The Rise and Fall of Soul City: Planning, Politics, and Race in Recent America

Abstract

This article considers the checkered history of Soul City, a new town built in rural North Carolina under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s New Community Development Corporation in the 1970s. Based on legislation passed in 1968 and 1970, the federal government provided financial assistance for the construction of thirteen new towns around the country. Although architects and planners situated most of these new communities just outside of major metropolitan areas, Soul City was designed to be the only “free-standing” new town. Conceived by Floyd B. McKissick, the former national director of the Congress on Racial Equality, as an example of black capitalism, the daring experiment struggled from the outset. Beset throughout its brief existence by financial problems, plagued by scandal, and hounded by political enemies, Soul City failed to attract the capital and population necessary to survive.