THE BUZZ
H I STO RY
A DREAM DERAILED Charlotte native’s new book examines the bold plans and discarded promise of Soul City
A NEW BOOK by Seton Hall University law professor and Charlotte native Thomas Healy, Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia, traces the efforts of lawyer and civil rights leader Floyd McKissick to establish a unique community on a former tobacco plantation in rural northeastern North Carolina. McKissick’s idea was a planned town, Soul City, open to anyone but specifically intended to improve the lives and economic prospects of Black people. Its development, which began in 1969 and followed a master plan by a young architect and planner named Harvey Gantt, drew financial support from surprising quarters, including the Nixon administration. Soul City barely got off the ground, and the reasons—racism, paternalism, an ingrained reluctance of white institutions to invest in an endeavor by and for Black people—obstruct economic progress for racial minorities as thor-
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oughly now as they did a half-century ago. We talked with Healy, 51, a Charlotte Catholic and UNC Chapel Hill graduate who started his career as a reporter for The News & Observer in Raleigh, and Gantt about the book, the project, and how they illuminate issues that remain fresh today. Answers are edited for space and clarity; read an expanded version at charlottemagazine.com.
THOMAS HEALY
What led you to write Soul City? Soul City had always been in the back of my mind since I first heard about it ... I started reading more about it and realized that the reason that it didn’t succeed had a lot to do with my former newspaper and a lot to do with (the late U.S. Senator) Jesse Helms. It struck me as a very poignant story that had been forgotten. This is also right around the time of the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of Michael Brown (in 2014).
When I thought about Ferguson and the fact that the population was twothirds Black and yet whites controlled every aspect of the town, it reminded me a lot of what Warren County looked like when Floyd McKissick arrived and what McKissick was trying to achieve, which was to give Black people control over their own lives. I just thought the parallels between Ferguson and Warren County in 1969 were really interesting. What makes this story relevant today? Essentially, what McKissick was trying to do back then was the same thing that the residents in Ferguson were trying to do in 2014—take control over their lives and acquire a measure of power. If you look at the economic situation of African Americans today, they’re, on average, not much better than they were in 1969. The average wealth of African American families is still about one-tenth of a white family’s, and the unemployment rate is
COURTESY HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY/ METROPOLITAN BOOKS
BY GREG LACOUR
