Children of the Flood: Three Towns, Rising Waters, and the Fate of Black America

By Vann R. Newkirk II

An award-winning journalist unearths the roots of African-American dispossession.

In Children of the Flood, Vann Newkirk weaves together the incredible stories of three of the earliest free black towns in the United States – Princeville, North Carolina; St Helena, South Carolina; and Ironton, Louisiana – and their pioneering inhabitants, who, imperilled by both climate change and more than a century of white-supremacist policy, face a manmade environmental disaster on the scale of the 1930s’ Dust Bowl. In so doing, he reveals how black Americans throughout history have been forced to negotiate an impossible choice: self-preservation or the preservation of their ancestral lands and culture.

A powerful – and timely – story about survival, resilience and spiritual longing, Children of the Flood offers lessons for us all on how to endure in the face of environmental catastrophe.