by Thomas Healy
Given this history, Scott was not an obvious ally for Soul City. And, as he candidly told McKissick during their meeting, he thought the project had little chance of success. But he was intrigued nonetheless. His administration had embraced regional planning as a way to improve the state’s economic prospects. If Soul City could aid that effort, perhaps by helping secure federal dollars for the state, he was willing to back McKissick’s venture—on two conditions. First, he wanted McKissick’s application for a planning grant to be routed through the North Carolina Department of Administration. That way, state officials could monitor Soul City’s actions. Second, in spite of that supervision, he wanted to keep the state’s role in the project under wraps. He had already received numerous complaints from voters and local officials who opposed the building of a predominantly Black city. The last thing he needed was an announcement that the state was endorsing the project.
Scott’s willingness to work with McKissick helped reassure HUD. Shortly after their meeting, Jackson and Nicoson paid a visit to Chase in New York. Although they didn’t give the bank the promise it sought, they made clear that HUD was serious about Soul City and that if McKissick satisfied their requests the loan guarantee would ultimately come through. That was enough to loosen the purse strings. In April, Chase agreed to lend McKissick another $200,000. Not long after that, HUD approved a grant of $243,000 to the state of North Carolina. Of that amount, more than half was earmarked for the Warren Regional Planning Corporation, a nonprofit entity McKissick established to oversee the planning of Soul City.
And just like that, Soul City was back in business.
• 10 •
Naming Rights
With his immediate financial needs addressed, McKissick turned his attention to the most important factor in Soul City’s prospects: recruiting industry. He and his staff had been in contact with various companies since his announcement more than a year earlier. But as planning progressed and HUD’s support for the project grew, he redoubled his efforts, traveling the country to meet with corporate executives and search firms. Over the next year, he had discussions with more than twenty-five firms, including General Motors; General Foods; General Electric; Xerox; IBM; Sears, Roebuck; and Miller Brewing Company. In courting these companies, McKissick was often forced to compromise on his earlier ideals. Whereas he and the political economist Louis Kelso had once proclaimed that Soul City would be a model of “radical capitalism” in which employee-owned trusts would share in company profits, he now realized that such demands didn’t play well with corporate America. You couldn’t march into the headquarters of General Motors or Miller Brewing and tell company officials how to structure their finances, especially when you desperately needed their help. So, just as some of his liberal critics had predicted, McKissick gradually gave up on radical capitalism, making clear he would not insist on any particular form of ownership or profit sharing.
But there was one issue he was unwilling to compromise on: the town’s name. In conversations with executives and recruiters, the name “Soul City” had emerged as a sticking point. The former head of American Electric Power Company told McKissick the name was “too poetic and fancy.” An industrial recruiter in California said it was too Black. And officials at General Motors complained it was too unconventional.
This wasn’t the first time concerns had been raised about the name. The authors of the Harvard case study argued that the name “denotes gimmicry and cultural segregation,” while students in the UNC planning department thought it sounded “hard edged.” HUD had also been dubious about the name. In their preliminary review of McKissick’s application, staffers had recommended naming the city in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. or giving it “some other name that appealed to Black pride. This would establish Soul City not as a precedent for Black separatism, but as a preliminary experiment leading to a true multi-racial program of new community development.” State planners in North Carolina were so uncomfortable with the name they referred to the project simply as “New City.”
For all the controversy it generated, the name had not been well thought out. In fact, most people involved in the planning of Soul City don’t remember exactly where it came from. According to one account, the name emerged from staff discussions about the kind of city they wanted to build. It should be attractive, they agreed, with stylish architecture, plenty of open space, and immaculate landscaping. But they also agreed that a great city was not simply a collection of beautiful buildings. It needed something more, some intangible essence that brought people together for a higher purpose. In a word, it needed “soul.” And from that point on, staff members referred to the project as Soul City.
This account is certainly plausible. In his 1967 book Cities of Destiny, the historian Arnold Toynbee made a similar observation. Explaining the difference between a real city and suburban sprawl, Toynbee argued that the key criterion was not size or population. “Los Angeles may swell physically to the size of a subcontinent, but the tropical luxuriance of its physical growth may never succeed in making a city of it,” he wrote. “In order to become a city, it would have also to evolve at least the rudiments of a soul. This is the essence of cityhood.”
Toynbee’s book aside, there’s little evidence to support this account of the name’s origins. And some staff members dispute it. Carey believes McKissick chose the name himself, without any input. “I think it was a unilateral decision on the part of Floyd, and God only knows what went on in his head that led him to call it that.” For his part, McKissick insisted that the name had religious connotations, not racial ones—a claim that many people, including Carey, dismissed. By 1969, they noted, the word “soul” and its various permutations—“soul music,” “soul food,” “soul brother”—had become inextricably linked to Black culture. For a time, some Black people even referred to Harlem as “Soul City.”
Moreover, as late as December 1968, McKissick’s staff was referring to the project as “Black City.” In a memo written to McKissick on December 31, Harold Brown, senior vice president of McKissick Enterprises, recommended that the name “Black City” no longer be used and that the phrase “New City” be used instead. “I fear that the phrase ‘Black City’ may cause a reaction that will destroy or delay the project,” he wrote. “Besides, there would be no federal assistance (and very little private assistance) to build a ‘Black City.’ I strongly recommend that we get the city built first before we attach the word ‘Black’ to it.” McKissick appeared to accept this advice, for one week later, in a letter to the Rockefeller Foundation, he referred to the project as “New City.” It wasn’t until his press conference on January 13, 1969, that he began officially using the name Soul City.
Whatever the name’s origins, and whatever people thought of it, McKissick had quickly become attached to it. In a fall 1969 interview in CITY magazine, he brushed off questions about the name, arguing that critics were trying to create controversy where none existed. Asked whether he would consider a different name, he became defiant. “All my life I’ve worked to keep my brothers from having to compromise what they believe to accommodate The Man,” he said. “I believe in Soul City. If I change the name, I will have lived my life for nothing.” McKissick also argued that there was hypocrisy behind the criticism. Lots of cities were named for white people or white culture, he pointed out. There was White City, Kansas; White Settlement, Texas; Whitesboro, Alabama. “God damn it’s the White House and no one thinks of it as all white,” he complained to Clayton.
The debate over the name was part of a deeper struggle over control and autonomy, over whose identity the city would reflect. McKissick was determined to make Soul City a monument to Black achievement. That would only happen, he believed, if the name reflected the role Black people played in building and sustaining it. There was also a long history of whites using names to control Blacks. For centuries, enslaved Africans had been stripped of their real names and given European names instead—names such as Thomas, Andrew, or Tob
y, the appellation bestowed on Alex Haley’s African ancestor in Roots. Renaming the enslaved was a way of dominating them, denying them agency, and demonstrating that not even something as simple as a name would be theirs to choose. This domination continued after emancipation, as many Black people continued to bear the surnames of their former masters. McKissick was well aware of this history: his last name derived from a prominent family in South Carolina that had once enslaved his ancestors.
As with the charges of separatism, McKissick was exasperated by concerns about the city’s name. But those concerns had been raised too frequently, by too many people, for him to ignore altogether. So in the spring of 1970, he wrote to his economic consultant Philip Hammer, asking whether he should change the town’s name as a way to attract industry and lessen political resistance. If so, what should the new name be? Should he choose a generic American name like “Cherry Hill,” as the UNC students had suggested? Or should he name the city after a prominent Black leader, such as King, or perhaps even himself?
The answer came several weeks later, in a long, diplomatic letter. After debating the issue intensely, Hammer reported, his staff was split. On the one hand, most agreed the name had served a valuable function in quickly and clearly identifying the mission of Soul City. “In two words it has conveyed something of your basic purpose as a counterforce to migration to the urban ghettos.” Moreover, that purpose was a worthy one that many businessmen and government officials applauded. It was true that some people objected to the idea of a new town, especially one focused on the needs of poor Blacks. But “there is no use trying to hide what Soul City is all about and the very use of the name ‘Soul City’ is a good way to lay it on the line.”
The name served another function as well, Hammer noted. Although Soul City had to justify itself economically—which was what his firm had been hired to do—its basic appeal was “extra-economic.” Corporations and banks were unlikely to invest in Soul City based on business considerations alone; the risk of failure was too high. If companies invested in Soul City, it would be because they believed in what McKissick was trying to accomplish. But if they took a chance on his dream, they would want some recognition in return. As Hammer bluntly put it, “There is no percentage in lending a helping hand if you do not get credit for it, and to a highly visible industrialist the identification with a town called ‘Soul City’ could spell instant credit.”
Despite these benefits, Hammer explained, there were drawbacks to the name. For one thing, his staff had sensed some skittishness among the industrialists they had spoken with. Some were uneasy about being associated with a community that was perceived as separatist, while others thought the name had a flippant “less-than-solid” ring to it. “To many conservatives, the idea of a new town is radical enough without the social implications of a ‘way-out’ name.” There was also a risk that the name would become a self-fulfilling prophecy—that by creating the perception of a separatist community, the name would impede efforts to attract white residents and businesses. “We know that the basic thrust of Soul City is ‘majority black,’ not all black,” Hammer assured McKissick, “but the initial ‘Soul City’ momentum could push it in the latter direction.”
For these reasons, Hammer wrote, the staff agreed that the name should ultimately be changed. The disagreement was over timing. Some thought it best to change the name now, while McKissick was trying to secure his first industrial commitment. Others worried that this would anger Black supporters—that abandoning the name so quickly in the face of white criticism would look like capitulation. Hammer thought McKissick would have a better sense than his staff of the potential fallout, but “at this particular time of tension and alienation, the step could have repercussions.”
Hammer ended his letter with a “final hedge,” a “personal postscript” that reflected his own instincts rather than the consensus of his staff. He advised McKissick to “travel along with ‘Soul City’ as far and as long” as possible, while remaining alert to the feedback he received from various quarters. “In short, if you really do run into persistent resistance in the business or banking community, and it looks serious, and it appears to jeopardize the success of your efforts, you ought to be ready and willing to change the name,” Hammer wrote. “Up to that point (which you may of course not reach), I’d stick to ‘Soul City’ and play it for all it’s worth.”
That was all the encouragement McKissick needed. After receiving Hammer’s letter, he informed his staff that, upon the advice of his economic consultant, he was sticking with the name Soul City. Carey was annoyed, believing that Hammer, like most consultants, had simply told his client what he wanted to hear. McKissick, on the other hand, was gratified, hopeful that Hammer’s advice would finally put to rest questions about the wisdom of the city’s name.
And for a while, at least, it did.
* * *
IN THE SUMMER of 1970, Soul City experienced its first tragedy. Odell Kearney, the handyman who had watched over the property before the first residents arrived and then helped them adjust to their new surroundings, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. It happened on a Tuesday morning in June, at his home in the small community of Ridgeway, just down the road from the Circle P Ranch. His wife was out shopping, and he was in the kitchen cleaning his gun when their children heard a shot. Rushing to the scene, they discovered their father on the floor, fatally wounded. Some speculated it was suicide, questioning how an experienced hunter like Kearney could shoot himself by accident. Others insisted Kearney would never have taken his own life, especially with children in the house.
Still grieving Kearney’s death, McKissick soon received more bad news. In August, his friend and benefactor Irving Fain died of Hodgkin’s disease, at the age of sixty-four. McKissick knew Fain was sick and had reached out to him several times in recent months to express his affection and gratitude. “My thoughts are with you constantly,” he wrote in one letter. “Your support of my work here at McKissick Enterprises, and previously at CORE, has been of the utmost importance to me.” Still, the news of Fain’s death came as a blow. Not only had McKissick lost a close friend; he had lost an important adviser and patient creditor—a fact underscored six weeks later when Fain’s estate sent McKissick a letter asking when he planned to repay the two hundred thousand dollars he had borrowed the year before.
McKissick was in no position to settle that debt, because he was still waiting on the loan guarantee from HUD. And on that front the news was mixed. Although his application hadn’t been approved yet, the effort to build new towns was gaining steam. By late 1970, HUD had awarded guarantees to five projects. In addition to $21 million for Jonathan, Minnesota, it had authorized $30 million for Park Forest South, Illinois, an extension of the postwar community of Park Forest; $24 million for St. Charles, Maryland, a proposed town twenty-two miles southeast of Washington, DC; $18 million for Flower Mound, Texas, a suburb north of Dallas; and $7.5 million for Maumelle, Arkansas, a development just upriver from Little Rock. HUD was also close to approving loan guarantees for several other developments, including Cedar-Riverside, a high-rise community near downtown Minneapolis that was inspired by Le Corbusier’s Radiant City.
At the same time, there was a move to expand the program. Since passage of the New Communities Act in 1968, Washington’s enthusiasm for new towns had only grown. In 1969, the National Committee on Urban Growth Policy issued a report titled “The New City.” Denouncing the American metropolis as “monumentally ugly” and condemning suburban sprawl as “wasteful and destructive of the urban environment,” the report called for a shift to comprehensively planned communities, pointing to Reston and Columbia as models. If the government built ten large cities (each with a population of one million) and one hundred smaller towns, the report asserted, it could absorb the population boom and remake the urban landscape. A year later, HUD issued a similar report, proposing the construction of ten new towns each year over the next decade.
Congress wasn�
�t prepared to go that far, but it did double down on its support for new towns. In the summer of 1970, it passed the Urban Growth and New Community Development Act, which increased funding for new towns from $250 million to $500 million; established the New Community Development Corporation to oversee the program; and authorized a variety of grants for education, technical assistance, and social services. Nixon initially vetoed the bill because it was part of a larger package that exceeded his budget demands. But after extensive negotiations, Congress amended the bill, and Nixon signed it into law on December 31, 1970, just hours before the end of the legislative calendar.
With both HUD and Congress reaffirming their support for new towns, McKissick moved quickly to close the deal, scheduling a formal presentation before the New Community Development Corporation in February 1971. It was the most important moment yet in Soul City’s short history, and he left nothing to chance. He brought along a team of a dozen planners, lawyers, accountants, and consultants, hoping to show strength in numbers. He also made sure the group was racially mixed (eight Black members, four white) to demonstrate the integrated nature of the project. They stayed at the Skyline Inn on I Street, a few blocks south of the Capitol and a short walk from the newly constructed HUD building, a curving concrete structure in the Brutalist style. To save money, the team slept two to a room, in single beds. For an extra twenty-five dollars, McKissick reserved a conference room, where he conducted a dry run the night before that lasted until two o’clock in the morning.