Jane Ball Groom (5:28)

I thought I had come to paradise. Who does that with five kids. I mean, in 1970, to come to a segregated place in Warren County, North Carolina, to build a new black town. I mean, controlled by blacks. Whoa.

Salim Reshamwala (5:46)

That's Jane Ball Groom, one of the people who moved here to North Carolina to help create a city unlike any she'd ever been a part of. I'm Salim Reshimwalla, and from ted. This is far flung. Each episode we look at a different place and the ideas that flow from there. Shout out to Marriott Hotels for sponsoring this week's episode. And we'll come back to Jane in a bit. But you just heard her describe a place she thought was paradise, which is what this week's journey is all about. We're going to be exploring utopias. This idea that there's a perfect place that meets every need for a group of people. I've been fascinated by utopias in general for a long time. It's just this way that people lay out their ideals and dreams. Blank slate. What do they want the world to be like? It's a thing that pops up in the popular imagination again and again. Maybe you've got some places that come to mind when you hear the word utopia. There's the Shakers, a group of descending Quakers who began to set up their own communities with rules they believed would allow them to live in harmony in the late 1700s. But this goes back even further. In ancient Greece, for example, there was Plato's Republic, a fictional book which imagined an alternative set of rules for an optimal society. It was hella problematic if you really look at it. But anyway, in this episode, we're going to search for the black utopia that you heard Jane talk about. And it starts with a short road trip with my friend Shirlette.

Shirlette (7:14)

I was trying to take the scenic route, which is what I normally do to avoid the highways, maybe because I'm country, but just prefer the scenic route. But it would have made me late. So, alas, I'm on 85.

Salim Reshamwala (7:26)

Yeah, I'm about to be on 85 in just a second here. And describing where we're going, it could be a little complicated. You want to tell them?

Shirlette (7:33)

Yeah, we're going to a place that some say currently doesn't exist. A black utopia, if you will.

Salim Reshamwala (7:40)

We are going to a real place. It's known as Seoul City. I've been interested in Seoul City for a few years. And Sholette, when I asked you if you had heard anything about Soul City.

Shirlette (7:51)

You said it's like they tried to build a Wakanda in North Carolina.

Salim Reshamwala (7:55)

Right. You and I were Both super interested in it. We've been working on stuff for a while together. We met when I was assisting on a music video. I remember you were wearing cool sunglasses and I took a photo. I think I posted it to Instagram. And then in the past couple years, we have made a kind of ridiculous amount of stuff together. I thought you'd be the perfect person to explore this story with because you're so connected to this area and you just get how rich North Carolina stories can be.

Shirlette (8:22)

Yeah, I thought exploring Soul City was a cool idea from the jump. I mean, I also thought the people we know would think is a cool idea. And I really wanted to know if it's a black utopia because being black in America is a 24 hour job and it's exhausting. We're constantly surveilled. Even when we're sleeping in our own homes or we're bird watching or shopping or doing regular everyday things, we're constantly checking our tone to make sure we're not perceived as a threat. And sometimes you want a break from all that. I mean, you seek out black spaces just so you can put your guard down for a minute. So I wonder what would a black utopia feel like and sound like and where do you go if you're looking for it?

Salim Reshamwala (9:02)

So yeah, has a black utopia ever existed? And did one exist this close to our houses? And being a mixed Indian, Japanese, white kid, I'm not fully qualified to do this story on black Utopia on my own.

Shirlette (9:18)

Well, lucky for you, Saleem, I am totally qualified to lead this journey. We're going to start our search in Soul City, which was created back in 1969. The founders recruited people from all over the country to come to this chosen plot of land in rural North Carolina and build a town from the ground up.

Salim Reshamwala (9:37)

And we knew a bit about it before we went. We'd seen it described as, quote, a short lived black utopian society. And when we found out that some of the first residents still lived there, we wanted to talk to them directly. Because of COVID we drove in separate cars and we were talking on the phone on our way out there.

Shirlette (9:54)

For some reason I'm like teetering on emotional because maybe I shouldn't have that. I went to this website called Road Trip America or something like that. Yeah, somebody described it in this way that is sad to see it. Like just because it wasn't realized in this way. Yeah. So I'm kind of preparing myself to feel some kind of heaviness around it.

Salim Reshamwala (10:22)

And based on things we'd read I can see why you felt that way.

Shirlette (10:26)

Yeah. I was anticipating, like, an apocalyptic scene where, you know, black people were once there, now they're not, and the whole town is covered in ash or something. Just feeling like, man, black people can't have nothing in this country. So here's a little bit of background. Soul City was an intentional project that was funded and developed by the Department of Housing and urban development, or HUD, under their new communities program in the late 60s and early 70s. It's in Warren county, which is a couple counties over from Durham. And HUD was funding this kind of project because they were trying to solve the quote, unquote, urban problem.

Salim Reshamwala (11:05)

In some ways, the term urban problem refers to something that was really happening. You know, there were real issues with poverty and violence, but it's also this euphemistic, weird terminology that was used in very weighted ways.

Shirlette (11:20)

Yeah. Completely loaded. I mean, basically, it was a polite way of saying housing is crumbling, white people will leave the cities for the burbs. And at the same time, crime and policing in the city is rising, causing, bam. An urban problem.

Salim Reshamwala (11:35)

Super loaded term.

Shirlette (11:37)

And what's so crazy is Soul city's only about 45 minutes away from Durham, and that ain't nothing but a hop and a skip.

Salim Reshamwala (11:42)

I've actually been in Durham since around 2010. And, you know, I grew up down the road in the suburbs for a big chunk of my life. My parents are in Cary.

Shirlette (11:50)

That's really the burbs. You can't get more Burberry in North Carolina.

Salim Reshamwala (11:53)

Basically, when immigrants imagine the American dream, that's like, what's in their head? I feel like it's Kerry. How'd you end up in Durham?

Shirlette (12:00)

Well, I'm from eastern North Carolina, a tiny town called Botankas, which is really outside of Mount Olive.

Salim Reshamwala (12:06)

Pickles.

Shirlette (12:06)

Yep. That's what we're famous for. Pickles. Anybody who knows anything about eastern North Carolina probably knows Mount Olive Pickles. Very country. I grew up working in tobacco fields, digging sweet potatoes, picking pecans. Those are, like, some of my first jobs. Working outdoors, working on farms and fields. And I've been in Durham now maybe about 15 years or so. And as soon as I got here, man, I just immediately started finding my people, and it felt like home really fast.

Salim Reshamwala (12:33)

It's a very welcoming, creative scene.

Shirlette (12:36)

Yeah.

Salim Reshamwala (12:37)

And relevant to this episode. Durham's 40% black.

Shirlette (12:40)

Yeah. That, to me, speaks to the soulful vibe that is kind of in the bones of this place. It's artsy and hip, but there's also a really strong working class community that's been in Durham for a long time.

Salim Reshamwala (12:52)

And to think there might be a, quote, black utopia just down the road is mind blowing.

Shirlette (12:57)

And the cool thing about Soul City is that it was actually created in this very rural part of North Carolina that was expansive and wide open. A whole bunch of black people who were not from that area kind of sort of descended on this tiny town in Warren county to build what became known as Soul City.

Salim Reshamwala (13:16)

That's the thing that it's, it's hard to overstate. It was just this empty land and, you know, coming from nothing, it was so optimistic to build and expect people to come there. It felt almost like, like wild west pioneer vibes to be like, hey, we will make it on our own. And this was the only city from HUD's New Communities program that was built by a black developer.

Shirlette (13:39)

And that developer's name was Floyd McKissick.

Salim Reshamwala (13:42)

Floyd McKissick was originally from Asheville, North Carolina, but had been living in New York when he decided to move back to North Carolina, specifically Warren county, to build Soul City. He was a lawyer and a civil rights activist in the 50s, all the way through to the 70s.

Shirlette (13:57)

Yeah, he was also a businessman and a real backer of black power within capitalism. And his idea was to build a town funded by HUD through their Urban Growth and New Communities Development Program act back in 1970. Initially, it was going to be a town built explicitly by black people for black people.

Salim Reshamwala (14:15)

There were plenty of subtle ways to make that intention known without saying it overtly.

Shirlette (14:19)

Yeah, it's another way black people incorporate coded language into everything we do. So Soul City was code for black people are welcome here. And the black capitalist agenda, for better or worse, is the primary motivator around creating what I imagine is this black utopia. So let's get back on the road, Saleem.

Salim Reshamwala (14:40)

I've used the term utopia to describe it and it feels like it fits like an attempt to make a black utopia. But it's kind of weird that it's considered a utopia because it wasn't like they were necessarily trying to make like heaven, like in the, like a paradise. Yeah, it's just a regular peaceful town that they were trying to make and it's, it kind of says something that that's considered a utopia. Does that make sense? Let's say that like Seoul City, everything about it was the same except that it was going to be a majority white community. But I don't think we call that a white utopia. I think we just call that A suburb, Right?

Shirlette (15:18)

I don't know. Yeah. Call it America.

Salim Reshamwala (15:22)

Yeah. We started our exploration of whether a black utopia once existed so close to us by taking a tour of Soul City with Mr. Lou Myers.

Shirlette (15:35)

Yeah, Mr. Lou Myers is a huge part of building that place out.

Salim Reshamwala (15:43)

Good morning, sir. How are you? My name is Saleem.

Ryan Reynolds (15:47)

Saleem Blue Myers.

Shirlette (15:48)

How are you?

Salim Reshamwala (15:48)

Great to meet you.

Ryan Reynolds (15:50)

I saw you.

Lou Myers (15:51)

Sorry, I drove by and got a.

Salim Reshamwala (15:52)

Little turned on the drive up. There were a lot of clear, metaphorical names I noticed. I literally took a turn onto Liberation Road.

Ryan Reynolds (16:01)

All of the streets here have significance. Matt Turner, Liberation Boulevard. Scott Circle, for.

Shirlette (16:09)

Yeah, there's all these incredible street names, and you look around at some of them and some of the spaces that they were building, and you see that there's a sense of trying to build a community that includes the very things that black folks were being excluded from.

Ryan Reynolds (16:22)

So this was. This was a recreation center. This was green Duke subdivision that we drove through. And it was oversized because it was really a regional pool, as opposed to just for here. We had lighted tennis courts, two basketball courts. The only other tennis courts in the county were at the country club. The only other swimming pool in the county was at the country club.

Shirlette (16:46)

Yo, that is so, so dope. I mean, you didn't have a swimming pool, so you built it. You didn't have a tennis court, so you built it. These things actually are things that we inherently associate with a particular class of wealth and whiteness. So having a tennis court or having a public pool, at least where I'm from in eastern North Carolina, those things were preserved for a particular class of white people. They were building it and saying, this is for everybody, because that's simply the way it should be.

Salim Reshamwala (17:21)

Right. They didn't just give themselves an alternative to the country club. They built the opposite.

Shirlette (17:26)

Yeah, exactly.

Salim Reshamwala (17:28)

Lou connected us with Floyd's youngest daughter, Charmaine McKissick. Let's see.

Charmaine McKissick (17:34)

You can't see the sign.

Salim Reshamwala (17:35)

I mean, we followed directions for her house. It's easy to miss. It's on a stretch of road in between the large Soul City sign and a Purdue chicken plant down the way.

Charmaine McKissick (17:42)

You can't see the house from the road. I thought Lou was bringing you, so that's why I didn't give any.

Salim Reshamwala (17:46)

You actually turned right at Floyd McKissick's mausoleum near the top of her driveway.

Shirlette (17:50)

And Charmaine's a professor at North Carolina Central University in Durham, which is one of the state's historically black schools. Her students call her Dr. Mack.

Charmaine McKissick (17:58)

Some white people that came here, had a little difficulty because they'd never been in an all black environment. It's the first time they've had to flip. Now, black folks as a whole, we all been in that situation at some time or other where we been only one. And let's get real, the boss is a black man. When does that happen? It happens now, baby. Back then, that was a rarity. Especially a man that has all this money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Shirlette (18:22)

Okay.

Charmaine McKissick (18:23)

And this old black power craziness. There's a piece where he actually lays out just. I think it's seven or eight steps for black power, and they're all still related to black economic development.

Salim Reshamwala (18:34)

That's interesting. We got to look that up.

Shirlette (18:37)

So actually, Floyd McKissick issued six steps to Black Power, and they are 1. The growth of black political power.

Salim Reshamwala (18:44)

And what exactly does that mean?

Shirlette (18:45)

Well, I think that's what we were seeing at the time. You know, black folks claiming our identity for the purpose of political power.

Salim Reshamwala (18:51)

Like folks were not just spectators in the political process of civil rights. And aside from just voting, they were running for office, all those kinds of things.

Shirlette (19:00)

Two, the building of black economic power.

Salim Reshamwala (19:03)

And that's kind of just getting money, right?

Shirlette (19:06)

Yeah, I think money and property. That's what we're seeing in Soul City. Three, the improvement of the self image of black people.

Salim Reshamwala (19:15)

And there are all these formal and informal ways that that was happening.

Shirlette (19:18)

Right. The black is beautiful campaign, self determination, the key parts of the black power movement. Four, the development of black leadership. I think this is probably where you start to feel a little bit of contention. There are probably tons of different definitions about what black leadership should look like. I mean, there are now. Why wouldn't there be then? So that's interesting because you have folks who believe system is kind of sort of operating outside of the peripheries of capitalism. And then you have people like McKissick who are operating within the boundaries of capitalism. Five, the attainment of federal law enforcement.

Salim Reshamwala (19:54)

I feel like there was a bit of a pause in your voice on that one, Sholette.

Shirlette (19:57)

Yeah, man. I think anybody who hears that might have pause in this moment. There's a lot of violence at the hands of the police that we're experiencing right now. Of course, that's not a new thing. We just have cameras to record it today, and that's a huge difference. But I think people sometimes confuse community accountability with law enforcement, and they're not synonymous terms. So I'm curious about McKissick's desire for attaining federal law enforcement.

Salim Reshamwala (20:25)

And it's hard to know exactly what McKissick meant by that line without chatting with him.

Shirlette (20:29)

True. Number six, mobilization of black consumer power.

Salim Reshamwala (20:36)

It's interesting trying to think about the difference between economic power and black consumer power. But I think this one means conscious spending.

Shirlette (20:43)

Yeah.

Salim Reshamwala (20:44)

Like spending your money in black businesses.

Shirlette (20:46)

Right, right. I'm thinking FUBU.

Salim Reshamwala (20:48)

Exactly. So those were McKissick's six principles. And it took McKissick, Lou Myers and everyone else years to go from taking that concept for a city built on those principles to actually breaking ground.

Shirlette (21:01)

And one of those people who was there from the beginning was Jane Ball Groom, whose voice we heard at the top of the episode.

Jane Ball Groom (21:08)

All right, so what? Go ahead. I'm sorry, what's your name again?

Salim Reshamwala (21:10)

My name's Celine Selene.

Jane Ball Groom (21:12)

Okay. This is my oldest daughter. She was.

Shirlette (21:14)

Hey, I'm Charlotte, 10 when she came here. Nice to meet you.

Jane Ball Groom (21:17)

So she built it also. Talk it out, Leandra.

Leandra (21:22)

Tell em for a few minutes. Cause I got food cooking.

Shirlette (21:25)

Okay. What are you cooking? I'm curious. Oh, nothing.

Leandra (21:27)

Some sweet potato fries and a hamburger.

Shirlette (21:29)

Okay.

Leandra (21:30)

Nothing elaborate.

Salim Reshamwala (21:31)

And we set up under the covered section of her driveway.

Shirlette (21:34)

Yeah. And both Ms. Jane and her daughter were super expressive. It was like their memories of Soul City were tangible. And when they talked, you could feel the spirit in the room.

Salim Reshamwala (21:44)

I actually remember I had to keep adjusting the levels because they were getting so excited and speaking louder and. Yeah, there was a little church in it.

Shirlette (21:51)

Yeah. Man. You couldn't find better advocates for what Soul City was to them.

Salim Reshamwala (21:55)

Help me see what this area looked like as it was getting built.

Jane Ball Groom (21:59)

Okay. You came down the boulevard, so you passed a fire department, I believe. And then you passed. Then you had the pool on this side. You come up the hill, there's HealthCo, which I named by the way. And then there's Assisted Living Center. None of that was there. That road, that Salt City Boulevard was all dirt. It's all dirt. The only thing that was here then is that old house up there. Green Duke house. That's the only thing remaining of the old place. When you came in from Helsgo, there was an old hut with the green Duke house. There were slave cabins around the slave cabin. We know we were looking at the moment because we were from New Yorkers. New Yorkers don't know that, you know. So that's it. You drive into this area. It's farm. Oh, cows, mules. The bulls would chase my kids to school. They would have to walk up to the hill to get to the bus. The bus. The bus couldn't come into these roads because it was all dirt. And the tires would get caught in the. And the. You get stuck in the. In the mud. We would have to go out and watch them walk to the stop. So the bulls would jump the fence after them because they didn't know who we were after.

Salim Reshamwala (22:56)

Your kids?

Jane Ball Groom (22:57)

Well, yeah. My daughter was only chased by one. One down there. Yeah. So it was. It was all of that. It was in the winter time, freezing, because they had little, very little heat in the trailers and sometime no ac. You had the window acs, which didn't really come through. We had a double, single wide trailer. Myself and my husband and five kids, so. But it was paradise.

Shirlette (23:15)

Back roads, dirt paths, cow pastures, open fields, former slave cabins. I mean, that's where I'm from. That's how I grew up. So I get it. But it's really hard to imagine a woman from Harlem thinking, that's paradise.

Salim Reshamwala (23:31)

It hadn't occurred to me that just a few years before you were born, these folks were trying to do this in a place that was very similar to where you grew up.

Shirlette (23:40)

Yeah, the landscapes are the exact same. The only difference, really is the power structure.

Salim Reshamwala (23:45)

What was the power structure like in the spot where you grew up?

Shirlette (23:48)

Yeah, so till I was about 12 years old, we lived at Route 1, Box 80. That was our address. It was a route number. And the house we lived in was essentially a shack with no indoor water or running water. We had an outhouse. And this is in the 80s, and it was owned by the white family that lived up the street. And then when I was 12, we moved to another house that had indoor plumbing, but it was down a dirt road surrounded by farmland that was owned by the white man up the street. So the actual path we lived on, even now, my aunts still live there, is named after that white man who owns all that land around our home. And that, in and of itself, I think, illustrates that difference in power structure.

Salim Reshamwala (24:31)

Really common thing in rural North Carolina for the street to be named after local landowners.

Shirlette (24:36)

Yeah. What you really mean is white men, like agribusiness, big farmers. So imagine being a black kid growing up on a dirt road named after a white dude versus growing up on Liberation Boulevard.

Elise Hu (24:56)

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Ryan Reynolds (26:02)

Soul City was never incorporated. And at one point there was a Soul City sign off of right before the manson exit on 85.

Shirlette (26:11)

That's Lou again.

Ryan Reynolds (26:12)

I had a Volkswagen first time I came down there. Came over the railroad track because my wife Floyd's daughter and I, I was at Harvard. She had just graduated. And so we drove down to New York and then Floyd said, you know, go down da da da da. When you get off at the Manson exit, come up, go over the railroad tracks. And I called my mom and I said, mom, I need to talk with you. She said, what? I said, look, I'm in love with this girl. She said, okay, what's wrong? I said, well, I don't know if his daddy's crazy. She said, what are you talking about? I said, mom, this man's talking about building the city. She said, doing what? I said, building the city. We hadn't. We didn't own our own home. We lived in what they call cardboard city, some projects. So here's a man gonna build a city. Now. I didn't know much, but I knew that was a hell of an effort.

Shirlette (27:04)

Man, love makes you do some crazy shit.

Salim Reshamwala (27:07)

This is true.

Ryan Reynolds (27:09)

Living here in 71, it was just my wife and I, Jane Groom, and there were about seven in her family. Gordon Carey, 3. That was about it. I guess with all the Soul City companies, we might have been around 50 people or so.

Salim Reshamwala (27:23)

It feels hard to overemphasize that this man is driving from Harvard to the south, which, you know, all the migration had been in the other direction. And Jane is leaving Harlem.

Shirlette (27:35)

I know. I mean, can you imagine all that blackness she left behind? I mean, the blackness that she knew and trusted to come down south to all this unknown. That's like faith at its finest right there.

Jane Ball Groom (27:52)

It was 1968. I worked for McKissick in Harlem, New York, as a secretary. Harlem was Harlem back in the late 60s. I mean, because we had, you know, black is beautiful. Everything was accrued to us, coming from the Negro aspect of our lives to that of being a black person. You know, solidarity, possession of pride, possession of self. Beginning of 1969, he started talking about a new town in Warren County, North Carolina. And I said, well, that's a joke. You know, come on down South. I'm not going down South. Not me.

Salim Reshamwala (28:25)

That's what I was curious about, because it sounds like Harlem. Like, we're talking about utopia. Like, that sounded like.

Jane Ball Groom (28:29)

You have to understand that the period of the times. You have to understand. I was born a Negro girl. I lived the Negro life. I was told to fifth grade that Abraham Lincoln freed us. You know, Stoker Carmichael, he walks in one day and says, hell are my beautiful African flowers. I mean, you're sitting up there with these people that are changing the world. If you don't change your own mind, then something's wrong with you. And then here comes this opportunity with. To build a new town, to be a part of building a new town, to be educated at the feet of some pretty important people. At that point in time, I was going to come for two weeks to set the office up. I had no idea I'd be here forever. I came for two weeks coming from New York, and you're out here and all this. You don't know that this land is even available. It's not in your scope of thinking. There's so much land in New York. You have this house and that house and that tenement and that tenement. But here you have all this land. Well, my kids were very small, and I thought I had come to paradise. So to me, in a sense, it was a paradigm. They were safe. We were living on 1200 acres of land, and it was about getting up in the morning and going to work and just building. We drove down here from New York and we had never driven this way before. And five children and my husband and I in the car, this little Dodge station. No, it was a Dodge compact car. I had the baby on my lap. She was 18 months old. And the four of you guys are in the back seat like this, you know, faces stuck to the window. And we got here at 2 in the morning. We came to Manson, where the post office is.

Salim Reshamwala (30:11)

Yeah.

Jane Ball Groom (30:12)

And there is. There was nothing there. No sound. A dog was barking. And we stayed in that car all night because we didn't know where we were.

Salim Reshamwala (30:20)

Wow.

Jane Ball Groom (30:21)

You just stayed in the car because we. There were no signs.

Salim Reshamwala (30:25)

Do you remember this?

Jane Ball Groom (30:27)

Who does that? With five kids in 1970. I mean, in 1970, to come to a segregated place in Warren County, North Carolina, to build a new black town. I mean, controlled by blacks. Whoa.

Salim Reshamwala (30:41)

Was it super exciting or scary or both?

Jane Ball Groom (30:44)

No, it was transformative. It made me feel, personally, for me, that I was someone more than a Negro. I was a woman with purpose, control, potential, and passion.

Leandra (31:01)

I began to really get this sense of, oh, this is something that's happening. There's a vibration that takes place in a movement that you can't deny. And so you begin to take on a sense of pride. Yes, I belong to that. Even though you're still not quite aware of the bigger picture, but you can't deny the movement. I wanted to be a fly on the wall. I wanted to just hear and to see grown black men, white men, anybody, just coming together with a common cause that believed in a project. And they were all fighting for it together, and they were passionate about it.

Ryan Reynolds (31:39)

We had to get infrastructure here. There was none from HUD. We got a $14 million loan guarantee commitment. That's where we went and sold bonds on the market. Wall street and the feds guaranteed them if we would default on them.

Shirlette (32:04)

So this wasn't like HUD was just giving Soul City $14 million to ball out. It was a bond guarantee, which is basically where a third party, in this case the federal government, will pay the debt security if the issuer, in this case the developer, Floyd McKissick, were to default. And you could take a certain amount from the total guarantee. And so Mr. Liu and the rest of the team drew 5 million and started building the infrastructure, which was mostly underground.

Ryan Reynolds (32:37)

This was farmland, and as you can see, a lot of it is still farmland. We were in basically the first phase of development, so there was literally nothing here when we came. There was no water, no sewer, and so we had to build all of that from scratch.

Salim Reshamwala (32:55)

They also built a couple of buildings which stuck around that we could still see. They stood out really stark in all that farmland and greenery.

Ryan Reynolds (33:03)

This was sort of what was going to be the town center where we are. That was a health center, regional health center. There was McKissick Assisted Living Center. Everything you can see here, we owned. We owned 5,000 acres.

Shirlette (33:20)

So they owned 5,000 acres of land and anticipated that 50,000 people would come to live in Soul City.

Ryan Reynolds (33:28)

The location is within 500 miles of most of the major metropolitan areas. You know, the Chicago's pretty much everything east of the Mississippi. And you had Interstate 85, which I mentioned, that is US number one. That's what they call the old Boston Post highway. Goes all the way from Boston down to Florida, all the way down to Key West. And then you had the train that was the Seaboard Coastline Railroad. So you had transportation, you had accessibility to the markets, and you had a labor force that could be trained.

Salim Reshamwala (34:09)

And that was important because people were leaving Warren county at a staggering rate. And Floyd McKissick's plan, it was to get people to come here, but it was also to get people to stop leaving, to just stay here and work here.

Shirlette (34:23)

And was predominantly black.

Ryan Reynolds (34:25)

Warren County? Yes, Warren county was predominantly black. And Floyd said economic development is where black folk need to be, because we're in a capitalistic system. If you don't have capital, you're not going to be a player.

Salim Reshamwala (34:38)

Was it fun at that point?

Ryan Reynolds (34:40)

Oh, absolutely. No, no, no, no, no. It was. It was the most fun I ever had working. I mean, seriously. I mean, because. No, I mean, where can you see stuff get done, you know, particularly when you're planning. When they broke ground for the water system, it just, you know, building going on and that type of stuff. Yeah, it was just thrilling.

Salim Reshamwala (35:00)

So, Shalette, through all this, you were still trying to define black utopia and find ways to talk about it?

Shirlette (35:06)

Yep, sure was. Did you see Black Panther?

Ryan Reynolds (35:10)

Yeah.

Shirlette (35:11)

When you watched it, did you sing like. No, shoot, we did that.

Ryan Reynolds (35:14)

No, that was fantasy. That was Disney. No, this was real work.

Salim Reshamwala (35:21)

So Lou shut that down pretty quickly, huh?

Shirlette (35:24)

Yeah. He wanted nothing to do with a fictitious world.

Salim Reshamwala (35:28)

Yeah. And it seems like there's almost this recurring question of if a real black utopia can exist within a capitalist framework, which kind of needs winners and losers.

Shirlette (35:39)

Yeah, I think you're right about that. And unfortunately, black folks in America have historically been on the losing side of that history.

Salim Reshamwala (35:47)

What are some places that people have come close to turning the tides?

Shirlette (35:50)

Well, there was another potential black utopia, this one right here in the Bull City, Durham, North Carolina. And it was created through a similar intention of carving out space for black people within a capitalist system.

Tobias (36:05)

Yep.

Salim Reshamwala (36:05)

And it's a place we walk by every single day. Black Wall Street.

Shirlette (36:11)

Many people knew about Tulsa, Oklahoma's Black Wall street ever since the HBO series Watchmen came out. But not too many people know about Durham's Black Wall Street.

Salim Reshamwala (36:20)

Durham's Black Wall street was created in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and it was basically a spot where black folks actually owned banks and insurance companies and could give each other loans and had the way to start their own business.

Shirlette (36:33)

Our friend Tobias has his own relationship with Durham's black and has his own business on black Wall street today. So we talked with him about what he imagined the original black Wall street would have been like.

Tobias (36:46)

To me, when I think about it, I think about my grandfather, and I think about the way that he dressed when I was a kid, I'm thinking, like, man, why always wearing that? He always had his little hat on. He always wear a suit or, you know, spenders and everything. And I guess in my head, I'm like, okay, that style came from somewhere that, you know, we're. Back then, it was the 80s that came from somewhere. So in my head, I kind of rewind to when that was all hot and old pictures and. And them wearing the, you know, the pants and the clothes and the suits, and everybody always dressed up, and they're out there on the street. I was going here to go shopping. You got to shoot the guy over here doing shoes over here. Oh, I need to go to the bank and cash this check real quick. Or do this. Oh, go. Make sure you pay on such and such as insurance because. Because they getting older, and we need to make sure that we have a place to bury them when they get older. So make sure you pay the insurance down the street. Go down there to. You know where to go. Yeah, go down to the mutual. There you go. I just feel like that's the way it was. Like, that is so cool to me, just the community and the people doing it. Go down to the mutual and do that. I'm gonna be over at Mechanics and Farm.

Shirlette (37:51)

So Mechanics and Farmers bank became operational in 1907, and it played an important role in helping black businesses survive during the Great Depression because it was financially stable enough to remain standing through the financial crisis of the time. And they were specifically catering to black people and black business owners. So when these very same people were rejected from other banks because of segregation, they had their own community to look to.

Tobias (38:21)

Yeah, yeah, it was necessary because we couldn't do business with white people, and so that was necessary. John Merrick was a barber, and he cut everyone's hair. He had black barbershops, white barbershops. Smart dude. Incredibly smart. And decided to start his company, which was North Carolina Mutual. He was a barber, but knew the importance of being buried with dignity.

Salim Reshamwala (38:48)

All right.

Tobias (38:49)

And that was part of the reason why he started a life Insurance company. Because back then, you know, coming out of slavery, we're in reconstruction. So there's really no, no framework for what to do with black dead bodies. So a lot of us were being thrown in places that we didn't want to be, that we didn't want our families to be. So necessity. And other people, like doctors, there were a lot of other people who went into business and built this legacy. So they did that because they knew that their community needed it. They knew that this was something that they were filling voids. Again, it came out of necessity. It was partially a dream and it was partially necessity. Like you can be oppressed and still dream.

Shirlette (39:33)

No doubt.

Tobias (39:34)

People forget that.

Salim Reshamwala (39:38)

Okay, so Black Wall street, this spot that we walk by almost every single day, would you say that it was a black utopia?

Shirlette (39:47)

So yeah. Tobias brings up interesting elements of what could potentially be a black utopia. This marriage of necessity and dream.

Salim Reshamwala (39:55)

You don't sound totally convinced.

Shirlette (39:59)

Well, Saleem, I'm not really. I mean, I just wonder how long black people can sustain this kind of insular space in America without it being co opted. And on top of that, every black man couldn't afford insurance and a suit.

Salim Reshamwala (40:11)

Derek Beasley, who's a local artist who is trying to figure out ways to have little pieces of that utopia in Durham, also brought up a similar point.

Lou Myers (40:20)

You know, the idea of a black utopia to me is. It's kind of an abstract one of those things that I think when I first came into my consciousness or whatever you want to call it, you know, my wokeness when I first started reading books and thinking about my blackness in a certain way, like, you know, that concept of a black utopia, like, oh, I'm buy some land and we just gonna move out there and we gonna start a new society. Like, and I'm not saying that in just like it' ridiculous, but I think some of my ideas around what freedom looks like have evolved and I center blackness. But I don't necessarily envision the future, a liberated future, as being exclusively black, even though I've created lots of exclusively black spaces.

Shirlette (41:07)

So one of the spaces Derek co founded is called Black August in the park. And it happens every year in Durham. August in Central park, it's a beautiful day carved out to celebrate in center blackness. There's music, there's great vibes, delicious food, and of course, the Electric Slide.

Lou Myers (41:28)

So when you're coming down the hill that is Foster street in Durham. Looking down that hill, you'll see a 15 foot high scaffold that says Black August Center park it's anchored by different, different signs and placards as you walk up that are black affirming. So you might see a sign that says, your blackness is welcome here. As you get closer, you hear the bass and it's like, you hear the music thumping and like, damn, like, what's that? You know, so. And then you see people kind of pouring in and out. It's just like a sea of people, black folks of all ages, all orientations, just getting down and loving on each other.

Shirlette (42:08)

I find it to be an obligatory stop on that day. I mean, black people as far as the eye can see. And you really put your black card in jeopardy if you don't at least pop by. Do you see black artists in the park as a grandchild of black Wall Street?

Lou Myers (42:23)

I think it's that legacy that emboldens us to even think about taking up space like that. Right. I would own that as a grandbaby. We all got grandparents that we'd be like, that was my granddaddy. But I don't necessarily agree with everything he did or he said, but he did make a way for me.

Shirlette (42:41)

Derek had a few specific things he actually did like about black Wall Street.

Lou Myers (42:45)

I think there is something about black Wall street that is self determining, that is revolutionary in its own right, but.

Shirlette (42:55)

It'S not quite his utopia.

Lou Myers (42:58)

There is also a part of black Wall street that's elitist. There's a part of black Wall street that's classes. There's a part of black Wall street that's really deeply invested in a capitalist agenda which is inherently exclusionary. And so when I think about black August in the park, and for that matter, any black thing that I'm trying to be a part of, we're thinking about all black folks, right? We want to envision a future where all black people can get free and feel liberated. So, you know, I think that's the core difference. We're not equating freedom with financial gain.

Shirlette (43:38)

Now that's Derek's opinion, and I ain't mad at it. And maybe that's one of the problems with black spaces created within a capitalist framework. The benefits are short lived.

Salim Reshamwala (43:50)

And Tobias had some interesting thoughts on this.

Tobias (43:52)

The problem is when integration happened, those businesses were not taken care of. They did not have the support that the other companies had. And so a lot of them have died. Let's look at North Carolina Mutual, that's a great example. North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance. They don't have the products and we're in 2020. They don't have the products that some of their competitors have, and they don't have them because they don't have access. Now, we're not in the same situation that we were in before, but, man, that's a lot of catching up that you have to do if you do decide that you want to catch up. Like, we still need to own land. We still need to own businesses. We still need to own property. We still need to invest our money, and we need to track that because there is power in the black dollar. Look at where we are in our real estate. No one can get into that unless you got money. Who's got money? The people who have money are probably the ones that benefited when they said that. Now, black people can do businesses with white people around the 50s and 60s. Okay. Excuse me, the 60s. This is what systemic racism looks like. We're in these positions because of generations of issues.

Shirlette (45:02)

Yes. Aleem, you remember how Lou said, you can only play the game if you got capital?

Salim Reshamwala (45:07)

Yeah, that's exactly what I remembered when Tobias said this same thing. There's just not equal access to capital.

Shirlette (45:14)

Well, since Soul City's capital was loan guaranteed by hud, when your state representatives change, that could affect your access to the money that you were dependent on. So with one election, things started to fall apart. Here again, is Charmaine describing what happened.

Charmaine McKissick (45:32)

I really think we thought we could get there.

Shirlette (45:35)

Yeah, I do.

Charmaine McKissick (45:36)

I think we thought we could get there, even with Senator Helms, who was our biggest thorn. I mean, when does a senator tell his state not to get money? I mean, that just doesn't happen. When he got elected, my father wrote him a note in congratulating him, and he wrote us back and told us, well, you know, good luck, because the first thing I'm going to be doing when I get there is to try to make sure that you guys are closed down. Basically.

Shirlette (45:58)

He kept his word on that.

Charmaine McKissick (45:59)

Well, hell, yeah.

Salim Reshamwala (46:00)

Jesse Helms was a conservative senator who came into office in 1973 and remained in that position until 2003. He earned the nickname Senator Noe for being an obstructionist who strongly opposed what he considered liberal ideas. Things like civil rights, disability rights, feminism, gay rights, and affirmative action, among others. He was not popular with people we talked to in Soul City.

Charmaine McKissick (46:24)

They say the good die young. He lived a long time.

Shirlette (46:33)

That's a whole sentence.

Ryan Reynolds (46:37)

They did an investigation, and that's when you get concerned, because it's the thing about black folk and the money. And Helms was suggesting that McKissick was using this to pay at his Pockets, and you couldn't see any evidence of what was built.

Salim Reshamwala (46:54)

So eventually, Soul City ran out of funding and had to stop operations, even though no one was ever charged with illegitimately spending money. And most of what they built, it was underground, like the city's sewer system. That's part of the reason why you go to Seoul city and you see this beautiful land, but you don't see the city that you might be expecting. When you start building a city on fresh land, the first things you build are infrastructure, almost all underground. And that's what got built. And today, well, you know, unfortunately, Floyd.

Charmaine McKissick (47:25)

McKissick was always right. We knew he was right anyway. But where is all the economic development in Warren county right now?

Shirlette (47:29)

Right here.

Charmaine McKissick (47:31)

Right there.

Shirlette (47:32)

The prison.

Charmaine McKissick (47:32)

The prison.

Shirlette (47:33)

Wow.

Charmaine McKissick (47:34)

Next door you saw it. Purdue and then the other decor manufacturing, the corrugated pox company. They're all right within what Soul City would have been.

Shirlette (47:44)

So what do you do with that information? I mean, it seems like, you know, that could be a little disheartening. Here's Leandra, Jane's daughter again.

Leandra (47:54)

And it does bother me. Like my mother said, when people say, oh, it failed, but it. See, I remember what it was when we first got here and to see it now. So my hope and my dream is that the younger generation, once they get the understanding of the foundation. See, we came as foundational builders, and once they get an understanding of the foundation that was built, that they won't disregard it, but they will come with their new visions and their new dreams because. And build on. Because my prayer has always been revitalize. I don't care where they are. There's somebody that has a seed to revitalize. And when you come here and you get to. And you get in this area and you get in touch with the soul, the soul, the heartbeat of this place, you can't help but catch a hold of a vision and want to begin to build, catch a vibe that's becomes contagious.

Shirlette (48:49)

Contagious. Wow. That's beautiful. We had to ask Lou how he felt.

Salim Reshamwala (48:54)

When you think about Soul City now, do you feel like you've mentioned a few times the cycle of the problems and how some of the issues are the same and just new names and some of the techniques are the same and just new names. I was curious, like, when you think back on Soul City, do you feel hopeful? Do you feel. What's your emotion now?

Ryan Reynolds (49:11)

I forget how much money was put into this area for the regional water system. All that other stuff.

Salim Reshamwala (49:18)

Lou wasn't sure how much money they put into the water system. But we found sources that stated the water system cost anywhere between 9 and $12 million.

Ryan Reynolds (49:28)

So my concern is with all of this investment and the proximity to rtp, it couldn't happen.

Salim Reshamwala (49:39)

Lou Myers is referring to Research Triangle Park. It's in North Carolina, and it's one of the largest industrial parks in the.

Ryan Reynolds (49:46)

Entire U.S. i don't think it didn't happen because black folk were developing it. I mean, this was just a rough road. Hoe if you can't. You needed to sell land to get money to continue. We couldn't sell land, particularly the industrial tracks. Without the industrial tracks and the jobs, it was hard to attract people to come because these folk that were living in Warren county couldn't have afforded one of these homes that you see over here. So I believe in reparations. Until black folk get reparations, nothing's going to change because at the end of the day, it's about money.

Salim Reshamwala (50:25)

Mr. Myers is referring to the fact that Soul City had all this land to sell for housing, but it was a cycle. You couldn't sell this land to businesses or residents without jobs. It was hard to get people to come there because it was Warren County. No one knew anything about it. It was just the middle of nowhere to most people.

Shirlette (50:44)

And I think it's also important to note that they're moving from a historically agrarian model to a desire to be like a tech hub.

Salim Reshamwala (50:52)

That's a great point, because it's a hard sell to be like, hey, the right spot for your tech industry. It's in this open field.

Shirlette (50:59)

It's a hard sell, but an even harder grind. You know, they're building this thing from scratch.

Salim Reshamwala (51:07)

And I think there's at least two forces here. There's race, clearly, and then there's the other that it's just hard to make a new city, period. And at the end of the day, cities need money to survive.

Shirlette (51:20)

So even though they didn't get to live out the full dream, I wondered if Leandra and Jane felt like they were building a black utopia. You talk about it as a utopia, and I wonder if you ever thought about that. And if so, what. What makes it that for you?

Leandra (51:37)

For as long as I can remember, I don't think I've ever mentally or even emotionally framed it as a utopia. For me, it was history in the making and I was a part of it. And that, to me, was everything. I mean, you to know that you're in the midst of history being made and you are part of that history, it takes on a whole nother stature in your spirit, you know, so that when there's a passion that comes forth when we talk about it, that basically alludes to the fact that we're very proud. Listen. We listen. When I was on my school bus and I had to walk from here way down on the muddy road to catch. We're still on a school bus driving on what, dirt roads. But because of Soul City, other roads became paved because we were the place where everything was happening. So other people, other areas began to benefit because of what we were doing right here.

Shirlette (52:41)

Wow.

Leandra (52:41)

There was a wave.

Shirlette (52:43)

Yeah. So that's Soul City was the nucleus for all the radiating.

Leandra (52:47)

Good way to put it.

Salim Reshamwala (52:48)

Yes.

Jane Ball Groom (52:49)

Yes.

Shirlette (52:49)

That's amazing. So I feel like, you know, you have some kind of. Correct me if I'm wrong, but utopia feels kind of that, to use that word, feels like it takes away from the actual work of building. And it's not a fantasy. It's like.

Leandra (53:03)

Right, okay, right, right.

Jane Ball Groom (53:06)

Utopia is a place that I define as perfect. It was never a utopia. It was the answer solution to building a better lifestyle for blacks and future generations to come.

Leandra (53:17)

What made it great was that it wasn't perfect. What made it great was because we had the challenges. So every time we could overcome another challenge, either with HUD or something else, that's what makes it stand tall, that we had the challenges that we had to overcome. But we persevered, we kept going through because the vision was in action. It's one thing to build, to say you have a vision. That's all on paper. But we took the paper and we began to make the vision come alive. And that right there, to be in.

Jane Ball Groom (53:45)

The middle of that, that's the spiritual utopia. Utopia, spiritually, is possible. That's when you feel so good about a given thing. That transformative sense that I was saying about earlier, that's my utopian spirit right here. I'm feeling great about this. I feel good. So in a sense, it's a mental thing, but a physical utopia. No, unrealistic.

Salim Reshamwala (54:05)

I love that distinction of a spiritual utopia.

Jane Ball Groom (54:08)

Physically, yeah. It was what Helly Andrews.

Leandra (54:10)

They find it, you know, that's. That's where the soul comes in.

Jane Ball Groom (54:13)

Soulful utopia.

Shirlette (54:15)

Can I just mention this quote from Nikki Giovanni? That's kind of like my mantra.

Salim Reshamwala (54:20)

Please.

Shirlette (54:21)

It's like a phrase I live by. So she says in this poem, nicarosa. I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand that black love is black wealth. And I Feel like that's kind of sort of the point that Jane and Leandra are making when they talk about the spiritual utopia, our ability to be resilient and find wealth even when we don't have this material wealth. It's not necessarily about tangible and tactile or financial wealth. It's the ability to access joy for the sake of our own survival.

Salim Reshamwala (55:01)

Of all the conversations we've had, what do you feel will stick with you?

Shirlette (55:07)

I think Jane and Leandra, frankly, their energy. I mean, I was just so moved by sitting in their presence, how much they still believe in the original vision. Although they're not nostalgic in any way, their joy is very much alive. They don't feel stagnant at all. It's an act of hope.

Salim Reshamwala (55:26)

I love that phrase, active hope.

Shirlette (55:29)

Yeah. Did you feel that?

Salim Reshamwala (55:31)

When I heard them, specifically the daughter, I 100% felt like I want to live feeling this energy. It's kind of cliche, you know, we're never going to find a utopia. No one's ever going to find a utopia. But that state, that active hope, that phrase you just said, it's really interesting to me. Like, if you feel like you can maintain active hope, then you can be both good within yourself and trying to make sure that you're doing good in the world at the same time. And to me, the fact that they found that that's all just how I want to live in this world.

Shirlette (56:06)

Right on. I absolutely agree.

Salim Reshamwala (56:09)

And just in the news, on the good side of it, I feel like we're seeing people who were inspired by movements like Soul City, and they're using that inspiration to build things now.

Shirlette (56:19)

Right. There's freedom, Georgia, where 19 black families bought land to take care of folks who look like them. There's Akon City in Senegal, which some folks have actually compared to Wakanda.

Salim Reshamwala (56:33)

That's a place you could go and not have them laugh when you compare their project to Wakanda.

Shirlette (56:43)

So basically, what you're saying is this understanding, like, moving beyond the measure of our own worth outside of the white gaze is the parallel when Soul City is that as is Roots, as was Black Wall street in its own way, as is Wakanda in its own way.

Charmaine McKissick (57:01)

Yes, absolutely. I agree.

Shirlette (57:05)

You satisfied me. I can let it go now.

Charmaine McKissick (57:07)

Okay.

Salim Reshamwala (57:08)

I could feel the atmospheric pressure change you. Shirlette has been satisfied.

Shirlette (57:14)

Yes. That was weighing on me. Kind of heavy. Yeah. I'm coming back. I want to spend more time out this beautiful, lush Carolina land. Familiar to me in that way. I mean, reminds me of eastern North Carolina where I grew up. Only thing missing was black ownership, which is like a big omission. But yeah, I'm moved. I'm coming back.

Salim Reshamwala (57:47)

Far Flung with Salim Reshamwala Season 1 it's over for now. Thank you, thank you, thank you for journeying with us. And if you want us back, let us know. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts and tell us where we should go next. Sholette, thank you for leading us through this story.

Shirlette (58:05)

Oh, my pleasure, Saleem. Thanks for inviting me along for the ride.

Salim Reshamwala (58:10)

Far Flung with Salim Russianwala is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Newsom of Magnificent Noise for Ted. Our production staff includes Huete Gitana, Sabrina.

Leandra (58:22)

Farhee, Kim Naderfein Peterson, Elise Blennerhasset, Angela.

Salim Reshamwala (58:27)

Chang and Michelle Quint with the guidance of Roxanne hi Lash and Colin Helms. Our fact checker is Abby White. Ad stories are produced by Transmitter Media. Extra special thanks to Alan Thompson who recorded the saxophone music in this episode on Paris street on Durham's Black Wall Street. Also thanks to Nicole Boddy, Valentina Bohanini, Sammy Case, Micah Ames, Brian Green, Will Hennessy, Dion Lofton, Anna Phelan, Sarah Jane Souther and Peter Zweifel. This episode was mixed and sound designed by Kristen Muller. Our Executive producer is Eric Newsome. Special thanks to our sponsor, Marriott Hotels and Women Will a grow with Google Program I'm Saleem Reshamwala.

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