by Thomas Healy
Undeterred by McKissick’s response, Stewart asked Carmichael to prepare a report with suggestions for choosing a new name. Sent to McKissick in late February, Carmichael’s report rejected the idea of a contest to rename the city, which some staffers had suggested. A contest would take control away from McKissick and leave the name in limbo for a period of time. Instead, he urged McKissick to announce a preselected name with a major publicity campaign, possibly tied to some milestone in the city’s development. As for the name itself, Carmichael argued that it should have no racial or ethnic connotations, should be capable of standing the test of time, and should invoke the idea of the New South. “South City” and “Genesis” were both possibilities, but Carmichael preferred “Sunrise.” With its image of a new day dawning, “Sunrise” would give McKissick’s dream a truly fresh start.
As McKissick stewed over the issue, he received input from friends and business colleagues. Julian Madison, a Black Cleveland architect who had invested in Soul City along with his brother Robert, argued in favor of a new name. “After four years of discussion, debates, opinions, positions, and lectures on the subject of the name, I have come to the conclusion that it should be changed,” he wrote. “I take this firm position mainly because I want to give those who have used the name as an excuse for non-production of industry an opportunity to ‘produce or shut up.’” As an alternative to “Soul City,” Madison proposed “Kerr Lake,” which he thought might attract residents to the recreational and leisure features of the area.
But Harvey Gantt, who now had his own architecture firm in Charlotte, took McKissick’s side, arguing that “it would be a big mistake to change the name of the project at this stage.” Soul City had been closely followed by Black people around the country who were concerned about problems of equality and opportunity. Renaming the city now would disappoint all those people who had cheered McKissick on. Besides, Gantt was not convinced a name change would have much effect on industry. “Anyone who is using the name ‘Soul City’ as a reason for not locating is merely reflecting traditional racism,” he wrote. “I hope you will not be seduced by the siren call to switch horses in midstream.”
Irving L. McCaine, a longtime friend of McKissick and chairman of the board of McKissick Enterprises, offered a similar assessment. He had surveyed numerous people about the name and heard a variety of opinions. Some disliked it, saying they wouldn’t want “Soul City” on their business letterhead or their child’s birth certificate. Others felt differently, arguing that the name was an “ear catcher” that would attract residents. McCaine wasn’t sure who was right on the merits. But he was sure about one thing. “In my opinion, a name change would indicate to America that the proponents of Soul City have no backbone and succumbed to the power of racism in order to make a buck,” he wrote. “An obligation rests with Soul City people and it must not falter from its original goal, including its name.”
On every other issue concerning Soul City, McKissick had been a pragmatist, doing whatever it took to realize his dream. He had switched political parties. He had endorsed Richard Nixon. He had given up on his plans for “radical capitalism.” Yet on this one issue he refused to budge.
Carey believes it was stubbornness. “Once he got it out there and the newspapers talked about Soul City, there was no turning back,” he said later. And McKissick was stubborn. But that obstinacy had not prevented him from making a thousand other compromises. In the end, his refusal to change the name wasn’t just about stubbornness. It was about pride. McKissick wanted Soul City to be regarded as a “black accomplishment.” He wanted to prove that Black Americans could achieve something monumental. To remove the word “Soul” from the project, he believed, would undermine that message. It would suggest that Black people could only be accepted if they erased their Blackness, if they denied the part of their identity that had been used to enslave and dehumanize them. And if there was any way McKissick could avoid that, he was determined to do so. Thus, whether out of pride, principle, or a belief that nothing would help at this point, McKissick rejected his consultants’ advice and resolved to keep the name.
As if to vindicate that decision, McKissick soon received positive news. In April, a textile manufacturer named Wilmetco announced that it would begin operations in Soul City that summer. Based in Long Island, the company agreed to lease manufacturing space in Soul Tech I, where it would make backpacks for the consumer market and duffel bags for the military. Eventually, Wilmetco projected, it would have three hundred employees in Soul City and an annual payroll of more than $2 million, a huge infusion of cash for an impoverished area.
A few months later, Standard Oil invited McKissick to speak at a management retreat in the Northwoods of Wisconsin, paying him a $1,500 honorarium and flying him up the night before in a company jet. Appearing before a group of seventy senior managers at the exclusive Red Crown Lodge, McKissick praised the company for its social conscience and touted free enterprise as the best hope for solving the problems that afflicted racial minorities. Black people were not looking to destroy the system, he assured his audience; they wanted “to become part of it, and once we become part of it, to fight to make the system include all people.” The managers received him warmly, and afterward the chairman of the board sent McKissick a note expressing his desire to personally visit Soul City.
Not long after that, Sorg received a letter from Phil Drotning, Standard’s director of corporate social policy, who reported that Amoco Chemical, one of the company’s divisions, was interested in locating a minority-owned plastics operation in Soul City. Relaying the news to McKissick, Sorg suggested this might be the break they had been waiting for. “Although Phil couldn’t give me a timetable,” he wrote, “my guess is that things will be popping in the next couple of months.”
• 19 •
Maseratis and Microwaves
As Soul City entered its sixth year of physical development, it was finally starting to feel like a real city, or at least a city in progress, with 124 full-time residents, 135 jobs, and work crews everywhere. Green Duke Village had sprung to life, with thirty-four houses either built or nearing completion and another forty-three lots ready for construction. As a Christmas gift, the Soul City Company had planted two saplings in every yard, letting residents choose among dogwood, red maple, oak, sweet gum, and cedar. Across Liberation Road, workers were paving roads and laying underground electrical lines in Pleasant Hills Village, which would have ninety-one lots. And soon bulldozers would begin clearing land for the third village, Haliwa Hills, named after a Native American tribe that had been in Warren County since the early eighteenth century. At the Warren Industrial Park, new roads were being paved and water and sewer lines installed, while down the road a construction crew was laying the foundation for a six-thousand-square-foot fire station, which would house the city’s signature light blue fire trucks. The new HealthCo ambulatory care clinic was also up and running. With two doctors, two dentists, and a handful of nurses and technicians, the clinic was handling more than ten thousand patients annually across Warren and Vance counties. Behind HealthCo stood a small shopping center, with a drugstore, gift shop, and pharmacy. There was even progress on a new sewage treatment plant. After protracted negotiations, McKissick had secured $4.2 million in funding from a consortium of federal and state agencies. Construction would begin soon, with an expected completion date in the spring of 1981.
It was all very different from how it had looked a short time ago. “The change which has occurred in a brief few months is just staggering,” Sorg wrote to McKissick in late 1978. Sorg had traveled down from Washington a few days earlier to inspect the site and was struck by the transformation of Soul City “from a state of repose to one of vitality.” The years of hard work had paid off, he assured McKissick. Even the staff seemed to have recovered its old vigor. It was like the old days when they had worked out of trailers and the red barn, overworked and understaffed but energized by a sense of mission and urgency.
“I have been optimistic about Soul City since the day you outlined your dream in my office in 1969,” Sorg added. “For most of those intervening years, my optimism was based on a lot of faith and trust in the ability of you and Gordon to convert dreams (nightmares at times?) into hard-nosed reality. But the tangibility of my optimism only became evident last Thursday. We’ve spanked a bottom. A baby has been born. It’s alive and kicking and beautiful.”
Not everyone was enamored with the infant. Around the same time as Sorg’s letter, McKissick received word that General Motors had ruled out Soul City as a possible location for a new plant. It was a devastating blow. After courting the company for eight years, he had come up empty-handed. Even more crushing was the explanation he received from a source within GM: the city’s name. Frustrated and angry, McKissick asked Sorg if there was anything they could do to reverse the decision. Sorg suggested they write to CEO Thomas Murphy. He even drafted a letter from McKissick to Murphy asking directly whether the name had factored into the company’s decision. If so, the letter charged, “it casts a cloud over an otherwise unblemished record of G.M. support for minority enterprise.” But there would be no reconsideration of the decision. GM was not coming to Soul City.
McKissick (front center) poses in front of the monolith with some of Soul City’s 124 full-time residents.
Perhaps for that reason, HUD’s view of the project quickly soured. In December, it rejected Soul City’s budget for 1979, demanding that McKissick submit a revised budget in January. At the same time, it declined McKissick’s request to release the final $4 million in bonds. In a letter explaining these decisions, William White, the director of the New Communities Administration, informed McKissick that Soul City was no longer a financially acceptable risk. But White had not discussed the letter with Secretary Harris. And when she confronted him about the matter, he quickly backtracked. He did not mean to imply that the project was not economically feasible, he assured her. He had simply concluded that the agency could not justify releasing the final $4 million in bonds. Of course, failure to release the bonds might itself render the project unfeasible. Therefore, Harris announced the appointment of a task force to evaluate the project’s future. On the surface, her announcement was encouraging. The task force would “seek to develop possible ways to encourage investment in Soul City,” she stated. But beneath the surface were troubling signs. Harris charged the task force with reviewing “current and future conditions which impact on the viability and success of Soul City.” She also requested that it estimate “the number of jobs, land sales, and housing starts needed on an annual basis to make Soul City a success.”
It didn’t take a genius to realize that the task force would decide whether the infant city lived or died.
* * *
WHILE THE TASK force began its work, McKissick flew to Washington, DC, to indulge in a rare bit of nostalgia. On Saturday, March 3, he emceed a testimonial dinner for James Farmer at the Sheraton Park Hotel. Speaking to a crowd of four hundred, McKissick praised Farmer for his leadership and bravery during the civil rights battles of the 1960s. Farmer brushed off the praise, denying he possessed any special courage. But with a patch over his right eye (he had recently undergone surgery for glaucoma), he looked every bit the old soldier. And when he told the audience it was time to form a new civil rights organization because “the war is just starting,” it was possible, if just for a moment, to envision him and McKissick leading their troops into combat once more.
After spending two days back in Soul City, McKissick was scheduled to return to Washington on Tuesday, March 6. He had a meeting at HUD on Wednesday and, as he often did, had made reservations to fly up the night before. It was dusk when he got behind the wheel of his Pontiac sedan for the sixty-mile drive to the Raleigh-Durham airport. He had driven this route hundreds of times over the past decade and, on most nights, probably could have made it blindfolded. But on this night, approaching the town of Butner, just north of Durham, he swerved to avoid a deer and drove off an embankment. The car rolled over and landed on its roof, trapping McKissick inside. When the paramedics arrived, they worked frantically, prying open the car door with a hydraulic spreader, cutting McKissick out of his Yves Saint Laurent suit, and rushing him to the Durham County General Hospital.
It was too late, a local radio station reported. McKissick was dead. Another great civil rights leader had perished, this one in a tragic accident three days shy of his fifty-seventh birthday.
Not until several hours later did listeners learn the truth: McKissick was alive, albeit in critical condition. His youngest daughter, Charmaine, was the first to see him. Living in Durham at the time, she received a call from her mother, then rushed to the hospital and found McKissick on his way into surgery. He looked as if he had been in an explosion, his head covered in bloody bandages, shards of glass embedded in his face, his collarbone, shoulder, and arm all fractured. But as soon as he opened his mouth, she knew he was going to be fine. “Doodlebug, they fucked up my suit,” he joked, using his pet name for her. He told her to drive to the impound lot and retrieve his briefcase. Then, drawing her close, he instructed her to find his cowboy hat and run her fingers along the inside band. There, she would find ten one-hundred-dollar bills he always carried in case of emergency.
McKissick stayed in the hospital for several weeks, undergoing tests, working with a physical therapist, and gradually recovering his strength. After the first week, he was well enough to read some reports and take a few calls (including one from Ronald Reagan, who phoned to check on his condition). But he wasn’t able to keep tabs on everything that was happening at Soul City. And the timing was terrible. The task force was busy gathering information from the staff at Soul City, and its early assessment of the situation was not encouraging. In April, Floyd Jr. attended an event with Secretary Harris at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he was pursuing a master’s degree in public administration. During the event, he sat next to Bill Wise, HUD’s assistant secretary for public affairs, who ticked off a handful of reasons HUD was likely to shut the project down. For Floyd, it was an alarming conversation. He tried desperately to rebut what Wise said, then called his father to warn him. As he recalled later, “I remember leaving there and calling my dad up and telling him what I had heard and we needed to get this guy some good data, get him some good information because he obviously was headed in the wrong direction.”
* * *
OVER THE FOLLOWING months, Soul City faced a barrage of new attacks from old enemies. It began in March, shortly after McKissick’s accident, when the Wall Street Journal published an article under the headline “Mixed Fortunes: Black Leaders of the 1960s Have Come Out Better Than Segregationists.” Its premise, as the headline implied, was that opponents of integration had fallen on hard times while the civil rights leaders they once tormented were prospering. As an example of the former, it cited former Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who had once blocked Black students from entering Little Rock’s Central High School but was now being treated for a heart condition in Houston. The article painted equally sad portraits of George Wallace (once a presidential candidate, now confined to a wheelchair after an assassination attempt); Lester Maddox (the former Georgia governor who had branded a pistol to keep Black people from eating at his fried chicken restaurant, now “subdued by a heart attack and seriously in debt”); and James Clark (the Alabama sheriff who led the attack at Selma, now facing a two-year prison sentence for smuggling a planeload of marijuana into the state).
If the article’s depiction of the segregationists was oddly sympathetic, its portrait of former civil rights leaders was even stranger. Coretta Scott King, widowed at the age of forty, was portrayed as a wheeler-dealer who had raised $15 million for the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change in Atlanta. Andrew Young, a former King aide who was now ambassador to the United Nations, was said to be earning nearly fifty thousand dollars a year and living “in a lavishly decorated, four-bedroom ap
artment at the Waldorf Towers with a chauffeur at his beck and call.” And Vernon Jordan, once a lowly law clerk making thirty-five dollars a week, was now head of the Urban League, reportedly earning a hundred thousand dollars in annual salary and corporate directorships.
As for McKissick, he was “another obviously affluent black” who had made money off his career as a civil rights leader. The article highlighted the millions of dollars Soul City had received in federal money and its failure “to lure sufficient blacks or industry” to rural North Carolina. “The founder, however, obviously is doing well, though he won’t discuss his income,” the article reported. “Mr. McKissick’s wife and son also hold jobs at the project. All drive expensive automobiles. And they occupy a rambling house that a builder says couldn’t be duplicated for $300,000.”
It was the old narrative about uppity Blacks living above their station, and it apparently caught the attention of another reporter at the Journal, a staff writer named Susan Harrigan. Not long afterward, she traveled to Soul City to report on the town’s progress. Harrigan spent five days on-site, touring the property, interviewing staff and residents, and reviewing numerous documents. In spite of their previous experiences with the Journal, the McKissicks welcomed her warmly—inviting her into their home, feeding her dinner, driving her to the airport—and after she left they felt certain that Harrigan, unlike the reporters before her, would give them a fair shake.
They were disappointed. Her article appeared on the front page under the headline “An Old ‘New Town’ Hangs On, Sustained by Federal Money.” The title was unobjectionable, and much of the article was a straightforward account of the difficulties Soul City had encountered. It quoted McKissick on the red tape of the federal bureaucracy; Bignall Jones, the editor of the Warren Record, on the importance of Soul City to the local economy; and a businessman from nearby Henderson who wanted the Ku Klux Klan to burn Soul City down. And although Harrigan seemed determined to play up the town’s lack of progress with cheeky comments about the cement foundation of the “unbuilt fire station” and the Pleasant Hills subdivision consisting only of “pleasant, empty hills,” she did quote local resident Johnnie Johnson, who said, “Soul City is like a dream to me,” and Henry Chew, who compared living in Soul City to being a “Forty-Niner” on the frontier.