Thomas Healy’s new book, Soul City, tells the story of Floyd McKissick, a civil rights leader who wanted so badly to create a racially harmonious city out of nothing that he became a Republican to make it happen. Here’s one of the ads:

My review of Soul City ran at PopMatters:

Though he worked closely with the likes of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, Jr., McKissick was neither pure firebrand or pure visionary. But he embodied aspects of both. A World War II veteran with a staunch sense of right and wrong, he took a no-nonsense approach to civil rights. When studying to get his law degree at the University of North Carolina, McKissick managed the problem of a segregated campus swimming by jumping into it with his clothes on and announcing, ‘It’s integrated now.’

You can read an excerpt here.