[7] Wanting to improve conditions in his home state and feeling that it was more politically and economically progressive than its other Southern contemporaries, McKissick settled on locating the community in North Carolina.

Named the Circle P Ranch, the land was a cattle and timber farm owned by Leon Perry, who was losing money and eager to sell.

[10] Once a tobacco plantation, it contained woods, pastures, creeks, old agricultural buildings, centered around a historic manor house.

The house was serviced by electricity and the site had several wells and septic tanks, but there was no centralized water or sewage access and only one proximate paved road.

[16] Despite these problems, McKissick felt optimistic about the property's potential owing to low regional labor costs—which were beneficial to attracting industry, its geographic centrality relative to major urban centers within 500 miles, and its proximity to U.S. Route 1 and the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad.

[18] He also felt that establishing a planned community to help blacks on a former plantation once owned a by a segregationist legislator would have symbolic resonance.

[19] On January 13, McKissick held a joint press conference with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman to announce his intent to build a planned community called "Soul City" in Warren County.

[24] McKissick's announcement generated a significant amount of media attention, with the Big Three television networks each covering it on their evening news programs and The Washington Post reporting on it in a front page story.

"[27] Some progressives, such as Elizabeth Tornquist of the North Carolina Anvil, attacked the plan for relying too much on capitalism, which they considered exploitative and predisposed to enrich the project's leaders while unlikely to provide any long term benefit to poor blacks.

[36] Securing some additional funding from Rhode Island businessman Irving Fain, McKissick then reluctantly sought out grants from the federal government.

Heavily influenced by the layout of Columbia, Maryland, Gantt envisioned Soul City to be a collection of villages oriented around a core area which would include amenities such as a mall, a hospital, a college, and a central library.

[40] A boulevard running north-to-south through the middle of the community and a ring road passing through the villages would serve as the major transportation arteries.

[43] To that end, he created the Soul City Foundation, a non-profit organization led by Eva Clayton, to develop social life in the community.

[45] After studying different models for public governance, McKissick decided to petition the Warren County Board of Commissions and the North Carolina Board of Health to create a Soul City Sanitary District, which would collect taxes and fund the provision of water, sewer, waste collection, and firefighting services.

[50] Soul City was intended to be a new town built from the ground up and open to all races, while placing an emphasis on providing opportunities for minorities and the poor.

[1][51] It was also designed to be a means of reversing out-migration of minorities and the poor to urban areas; the opportunities Soul City provided, such as jobs, education, housing, training, and other social services would help lessen the migration.

A series of articles in the Raleigh News & Observer falsely accused McKissick of fraud and corruption and a congressional audit of the development stalled progress for nine months, only to clear Soul City of the charges leveled against it.

The Wall Street Journal, which had significant credence in the business community, negatively portrayed McKissick as a lawyer with a lavish lifestyle.

The population of Soul City grew to about 300,[61] and later in the decade an affordable housing complex was built in the Green Duke Village.

[61] Population decline in the late 1980s and 1990s led to decreasing revenue for homeowners' association responsible for the management of Green Duke Village.

As a result, the physician infrastructure of Soul City degraded and Warren County government assumed control of the Magnolia Ernest Recreation Complex and opened it to the public.

After a public outcry from local residents, county officials moved the sign to the entrance of Green Duke Village.