WARREN COUNTY, N.C. (WGHP) -- Though it had many successes, Soul City, America's first free-standing community in Warren County, was never fully realized. The original idea was to create economic opportunities by building a brand new town in a struggling rural county. It was an ambitious project to pursue, and it almost came to fruition. The land had been purchased, water was flowing into the community, health care and recreation centers had been built. It seemed as if America's only free-standing city at the time was going to be a success. So what happened? ‘Soul City’: Civil rights leader tried to create rural utopia in North Carolina over 50 years ago There are several factors that went into the fall of Soul City. One big one was the political and racial discomfort caused by the name of the town. "The name Soul City ... rubbed people the wrong way ... When you're selling something, you want people to feel comfortable, and if you have any kind of reservation, you're not going to buy," said Lew Myers, former director of marketing for Soul City. Soul City founder Floyd McKissick Sr. came up with the name Soul City to represent love and unity. "This is 1969 when we bought the land. So you know, big afros, red black and green. One of the number one hits in that time frame was ... 'Say it Loud. I'm Black and I'm Proud.' So you can understand perhaps, but my father's concept was always soul as in the Bible, agape, love," said Charmaine McKissick-Melton, daughter of Floyd McKissick Sr. "I think the name also fed into the point that we were talking about that this was going to be an all-Black town," Myers said. While it was McKissick's goal to make sure people of color benefited from the success of Soul City, he never wanted a segregated town. Brochures for Soul City advertised it as a place for all families, depicting illustrations of white and Black people. "He viewed Soul City as a multi-racial city being pursued by an African American development company but open to all and embracing people of all backgrounds," said Floyd McKissick Jr., former director of planning for Soul City. "There's never been a time where Soul City was ever segregated. It's always been an integrated community," McKissick-Melton said. ‘Soul City’: Remains of planned utopia in rural North Carolina find new life over 50 years later The name was one issue. Timing was another. The year was 1974 and this project was located in Warren County, which was and still is considered the rural south. At the helm of the project, was a Black civil rights activist. All before Soul City, McKissick Sr. helped desegregate UNC-Chapel Hill's Law School, his children desegregated Durham public schools and he had mostly Black people on his team leading the project. "It was sometimes difficult for people who were not people of color to adjust to a community ... in the early 70s where the boss is a Black man," said Charmaine McKissick-Melton, the youngest daughter of McKissick Sr. "People are intrigued about the idea that you would try to bring together the systems that make up urban areas into a rural area. And just think that a black man thought of this, right? And so you put it down because a Black person thought of that, right? You would've thought of that as innovative, imaginative, disciplined, foresight if someone else had done it. But yet you use his skin to say, 'poo poo,'" said Eva Clayton, former executive director of the Soul City Foundation. There were also heavy hitting politicians who made it clear they did not support McKissick Sr. like the late North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms. Helms was a staunch conservative who openly opposed federal intervention in the implementation of protections for women and people of color. "You had Jesse Helms who had been elected to the senate in 1972 who was an opponent of the civil rights movement and an opponent to everything that my dad articulated and represented. And when he was elected to the US Senate, his goal was to stop Soul City," McKissick Jr. said. Though the two had opposite political views, when Helms was elected, McKissick Sr. wrote a letter, extending an olive branch of sorts. He congratulated Helms and said he looked forward to working with him. Helms responded to the letter by calling Soul City a "boondoggle" and vowed to shut it down. Helms even opened a General Accounting Office investigation, also known as a GAO audit on the town, which triggered speculative stories in the local media about financial mismanagement. The negative press stirred doubt in the minds of other political leaders and the public.  The audit results came back clean. Every cent was accounted for and no funds had been misappropriated. In the end, the results even found a few hundred dollars the government owed Soul City. But the damage had already been done. "So you had Helms' attack, you had the investigation. When the investigation was announced, I think that was the death knell. I think you sort of know it, but you don't want to admit it. You think you can overcome it," Myers said. And just like that, America's first free-standing community was finished. Government funding for Soul City was officially pulled in 1979 just a year after the GAO audit.