[Durham INC] Fwd: Soul City doc - Thursday 1/5 10 pm WUNC-tv

[Susan Sewell]

Thought some of you might be interested in this NC history.

*Short-lived dream of Soul City Subject of Documentary* (Harold-Sun)

DURHAM -- In news conference footage contained in a new documentary, Floyd
McKissick Sr. outlined one of the purposes of the Soul City development
project. “By solving the problems of black people,” he said, “ultimately,
we’ll solve the problems of the country.”

The footage is part of “Soul City,” a documentary that airs at 10 p.m.
Thursday, Jan. 5 to kick off WUNC-TV’s “Reel South” series. Directed by
Monica Berra, SheRea DelSol and Gini Richards, the 30-minute film
chronicles the late Mr. McKissick’s and supporters’ efforts to make that
vision a reality, and the obstacles that ultimately derailed the project.

Richards and DelSol were graduate students in Wake Forest University’s
documentary program and were looking for a thesis topic.

They turned to Google and put in the terms “utopia” and “North Carolina”
“and Soul City was the first story that popped up,” Richards said. “We knew
this was the story we wanted to do.”

First proposed in 1969, Soul City was planned on 5,000 acres in Warren
County, just off Interstate 85 and near a rail line. The city was to be
multi-racial, with an emphasis on empowering minorities. Manufacturing
jobs, housing and health care were part of the vision.

Born in the Great Society, Soul City also had the backing of President
Richard Nixon, whose Housing and Urban Development Department gave the
project $14 million over its lifetime, which was supposed to be a 30-year
development process. Gov. Jim Holshouser attended the groundbreaking in
1973.

Holshouser, a Republican, was elected in 1972, the same year Jesse Helms,
also a Republican, was elected to the U.S. Senate.

In the documentary, Gordon Carey, who was the Soul City Company Vice
President, recalls the senior McKissick (also a Republican) sending Helms a
letter of congratulations on being elected. Helms’ reply, Carey says, was
that one of his first orders of business would be closing down Soul City.

Helms, alleging fraud and mismanagement, got the General Accounting Office
to investigate. The Soul City Company was cleared, but funding for Soul
City (and other similar projects under the Urban Growth and New Community
Development Act) fizzled in 1979.

“At a point in time when you were just getting off the ground, you were put
into a holding pattern,” said Floyd McKissick Jr., a former Durham City
Council member and now Durham’s senator in the General Assembly. McKissick
Jr. was in charge of planning for Soul City from 1975 to 1980, and prepared
about 90 percent of the grant applications to HUD and other agencies. Helms
as a television editorialist opposed civil rights legislation, marches,
sit-ins and other efforts and, by extension, was opposed to “my father’s
being instrumental in all those efforts,” McKissick Jr. said.

His father also knew how to work across party lines, McKissick said. “My
dad was one of those people who was politically savvy,” he said. “He didn't
want anyone to take his vote for granted.”

McKissick Sr. was the director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE),
and had met Nixon when Nixon was vice president. Nixon “was impressed with
my father” because he “supported a concept known as black capitalism” which
was about getting African-Americans involved in business, McKissick said.
“Nixon thought that was a very intriguing concept,” one that secured his
support for Soul City, McKissick said.

“Back in that time frame, the ideological divide was in some ways not as
extreme as it is today,” McKissick said.

McKissick is among the participants that the filmmakers interviewed for the
documentary. His sister, NCCU professor Charmaine McKissick-Melton, recalls
the diversity of the community. Other representatives of Soul City
interviewed are Harvey Gantt, a planner for the project, and Jane
Ball-Groom, an administrative assistant.

Soul City is now unincorporated, with about 75 houses and a retirement
community. McKissick Jr. points out some long-lasting legacies of the
project. They include a regional water system that serves Henderson, Oxford
and surrounding communities, which was built “at the initiation of Soul
City.” Soul City also developed a health clinic for Warren County.

It also offered a vision for rural development and empowerment. “The
project in many respects was very visionary,” McKissick said. It offered a
vision of development that could provide opportunities for citizens who
lived in the area while enticing new residents and businesses.

Many African-Americans who migrated from the rural South had great hope for
jobs in the Northeast, “but they found themselves too often living in urban
ghettos,” McKissick said. Soul City offered a chance for opportunities
“from where those people came from.”

What Soul City accomplished “was amazing, and what they were trying to
accomplish was more amazing,” Richards said. The organizers balanced
pragmatism and idealism. She believes the program could have worked, but
politics and personal feelings got in the way. “It’s a story about why
things fall apart in America,” Richards said. “It speaks to just how hard
it is to make grand things happen in America,” particularly when they
involve race, she said.





Thanks,

Susan Sewell
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