Department of City and Regional Planning Collection of Soul City, N.C. Materials, 1962-1991

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Summary

Creator:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Department of City and Regional Planning.
Abstract:

Initiated and led by African American civil rights activist Floyd B. McKissick, Soul City in Warren County, N.C., was to be a new town administered by African Americans. In 1969, McKissick approached the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) for consultation and assistance in planning Soul City. John A. Parker, then head of DCRP, offered his and his colleagues' services to McKissick, and the DCRP faculty also used Soul City as a case study in their courses, requiring planning students to develop planning reports on various aspects of Soul City and its region. The material in the Soul City Collection was brought together over several years by DCRP faculty and F. Stuart Chapin, Jr. Planning Library staff. The collection was developed to serve as a reserve reading for DCRP courses dealing with new towns, and to document DCRP's role in the development of Soul City. The collection additionally illustrates DCRP pedagogy. It includes reports, proposals, correspondence, meeting minutes, legal documents, financial documents, administrative documents, articles, clippings, brochures, promotional materials, and video recordings about the planning and development of Soul City.

Extent:
4000 items (5 linear feet)
Language:
Materials in English
Library Catalog Link:
View UNC library catalog record for this item

Background

Biographical / historical:

Native North Carolinian, lawyer, and former leader of the Congress of Racial Equality, Floyd B. McKissick, led the initiative to create Soul City in Warren County, N.C., a new town to be administered by African Americans. Soul City, announced by McKissick in January 1969, received a United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) guarantee under the Urban Growth and New Communities Act of 1968. As McKissick and his company, McKissick Enterprises, Inc. moved forward with plans to create and develop Soul City, they approached the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) for consultation and assistance in planning the new town. John A. Parker, then head of the DCRP, offered his and his colleagues' services to McKissick, and Parker went on to serve on the Soul City Foundation Board of Directors until his retirement in 1974. After Parker's retirement, DCRP participation in Soul City diminished somewhat. Before that, though, DCRP faculty also used Soul City as a case study in their courses, requiring planning students to develop planning reports on various aspects of Soul City and its region.

Soul City received a great deal of media attention both because it was one of a handful of new town projects underway at the time and because of its African American leadership and administration. Soul City focused its early efforts on developing infrastructure in the region so that it could later support residential and industrial developments. Just as it began to move its focus from infrastructure to attracting industry to create employment opportunities, Soul City began to draw negative media attention.

Questioning its lack of industry, media began to make allegations about Soul City's use of federal funding. As the doubts heaped up, McKissick, adamant that funds were being managed sufficiently and that the lack of industry was due to Soul City's newness, agreed to an audit by an independent agency. The audit cited a few instances of mismanagement, but it largely found the Soul City Company innocent of any financial or legal violations. The damage, however, was done. Progress in Soul City was stalled for almost a year while awaiting the audit results, and, in the bad national economic climate, this delay was hard to overcome. The questions of Soul City's progress also caused HUD to question the entire New Communities program. The media continued its scrutiny of Soul City despite the audit results, and politicians also became involved in questioning Soul City's progress. Ultimately, in 1980, HUD withdrew its backing of Soul City, and the new town could no longer sustain itself. HUD acquired the development and did not pursue further construction.

Scope and content:

The material in the Soul City Collection was brought together over several years by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Department of City and Regional Planning (DCRP) faculty and F. Stuart Chapin, Jr. Planning Library staff. The collection was developed for two reasons: first, to serve as reserve reading for DCRP courses dealing with new towns; and second, to document DCRP's role in the development of Soul City. DCRP's role is captured through inclusion of correspondence among DCRP faculty and McKissick Enterprises staff and through planning proposals produced by DCRP faculty. It includes reports, proposals, correspondence, meeting minutes, legal documents, financial documents, administrative documents, articles, clippings, brochures, promotional materials, and video recordings about the planning and development of Soul City.

Of note in this collection are the 1979 reports of the Soul City Task Force and Avco Community Developers that led to HUD's withdrawal of funds. Soul City's subsequent legal complaint to prevent HUD from acquiring control of Soul City development also appears in the collection. Also of note are the 1969-1972 student papers from UNC Planning students. These papers illustrate not only thoughts about how to develop Soul City, but also how the DCRP used Soul City as a case study in its pedagogy. The entire collection, created, in part, as reserve course reading, further illustrates DCRP pedagogy. Of additional note are the articles and clippings published about Soul City and the promotional publications and newsletters produced by the Soul City Foundation which document the activities and programs of Soul City.

This collection is divided into five series: student papers; planning proposals and reports; operations of Soul City Foundation, Warren Regional Planning Corporation, and UNC Department of City and Regional Planning; publicity and promotional material; and video recordings.

Acquisition information:

Transferred from the North Carolina Collection via F. Stuart Chapin, Jr. Planning Library in July 2010 (Acc. 101324) and September 2010 (Acc. 101346).

Processing information:

Processed by: Johanna Russ, September 2007

Encoded by: Anne Wells, August 2019

Updated by: Anne Wells, August 2019

In 2017, we began using "white" as an ethnic and racial identity for individual and families, in addition to "Black," "African American," "Jewish," and other familiar identity terms that we have used for decades in collection descriptions. We use this identity term so that whiteness is no longer the presumed default of the people represented in our collections. To determine identity, we rely on self-identification; other information supplied to the repository by collection creators or sources; public records, press accounts, and secondary sources; and contextual information in the collection materials. Omissions of ethnic and racial identities in finding aids created or updated after August 2017 are an indication of insufficient information to make an educated guess or an individual's preference for identity information to be excluded from description. When we have misidentified, please let us know at wilsonlibrary@unc.edu.

Sensitive materials statement:

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Access and use

Restrictions to access:

Use of moving image materials may require production of viewing copies.

Restrictions to use:

No usage restrictions.

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], in the Department of City and Regional Planning of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Collection of Soul City, N.C. Materials #05469, Southern Folklife Collection, Wilson Special Collections Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Location of this collection:
Louis Round Wilson Library
200 South Road
Chapel Hill, NC 27515
Contact:
(919) 962-3765
wilsonlibrary@unc.edu