Archive footage: Black Journal episode 26 featuring Soul City, North Carolina

[Amo Husserl]

Link: Soul City article

Previous attempts at building all-black communities—like Brooklyn, Illinois, established before the Civil War, and Promiseland, South Carolina, founded during Reconstruction—had failed, but Soul City had one major advantage over these earlier towns: money. McKissick secured a $14 million bond from the Department of Housing and Urban Development—perhaps in exchange for his support of Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election. The state of North Carolina chipped in $1.7 million. Another million came from private donors. With this money, McKissick built a state-of-the art water system, a health care clinic, and a massive steel-and-glass factory named Soultech I.

Donations alone were not enough. The city needed both inhabitants and businesses. Neither was forthcoming. A summer 1973 headline from the Soul City News spoke volumes: “Population Increases to 33.” Another serious blow came early in 1975, when Tom Stith of the Raleigh News & Observer wrote a hard-hitting expose of alleged corruption, nepotism, and mismanagement in Soul City. His story led Senator Jesse Helms and Congressman L.H. Fountain to demand an audit of the project. Soul City spent a year in suspended animation. Nothing could be built until the General Accounting Office (GAO) completed its investigation.

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The Time Republicans Helped Build an All-Black Town Called 'Soul City'

In the Early 1970s, Republicans Helped Build an All-Black Town Called 'Soul City' The Time Republicans Helped Build an All-Black Town Called 'Soul City' In the early 1970s, African Americans in North Carolina coalesced around constructing a new community where the mission was black...

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Full Documentary on Rise and Fall of Soul City NC

About to watch and wanted to share Watch Full Episodes Online of REEL SOUTH on PBS | SOUL CITY Soul City explores the rise, fall, and legacy of Soul City, North Carolina. Rich archival material, interviews with former and current Soul City residents, animations, and the soulful rhythms of the...

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Atlantic article for Soul City

It wasn’t impossible, though, as evidenced by the fact that other new cities of the period did survive—cities such as The Woodlands, Texas; Columbia, Maryland; and Reston, Virginia. These cities faced many of the same challenges as Soul City, with one primary exception: They were built by white developers, financed by white corporations, and populated largely by white people.

What doomed Soul City was not just the size of its ambition but, at least in part, its color. Like nearly every other effort to improve the lives of Black people, it was subjected to a level of scrutiny, second-guessing, and outright hostility that other ventures rarely encounter. The race-baiting politician Jesse Helms, elected to the Senate from North Carolina in 1972, repeatedly attacked the project as a boondoggle and a waste of taxpayer money. A series of articles in the Raleigh News & Observer falsely accused McKissick of fraud and corruption. And a congressional audit of the development stalled progress for nine months, only to clear Soul City of the charges leveled against it.

This is not to suggest that bigotry alone doomed Soul City. Many white Americans who rejected Soul City—such as Claude Sitton, the legendary civil-rights reporter for The New York Times who had become editor of the News & Observer—were not overtly racist; they were integrationists who thought Soul City was the wrong path to racial equality. Yet their opposition denied Black Americans the one thing they desired most: self-determination. As one Black preacher presciently observed in 1973, “It’s white folk, not black folk, who are going to decide whether Soul City will be a reality.”​