Mar 28, 2019 - Sale 2503

Sale 2503 - Lot 203

Price Realized: $ 4,250
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(BUSINESS.) Pair of promotional pamphlets from the utopian African-American community, Soul City. 14 and 44 pages. 4to, 11 x 8 1/2 inches, original pictorial wrappers, minor wear; minimal wear to contents Np, 1972-73

Additional Details

Soul City was a planned development in Warren County, NC which was launched by CORE activist Floyd McKissick in 1969. It was intended to be a utopian residential and industrial community, primarily African-American but multi-racial, and was launched with substantial support from the Nixon administration and state authorities. As described here, "Imagine a city without prejudice, a city without poverty, a city without slums, a city tailor-made for industry, a city with a booming economy." This lot includes two of their original promotional pamphlets. "Soul City: The Bold Alternative" (14 pages, circa 1972) and "Present at the Creation . . . Souvenir Book in Celebration of the Historic Groundbreaking of Soul City, North Carolina" (44 pages, illustrated, November 1973). Soul City was at least partially built, but its developers foreclosed in 1979. Its large business incubator complex, Soul Tech I, is very much still in use--as the 809-bed Warren Correctional Institution. Two copies of "The Bold Alternative" in OCLC, and one of "Present at the Creation"; none known at auction.