Descriptions:
The Rise and Fall of Soul City
In 1973, civil rights leader Floyd McKissick broke ground on Soul City — a fully planned community he built from the ground up in one of North Carolina’s poorest counties, on land that was once a slave plantation.
He secured over $30 million in federal and state funding, hired the architect who would later become the first Black mayor of Charlotte, and built a water treatment plant, a 72,000-square-foot manufacturing facility, and a healthcare clinic serving thousands of rural patients a year.
Two years later, Senator Jesse Helms — who had voted against the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and filibustered the MLK holiday — demanded a federal investigation into Soul City. The government froze all funding while the audit ran. For a full year, nothing could be built and no businesses would invest.
The investigation found no fraud, no corruption, and no mismanagement.
The damage was already done.
In 1979, the government pulled its support. The land McKissick built on eventually became a state prison. His daughter said the first time she drove past the barbed wire, she cried.
Soul City didn’t fail. It was shut down.
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