WARREN COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) -- Building a brand-new community from the ground up is no small feat, but it almost happened right here in North Carolina. The purpose of the new city was to create jobs, housing and opportunity for all people, and it all started from the vision of one man. The site of this new community was in Warren County, which is located about two hours northeast of the Piedmont Triad and about an hour north of Durham. In 1969, a former slave plantation was prepped and primed to one day become a rural utopia. It started as 5,000 acres of dirt in the middle of Warren County, which was one of the poorest counties in the country at the time, and was meant to be converted into a buzzing community that would eventually grow to 50,000 people with neighborhoods, businesses and schools. The man behind the vision was Floyd B. McKissick Sr. He was a civil rights lawyer and activist. Having been raised in North Carolina during the Jim Crow era, McKissick longed for and fought for equality his entire life. He even served as the National Director of Congress for Racial Equity from 1966 to 1968. When McKissick came up with the idea to start a new town, he and his family were living in Harlem. He wanted to help solve the problem of Black out-migration in the south. Black families were moving north in droves to escape racism and prejudice and find better job opportunities. McKissick thought if he could take a poor, rural city in the south and bring opportunities to the residents there, he could help the south build a stronger economy. It was the Urban Growth and New Communities Act of 1968 that would allow McKissick to put his plan in motion. With the help of a team of people including his son, Floyd McKissick Jr., son-in-law Lew Myers, T.T. and Eva Clayton, and architect and politician, Harvey Gantt, McKissick submitted for government funding through this new program He decided to call it Soul City. "He was ahead of his time ... in terms of understanding the need for economic development, trying to put together a program to address that ... Twas Soul City," said Lew Myers, former director of marketing for Soul City. McKissick had a very clear plan for what he wanted Soul City to be, but the most important was that it be diverse since that was a characteristic many towns in the 1970s rural south didn't have. It was a radical concept at that time, especially with a Black man being the face of the project. In addition to being the national director of CORE, McKissick marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., organized sit-ins, successfully desegregated and was one of the first Black students to attend the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Law, and with the help of his own children, helped desegregate Durham Public Schools. "He was somebody who likewise not only believed in dreaming about a better America but wanting to make America better," Floyd McKissick Jr. said. He had created many allies but enemies as well. That fact didn't stop him. He was determined to make Soul City happen. After applying and receiving approval, The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded McKissick Enterprises $14 million through the new communities program to start Soul City. McKissick moved his family down to Warren County from New York to oversee the project. On Nov. 9, 1973, the ground was officially broken in a grand ceremony. "There was a lot of excitement that day. Governor Holshouser flew in on a helicopter and declared it Soul City Day for the state of North Carolina. All of the top elected officials in that area of the state were there. You had a representative from the White House who was there. As I recall it, Bob Brown was there that day. He was the senior advisor to the president at that time. So you had a wide variety of leaders who were there and were excited about the groundbreaking for Soul City," excited about it's potential, excited about what would come forth from this amazing dream that my father had," McKissick Jr. said. Only 13 towns were granted funding from the government through HUD's 1968 New Communities program. By 1977, Soul City was one of only six that were thriving. This new town McKissick dreamt up had all the makings of the American dream, and it seemed to be off to a promising start. But the troubles that would lead to its demise were not far behind.