry White left Tarboro in 1900, he said he was leaving because it was impossible for a Black man to be a man in North Carolina. The 1899 disfranchising constitution had stripped Black citizens of the vote that had elected four African-American congressmen from the 2nd district in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. White had been one of them. He moved to Washington and then to Philadelphia, where he became a successful banker. He never came back. Tarboro itself - the ninth-oldest incorporated town in North Carolina, settled in a bend of the Tar River where the Piedmont meets the coastal plain - kept its 45-block historic district and its colonial town common, and waited a long time before it could acknowledge what White had been talking about.

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Tarboro, North Carolina: Founded in 1760

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. The Tuscarora people called the river Taw - river of health - and by 1750 the area was widely known as Tawboro. Tarboro was officially chartered on November 30, 1760, by the colonial General Assembly, when Joseph and Ester Howell deeded 150 acres to a group of commissioners for f...

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Tarboro, North Carolina: George Henry White and the Disfranchising Constitution

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. Office of the Associate Director for Decennial Census. Geography Division. (1/1987 - 7/15/2011), Public domain. By the 1870s, Edgecombe County had a majority-Black population, the result of antebellum cotton plantation labor and postwar settlement patterns. African Americans organized politically and won office. Between 1875 and 1901, four Black men represented North Carolina's 2nd congres...

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Image: Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. Office of the Associate Director for Decennial Census. Geography Division. (1/1987 - 7/15/2011) | Public domain

Tarboro, North Carolina: The Town Common and the Historic District

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. The Tarboro Town Common, set aside in the 1760 charter, is the only surviving original colonial town common on the East Coast outside Boston. A 15-acre park canopied by tall oaks, it originally surrounded the town and served for common grazing, community gatherings, and military ...

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Tarboro, North Carolina: Hurricane Floyd and Princeville

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. In September 1999, Hurricane Floyd stalled over eastern North Carolina and dumped catastrophic rainfall on watersheds already saturated by Hurricane Dennis. The Tar River, which wraps around about half of Tarboro, crested 24 feet above flood stage - exceeding the 500-year flood l...

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Image: Indy beetle | CC0