Soul City: An Asheville native’s failed utopian dream

Floyd McKissick Sr. Photo from the Heritage of Black Highlanders Collection, courtesy of D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville

“The first city in the world that’s built around your family. Before we laid a brick, we laid plans for a clean, uncongested city of 40,000 on 3,500 acres of beautiful land in Warren County, N.C. There will be 18,000 jobs at Soul City. But while people will work in a city, they’ll live in a village, within 10 minutes of work. All types of homes are available at Soul City. Everything you need to live here is here now, plus many recreational facilities. Here people of all ages, races and religions work together, play together, learn together. Soul City: A fresh start.”

So reads a 1977 advertisement for one of the more ambitious urban planning projects of its time. The brainchild of Asheville native Floyd McKissick Sr., Soul City reflected a far-reaching vision. McKissick aimed to build, from the ground up, a city where African-Americans could live, work, play and develop their own small businesses alongside people of all races: a multiethnic utopia sustained by private enterprise.

In 1972, Soul City received a $14 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that enabled construction to begin. But a combination of political pressure and negative press undermined the project, and today, visitors to the area will find only fragments of the idyllic community McKissick envisioned.

Photo by Juan Holladay
Photo by Juan Holladay

Soul City’s remains sit 53 miles north of Raleigh, some four hours’ drive from Asheville. But the experiences McKissick had in the city of his birth played a key role in shaping the activist approach to civil rights and racial justice that eventually found form in his utopian experiment (see sidebar, “McKissick in Asheville”).

Lasting impacts

Photo by Juan Holladay
Photo by Juan Holladay

The First Baptist Church of Soul City still stands, serving a small neighboring community. A short distance from the church stands an abandoned building that once housed Healthco Inc. Until the late 1990s, the clinic offered affordable health care, including dentistry and pharmaceuticals, on a sliding fee scale to underserved populations across Warren County and beyond. And while Soul City is no longer an actual municipality, the project’s spirit lingers on street signs like Liberation Road and Freedom Circle, though those noble aspirations contrast sharply with current conditions in the economically depressed area.

The centerpiece of the economic plan was Soul Tech 1, a concrete, steel and glass monolith meant to house a manufacturing firm that would provide most of the jobs. It’s now owned by the North Carolina prison system, and it may be a blessing that McKissick didn’t live to see the structure become a place where inmates produce janitorial supplies for the state.

“The saddest part for me is that where my father’s office was is now part of the prison system,” notes Charmaine McKissick-Melton, who still lives in the heart of the original Soul City. The youngest of four siblings, she’s an associate professor of mass communication at N.C. Central University. In addition, says McKissick-Melton, she serves on the Warren County Parks and Recreation Commission and heads up the Soul City Parks and Recreation Association.

Reflecting on the complexity of living in the wake of Soul City’s apparent failure, she says, “I was asked to speak at the Warren County High School commencement — which is, in essence, what would have been the same school” serving Soul City residents. “At the end of the day … I wanted those students to understand what Soul City was … and what they still get from that project,” says “Dr. Mac,” as she’s known to her students and peers.

Her mother, Evelyn McKissick, “was the first elected official of … the Soul City Sanitary District … the leader in creating the Kerr Lake Regional Water System, which is a better water system than even Raleigh-Durham has right now. It’s the reason, when you go up Interstate 85, all those counties” — Granville, Warren and Vance — “have the water they need,” Dr. Mac explains, adding, “That’s a residual, major impact of Soul City, and how it has increased the community’s economic development.”

Achilles’ heel

If the project had succeeded, the water system would have been only one of many benefits for the area. In a booklet prepared for potential investors, McKissick laid out a practical case for his vision:

“We do have a concept at Soul City that can be a prime means to revitalize blighted rural areas and stem migration. … Development of Soul City is occurring in an area which is now severely depressed; the advantages for development are very great. … The Seaboard Coast Line Railroad runs through the Employment Park. Interstate Highway 85 is one mile from the site, and I-95 is approximately 40 miles to the east. U.S. 1 and 158 run on the northern periphery. Thus, Soul City is connected with the major metropolitan markets in the industrial Piedmont and the Eastern Seaboard.”

But there were other reasons, too, that McKissick chose this particular Warren County acreage, notes Dr. Mac. “He knew the area,” knew that in the early 1960s, there’d already been talk of establishing a store that would be cooperatively owned and operated by Native Americans, African-Americans and whites. In 1969, “Warren County was … almost 70 percent black,” she explains. “And I think my father really liked the concept of the Native American community along with the Caucasian. … It was a nice mix.” McKissick saw an opportunity to develop infrastructure in an impoverished area, empowering communities that had already started working together for mutual benefit.

Early on, he and his family lived in trailers on-site; later, they moved into a finished house. But his children grew up and moved away, and McKissick eventually relocated to Durham.

In the meantime, his grand idea wasn’t so appealing to two North Carolinians in Congress. Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. L.H. Fountain saw Soul City as a misappropriation of federal funds and indirectly accused McKissick of embezzlement. Helms, a former Democrat turned Republican, and Fountain, a like-minded Democrat, successfully pushed for an audit of the project. After a yearlong audit, the Government Accountability Office absolved McKissick and Soul City of any misconduct.

But it was too late: A wave of negative press had turned public perception against the project.

By 1979, when HUD cut off its support, Soul City had built roads, water and sewage systems, a public swimming pool and tennis courts, a church, Soul Tech 1, the Healthco clinic and enough housing for the roughly 150 residents. One by one, however, the investors pulled out, and 10 years after construction had begun, Soul City was all but dead.

Even today, people still live in some of the old buildings, though, and paved cul-de-sacs with capped water pipes poke up out of the ground, waiting to be hooked up to nonexistent homes.

Inspiring ideas

Dr. Mac, however, contends that her father’s project wasn’t an absolute failure. Soul City, she maintains, attracted talent and passion from all over the country. The people who worked to build it forged enduring bonds, shared ideas, networked and then moved on to effect change by other means. “Harvey Gantt was our first city planner,” she points out. The MIT graduate went on to become the mayor of Charlotte and, in the 1990s, mounted two unsuccessful bids to unseat Helms, garnering almost half the votes both times. Eva Clayton, who was also involved in Soul City’s planning from the beginning, became the first African-American woman to represent North Carolina in Congress.

In a 1989 interview published by UNC Chapel Hill, Clayton stated: “The idea was bold enough to attract both white and black, was bold enough to attract extremely talented people. In fact, it attracted me. … If I look now at the people who went to Soul City, one is now the dean of Meharry Medical College, one was the assistant secretary of commerce. … So the boldness of bringing health services, bringing economic development, was an idea that was very exciting to a lot of people.”

McKissick’s son, Floyd McKissick Jr., went on to earn a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard and a law degree from Duke University. He now serves as Democratic deputy minority leader in the North Carolina Senate, and he recently stepped down as chair of the North Carolina Legislative Black Caucus.

Economic solidarity

Before undertaking the Soul City project, McKissick Sr. had been a formidable force for political and social change in the civil rights movement. He was the first African-American to attend UNC Chapel Hill’s law school. In 1966 he became the leader of the Congress of Racial Equality and worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. to advance the cause of African-American equality under the law.

In a controversial move, McKissick endorsed Richard Nixon during the 1972 election cycle; but when Nixon won, McKissick was able to call the White House and speak directly to the president. Espousing a Black Power philosophy that focused on African-American economic clout and ownership of capital, McKissick leveraged his tactical relationship with Nixon to help ensure that Soul City would receive HUD funding.

The HUD grant, however, turned out to be both Soul City’s biggest asset and its greatest liability. In the short term, the money jump-started the ambitious project. But that government funding also gave Helms and Fountain the jurisdiction to initiate an audit, which led to negative stories about Soul City in The News & Observer of Raleigh that scared away investors and undermined public support. Thus, one might argue that McKissick’s strategy of acquiring big money through big politics was ultimately self-defeating.

Building a city from the ground up might have proved to be a successful way to bypass established municipalities’ systemic racism. But by using federal money to fund his radical vision, McKissick exposed his project to the systemically racist elements in higher levels of government.

Reflecting on Soul City’s rise and fall, Phyllis Utley, the minority student recruiter at A-B Tech, concludes, “It becomes mission critical not to be dependent on [entities] outside your circle.” She cites the example of Whitesboro, New Jersey, a more successful planned community that was also established by African-Americans, including Booker T. Washington. “They didn’t use government money: They pooled their own resources. … They had their own Equitable Industrial Association … their own structure for their finances. And Whitesboro exists today.”

Utley sees a similar approach in the collective spirit of Asheville’s African-American community before integration, when the Jim Crow laws had the unintended consequence of supporting a vibrant black economy. “When you are dependent on each other, from a capitalistic standpoint, you know that that’s your market, so people are loyal to that,” she points out. “There’s that commitment to the group, and it’s concentrated. So you have all these [African-American owned] businesses that flourished.”

Integration’s downside

But when integration came, it made the economic landscape more challenging for local African-American business owners, who no longer cornered their own racial market.

“We don’t have the hundreds of black businesses that there once were in this area,” Utley explains. “People pulled together and worked together and supported each other financially. … You had thriving businesses. And then, collectively, people had extreme pride in what they did.”

That indelible pride is what set McKissick on course to become a powerful civil rights advocate, his son maintains. “History here in Asheville is very unique: It’s very different. It is a diverse community that’s always had African-Americans involved in leadership. It’s always had people that were active and engaged. … And it was the inspiration he received while growing up in Asheville that inspired him to become active in civil rights.”

As a civil rights warrior, McKissick senior fought and won hundreds of court cases that integrated institutions. He also crafted strategies for claiming equal rights and empowering oppressed minorities. And though his attempt to build a city founded on the basic principle of human dignity for all failed, his tenacious example remains an inspiration to many.

“McKissick’s dream was, you know, ownership of one’s self and pride in one’s self; to me, I realized the dream in my own little capacity,” Jane Ball-Groom, McKissick’s former personal assistant, said in an interview for the radio program “99% Invisible.” Involved in Soul City’s creation from the beginning, she continues to live there in a house she owns. During the initial construction, she recalled, “I remember him walking around with that hat on. He had this cowboy hat, or whatever you want to call it: It was a beautiful hat. And he would just walk and knock on the door:

‘Jane Groom, you OK in there?’

‘I’m OK, Mr. McKissick.’

“He cared about people; he really, really cared about people. … He wasn’t perfect, but he was magnificent.”

Photo by Juan Holladay
Photo by Juan Holladay

Building a new economy

Nonetheless, McKissick’s missteps loomed large in his project’s eventual demise.

Soul City depended on big investors, and to provide the bulk of its jobs, he sought to partner with one big corporation. That corporate partner never materialized, however, and the other investors eventually backed out.

Jane Hatley, the Western North Carolina regional director at the Self-Help Credit Union, challenges that approach. “I believe in community-based economic development, versus the traditional model of ‘Let’s bring in a big company and create jobs.’ We collaborate a lot on economic development projects, working with Asheville Grown on the Venture Local conference,” Hatley explains, adding that the event’s message is, “Let’s build a new economy here: Let’s base it in ‘local.’”

Accordingly, the credit union also offers a Go Local certificate of deposit that enables people to “invest with us and know that the money will be used on local loans for homes or businesses. Most of our jobs here,” adds Hatley, “were created by small businesses, not by big companies. We need to continue to support those small businesses and build other small businesses [whose employees are] going to raise their children here, so the economy strengthens itself from the ground up.”

McKissick died of lung cancer in 1991. None of his immediate family live in Asheville, though there are still some relatives here. Anastasia Yarbrough, whose grandfather was McKissick’s cousin, moved to Asheville in 2011 to work as marketing coordinator at Green Opportunities, a local nonprofit. A violist and singer, she’s performed in Pritchard Park and with the Hendersonville Symphony.

“I had never heard about Floyd McKissick until I moved to Asheville. It was completely coincidence that I had this connection with this man who had done so much civil rights work,” says Yarbrough, who’s also been involved in community organizing.

Reflecting on Soul City, she notes, “It’s difficult to address systemic problems when you’re partnering with the Department of Housing and Urban Development.”

And meanwhile, she has mixed feelings about what she sees happening in her adopted city. “Asheville is going through the motions of gentrification and, as a consequence, low-income people are being further marginalized.” The city’s “so-called ‘affordable housing’ programs,” Yarbrough maintains, “are not accessible for people with low incomes. Who are they for?

“I don’t think that’s what Soul City was about. We have a long way to go.”

Still, Hatley’s philosophy fundamentally agrees with McKissick’s original vision. And in that sense, perhaps the civil rights pioneer’s birthplace, the scene of his formative years, could end up fulfilling at least a portion of the dream of Soul City, notes local business consultant Kimberly Hunter.

“Asheville has the potential to become a place where African-Americans, people of color, and lower-income communities thrive through business ownership,” says Hunter, who’s worked for both Mountain BizWorks and Venture Local. “There are a myriad of factors that impede or create access to impact the process; I have dedicated my entire 12 years in this community to delivering this as a reality. It’s been slow and there have been setbacks, but I absolutely see the potential.”

For more on Floyd McKissick Sr and Soul City, visit “Floyd B. McKissick Papers, 1940s-1980s” housed at North Carolina Central University.

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About Juan Holladay
Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, Juan Holladay graduated from Warren Wilson College in 2005 with a B.A. in Global Studies, and has made the Blue Ridge Mountains his home ever since. Juan is a father, musician, and balloon artist, among other things. Follow me @howdbot

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7 thoughts on “Soul City: An Asheville native’s failed utopian dream

  1. It wasn’t just HUD providing public money. US EPA, Region IV dumped millions to build its wastewater treatment system and collection system. It no mention was made of that, nor the cost to run it. Anyone know its status?

    What was the TOTAL amount of public money provided by the federal, state and local governments?

    What was the TOTAL amount of private money provided?

    What is the financial condition today?

    As far as the HUD fiasco, I believe HUD had at least five (5) developments like this that it funded around the country. What/How are they doing?

    Anyone give any thought that a non-black would want to live in a city so named? It’s name connotes racial divide not racial diversity.

  2. Juan Holladay

    Yes, the name actually did scare away a lot of people. But, moreso than the name, Soul City, I wonder if people were just plain scared of living in a community with so many African-Americans. I’m also curious to know what exactly about the word ‘soul’ do people associate specifically with African-Americans. I’ve seen the word my entire life in Bibles written by Caucasians.

    • boatrocker

      Great point about soul being a panic triggering word for uptight whities. Soul food, soul power, Soul Train, etc. Strangely enough whitey still thinks the soul patch is cool, which it is not.

      Though the bible has been edited over the centuries to the point of looking like the re mastered Star Wars movies where Greedo shoots first, the original Bronze Age farmers/shepards would hardly be called Caucasians- as a matter of fact, Jesus would most likely end up on the no fly list due to his appearances. You know, brown people with not ‘Murican names.

      Nice work on the article.

  3. ebbandflow

    I understand it was a different era, but I would’ve been delighted to see what a place called “Soul City” had to offer. What a great name! It is unfortunate that the city did not make it to become what Mr. McKissick had envisioned it to be. It sounded like a beautiful vision. We clearly are still fighting many of the same battles here in North Carolina, so many decades later. I hold the hope that we will truly get to a place of equality in our society one day, where all people are judged only by the content of their character, truly. Thank you for this well written thoughtful piece, Juan.
    And by the way, I still listen to Flowers & Chocolate like it came out yesterday. Talk about soul! Secret B-sides has it on lock. Much love.

  4. Mr. Holladay: While there are many whites who do not want to integrate, there are also many that take positive steps to integrate. Just look at the past 50-years of integration and many places are more segregated than before. However, it’s not segregation by force, law or intimidation; it’s voluntary (or perhaps, by poverty in that they can not afford to move.)

    Remember, almost all government actions fail as the “Law of Unintended Consequences” attacks with vengeance! :)
    For some reason, economists and city planners believe they know so much that they believe their plans will actually work. It is all so complex, with both independence and inter-dependence that I believe no one can make a plan that would work.

    With respect to races, it is my belief that most want to be with their own race, while at the same time to move about freely whenever situations change to induce the move. Being FOR your race/religion does not, in itself, mean being AGAINST another race/religion.

    • Juan Holladay

      I think people are more often attracted to other races. Mutts rule.

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