Soul City
Page 36
double his share from 1968: Ronald Taylor, “2,500 Blacks Meet to Plan Ways to Re-elect President,” Washington Post, June 11, 1972, A2.
“cancer of hectic urbanization”: “‘Soul City’: A Vital Experiment,” editorial, Washington Post, July 6, 1972, A16.
“practical as well as imaginative concept”: “A Not Impossible Dream,” editorial, New York Times, July 8, 1972, 24.
“best thing that has happened to Warren County”: Caption on the back of a photograph of Henderson city manager Melvin Holmes, McKissick Papers, folder P-4930/9.
“into a booming American city”: “Soul City Praised on Anniversary,” News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), July 22, 1972.
“what ‘ole massa’ would have to say now”: Wooten, “Integrated City,” 21.
about fifteen cents an hour: Karen Brown, director of Corrections Enterprises, interview with the author, October 15, 2015.
Soul City was not … “a City upon a Hill”: Chris Jennings, Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism (New York: Random House, 2016), 6, 138.
Nor was Soul City … become “a Negro Paradise”: Janet Sharp Hermann, The Pursuit of a Dream (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 46; Norman L. Crockett, The Black Towns (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979); Katherine Franke, Repair: Redeeming the Promise of Abolition (Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2019); Sundiata Keita Cha-Jua, America’s First Black Town: Brooklyn, Illinois, 1830–1915 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002); Carter G. Woodson, A Century of Negro Migration (Washington, DC: Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1918).
These camps were broken up … remained in Nicodemus at all: Crockett, Black Towns; Kenneth Marvin Hamilton, Black Towns and Profit: Promotion and Development in the Trans-Appalachian West, 1877–1915 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991); Hannibal Johnson, Acres of Aspiration: The All-Black Towns in Oklahoma (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 2007); Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction (New York: W.W. Norton, 1986); Morris Turner, America’s Black Towns and Settlements: A Historical Reference Guide (Rohnert Park, CA: Missing Pages Production, 1998); Woodson, Century of Negro Migration.
It wasn’t long … thirty or so Black towns: Crockett, Black Towns; Hamilton, Black Towns and Profit; Johnson, Acres of Aspiration; Woodson, Century of Negro Migration.
a tenth of the territory’s population: Crockett, Black Towns, 98.
“a showpiece of democracy in a sea of hypocrisy”: “Architectural Firm Chosen for ‘Soul City’ in Carolina,” New York Times, January 19, 1969, 76.
But while many utopian … work in perfect harmony: Jennings, Paradise Now, 7–8.
“turn on, tune in, and drop out”: Robert Greenfield, Timothy Leary: A Biography (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006), 281.
One young man … office of the city planner: Glenn Powell, Soul City resident, interview with the author, March 6, 2015.
“stealing panties and bras”: “McKissick Backs Separatist Movement,” Durham Morning Herald, March 9, 1969.
The founders of Mound Bayou … liniments and powders: Crockett, Black Towns, 131, 144.
It inspired Paul Cuffee’s attempt … $400 billion in cash: John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans, 8th ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2000), 111, 188, 395–96; Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt, 2006), 54–55, 219, 278; “… We Also Want Four Hundred Billion Dollars Back Pay,” Esquire, January 1, 1969, 72.
“Oh, tis a pretty country”: Johnson, Acres of Aspiration, 80.
sardonic poem “Cultural Exchange”: Langston Hughes, The Panther & the Lash (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), 82–83.
“the role the white man played for centuries”: John Oliver Killens, Black Man’s Burden (New York: Trident, 1965), 116.
“welcome white people as equals”: Paul Jablow, “Soul City Has to Start with the Spirit Itself,” Charlotte Observer, March 30, 1969.
“only if white folks want it to come into being”: “Students March Down Franklin in 3rd Annual Cates Memorial,” Chapel Hill Newspaper, November 20, 1973, 1.
In the half century since McKissick … one-tenth that of whites: Valerie Wilson, “Black Unemployment Is at Least Twice as High as White Unemployment at the National Level and in 14 States and the District of Columbia,” Economic Policy Institute, April 4, 2019, https://www.epi.org/publication/valerie-figures-state-unemployment-by-race/; Kriston McIntosh, Emily Moss, Ryan Nunn, and Jay Shambaugh, “Examining the Black-White Wealth Gap,” Brookings Institution, February 27, 2020, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2020/02/27/examining-the-black-white-wealth-gap/; Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Case for Reparations,” Atlantic, June 2014.
By 2014, Ferguson’s population … a force of fifty-three: Matt Pearce, Maya Srikrishnan, and David Zucchino, “Protesters and Police Face Off in St. Louis Suburb Over Shooting,” Los Angeles Times, August 11, 2014, https://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-missouri-st-louis-police-shooting-teen-20140811-story.html.
an article or thesis on Soul City: The most extensive accounts of Soul City can be found in Herman Mixon Jr., Soul City: The Initial Stages, the Genesis and First Two Years of the Soul City Project, with Questions for the Future (Chapel Hill: Center for Urban and Regional Studies, University of North Carolina, 1971); Foon Rhee, “Visions, Illusions, and Perceptions: The Story of Soul City” (thesis in fulfillment of Honors in History, Duke University, 1984); Emily Webster Madison, “Objections Sustained: The Conception and Demise of Soul City, North Carolina” (essay submitted for Honors in History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, April 1995); Biles, “The Rise and Fall of Soul City: Planning, Politics, and Race in Recent America,” Journal of Planning History 4, no. 1 (February 2005): 52–72; Timothy J. Minchin, “‘A Brand New Shining City’: Floyd B. McKissick Sr. and the Struggle to Build Soul City, North Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Review 82, no. 2 (April 2005): 125–55; Christopher Strain, “Soul City, North Carolina: Black Power, Utopia, and the African American Dream,” Journal of African American History 89, no. 1 (Winter 2004): 57–74; Devin Fergus, Liberalism, Black Power, and the Making of American Politics, 1965–1980 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009); and Zachary Gillan, “Black Is Beautiful But So Is Green: Capitalism, Black Power, and Politics in Floyd McKissick’s Soul City,” in The New Black History: Revisiting the Second Reconstruction, edited by Manning Marable and Elizabeth Kai Hinton (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 267–86. Soul City has also been chronicled in one self-published memoir: Jane Ball-Groom, The Salad Pickers: Journey South (Morrisville, NC: Lulu, 2012). And it was the subject of a short 2016 documentary, Soul City, directed by Monica Berra, SheRea DelSoul, and Gini Richards. Shorter accounts of Soul City include Amanda Shapiro, “Welcome to Soul City: Exploring the Remains of a Black Power Utopia,” Oxford American 80 (Spring 2013); and Roman Mars, “Soul City,” April 5, 2016, an episode of the podcast 99% Invisible, produced by Katie Mingle, https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/soul-city/.
1: “BLACK BOY IN A WHITE LAND”
the most tumultuous of the century: Peter B. Levy, The Great Uprising: Race Riots in Urban America during the 1960s (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 9.
every American a guaranteed income: Ben A. Franklin, “‘City’ of the Poor Begun in Capital,” New York Times, May 14, 1968, 1; Sylvie Laurent, King and the Other America: The Poor People’s Campaign and the Quest for Racial Equality (Oakland: University of California Press, 2018).
improve relations between Black people and the police: Peter Kihss, “A March on Capital by Whites Proposed by Whitney Young,” New York Times, April 24, 1968, 1; Paul Hofmann, “NAACP Drives Against Violence,” New York Times, April 9, 1968, 37.
a merger with the revolutionary Black Panthers: Claybourne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), 279–90.
&n
bsp; For eight days, the city’s Black neighborhoods … $12 million in property damage: Peter B. Levy, “The Dream Deferred: The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the Holy Week Uprisings of 1968,” in Baltimore ’68: Riots and Rebirth in an American City, ed. Jessica Elfenbein, Elizabeth Nix, and Thomas Hollowak (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011), 3–25.
Titled “A Nation Within a Nation” … the Poor People’s Campaign: “A Nation Within a Nation: CORE’s Proposal for Economic Development and Control of Black Areas,” McKissick Papers, folder 6970.
“what I’m willing to risk my life for”: Rhee, “Visions, Illusions, and Perceptions,” 22.
The council’s reaction was tepid … building of new cities: Rhee, “Visions, Illusions, and Perceptions,” 22–24.
his thirteen-year-old son had been shot dead: “Mayor Attends Funeral for Son of Roy Innis,” New York Times, April 19, 1968, 42.
he knew he would have to leave: Rhee, “Visions, Illusions, and Perceptions,” 24.
until a new leader could be found: Rudy Johnson, “McKissick Resigns as Head of CORE,” New York Times, June 26, 1968, 33.
why couldn’t Black people build new cities: McKissick interview with Jack Bass, December 6, 1973, Southern Oral History Program Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 9–10; Harold Woodard, “Floyd McKissick: Portrait of a Leader” (master’s thesis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1981), 22; Mixon, Soul City, 13; Rhee, “Visions, Illusions, and Perceptions,” 5.
“Black, first. American, second”: McKissick, unfinished autobiography, personal papers of Charmaine McKissick-Melton, copy on file with author.
“Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!”: Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2013), 9.
It happened in 1926 … “more bad white people than there are good”: Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 12–13; McKissick, unfinished autobiography; Ernest and Magnolia McKissick interview with Louis Silveri, August 2, 1977, Southern Highlands Research Center Oral History Collection, University of North Carolina at Asheville, 20–22.
“two unreconciled strivings”: W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1907), 9.
Childhood was not all harsh lessons … insulting one another’s mothers: Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 2–3, 7-12; McKissick, unfinished autobiography; McKissick, autobiography transcripts, January 13, 1986, personal papers of Charmaine McKissick-Melton, copy on file with author; Ernest and Magnolia McKissick interview with Louis Silveri, 19–20.
Within this world … fish to make sandwiches: Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 3–5; McKissick, autobiography transcripts, 13; “Assignment in Asheville,” Memorandum from Jane Groom to FM, August 23, 1973.
although the mountainous terrain … response to emancipation subdued: John C. Inscoe, Mountain Masters: Slavery and the Sectional Crisis in Western North Carolina (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press: 1996), 59–86, 211–58.
backyard neighbors were white: McKissick transcripts, 12; Ernest and Magnolia McKissick interview with Louis Silveri, 23–24.
Still, race was a defining fact … finish in first place: Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 13–14; McKissick, outline for autobiography, personal papers of Charmaine McKissick-Melton, copy on file with author.
If these insults made clear … protest the decision before the city council: Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 14–17; McKissick, unfinished autobiography; McKissick interview with Robert Wright, 1–2.
McKissick left Asheville … received a Purple Heart: Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 18–23.
But the experience that affected … built by Blacks was next to zero: McKissick interview with Jack Bass; Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 22; Mixon, Soul City, 13; Rhee, “Visions, Illusions, and Perceptions,” 5.
by that point McKissick was married … the 1948 presidential election: Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 21–25; McKissick interview with Robert Wright, 9.
He also got his first taste … more famous bus rides fourteen years later: August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942–1968 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 33–39; McKissick interview with Robert Wright, 8.
After finishing at Morehouse … ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor: Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 26–29; McKissick interview with Bruce Kalk, May 31, 1989, Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 3–4; Biographical sketch, Floyd McKissick, April 1967, Papers of the Congress of Racial Equality, Reel 5.
“It’s integrated now”: McKissick interview with Bruce Kalk, 5–7; McKissick interview with Robert Wright, 6–7.
For the children … with his back to the door: Rhee, “Visions, Illusions, and Perceptions,” 4; Charmaine McKissick-Melton, interview with the author, July 18, 2016; Floyd McKissick Jr., interview with the author, October 12, 2015; “McKissick Led Way in Civil Rights,” Herald-Sun (Durham, NC), undated clipping from Daniel H. Pollitt Papers, folder 131.
2: SCRAMBLED EGG
The Montgomery bus boycott … over the next decade: Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 143–205, 271–75; William H. Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); Tomiko Brown-Nagin, Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 133–41; Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: The Free Press, 1986), 40–76.
youth director for the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP: Woodard, “Floyd McKissick,” 30; Chris D. Howard, “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize: The Black Struggle for Civic Equality in Durham, North Carolina, 1954–63” (undergraduate honors thesis, Duke University, 1983), 47–53.
Founded in Chicago in 1942 … boost CORE’s national profile: Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 1–98; Nishani Frazier, Harambee City: The Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the Rise of Black Power Populism (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2017), 3–25, 53–58; Brian Purnell, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013), 31–36.
He found it the first week … at the center of the action: Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 101–12; Morris, Origins, 198–200; Purnell, Fighting Jim Crow, 36–40; Gordon Carey, interview with the author, August 21, 2015.
The organization took off … catchier name: the Freedom Rides: Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 113–36; Carey interview, Eyes on the Prize I interviews, Washington University Digital Gateway, November 6, 1985.
Launched that spring … to appear in court: Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 137–58; Branch, Parting the Waters, 452, 557–58.
McKissick had long worked … backed McKissick for the post: Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 282–94; transcript of McKissick interview with Eugene E. Pfaff, Greensboro Voices/Greensboro Public Library Oral History Project, August 9, 1982, 1–6, http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CivilRights/id/863; Howard, “Keep Your Eyes,” 62–65.
The next few years … under an earthen dam: Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 145–149, 170–71, 213–328; William L. Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965–1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 133; Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years, 1963–65 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 440–41.
Despite its growing influence … commitment to nonviolence: Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–2006, 3rd ed. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 84; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 294–373.
“partnership of brothers”: Roy Reed, “The Deacons, Too, Ride By Night,” New York Times, August 15, 1965, SM10; Lance Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
, 2004), 133–49.
These conflicts took their toll … twelve votes to eight: Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 374–408.
When McKissick took over … of Baltimore and Cleveland: Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 409–13; Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon, 132–33.
McKissick also became increasingly outspoken … “the civil rights movement”: Aram Goudsouzian, Down to the Crossroads: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Meredith March Against Fear (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014), 3–5; David J. Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (London: Jonathan Cape, 1988), 473; McKissick interview with Robert Wright, 34–35.
Black Power … Africa’s Gold Coast: Goudsouzian, Down to the Crossroads, 142; Joseph, Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour, 1–131; McKissick interview with Robert Wright, 24–28.
“like a goddamn rabbit”: Goudsouzian, Down to the Crossroads, 47.
McKissick knew Meredith well … blessing for their plan: Goudsouzian, Down to the Crossroads, 27–30; McKissick interview with Robert Wright, 31–34.
The three men resumed … allowed to participate: Goudsouzian, Down to the Crossroads, 31–102; Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 473–79; Joseph, Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour, 133–40; Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1963–68 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 476–77; Hill, Deacons for Defense, 245–50; McKissick interview with James A. DeVinney, Eyes on the Prize II interviews, Washington University Digital Gateway, October 21, 1988, 2–3.
“civil rights carnival show”: Nicholas von Hoffman, “Mississippi Marchers to Cut West into Delta,” Washington Post, June 13, 1966, A1.
“you gotta come!”: Goudsouzian, Down to the Crossroads, 66.
“movement of the spirit”: Goudsouzian, Down to the Crossroads, 104.
referred to as “de lawd”: Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion, 68.