Soul City, North Carolina
"How to build a black city?" Pt. 1 - 3
This one of the wildest stories of black city planning we found in a minute. “Soul City” was established in 1969 by a visionary brother by the name of Floyd B. McKissick.
So many people I know rn are on building their own communities, schools or grocery stories. Maybe it's the time, or the shifts happening in the cities, but - you can only complain or see so much lack before you’re sprung into action.
Wanting to improve conditions in his home state in the 60s, McKissick chose to locate his new community, Soul City, in North Carolina. The land he chose in Warren County, NC was formerly a plantation, built by black enslaved folk - 2,500 acres with sloping hills that McKissick and his team purposefully chose to build on to.
(Hit the full screen button in the top left corner.)
Soul City was the first of its kind…. a city built from scratch, inspired and controlled by black folk. A liberated and self sustained town with its own industry, schools and medical services.
Black Journal ep. 26 shows an ambitious Mr. Floyd speaking on his plans for the town.
“You cannot have a nation without an economy, and if someone else controls your economy - you are a colony!!”
McKissick also bought in Harvey Gantt as the planning and architecture force behind Soul City, a brother who then went on to be elected for two terms as the mayor of Charlotte, NC. Wasn't hip to Mr. Gantt before this, but wow! A legend.
Really I’d never seen any brotha on video describe their visions of a place so clearly. Both of them were unwavering in what they saw for Soul City. They wanted the land to be intact as they developed the city. They wanted the actual community to be involved in every step of planning it.
These excerpts from Black Journal show so much of what comes from the question - “how you build a black city?” And damn, the interviews and whole art direction really show what Black folk were on in the 60s and 70s!!
We added a few of our fav parts from the episode to youtube. Shouts to all our world builders, past, present and future!!
-coop.
Written by Coop. Edited by Savannah.
#blackmodernism
The Black Journal archival collection on americanarchive.org actually goes so crazy. The aesthetics of the advertising posters for soul city were fire 🔥 tragic that the project never came to be in the way they were hoping.
We gotta talk about Africatown.