Floyd McKissick; Civil Rights Advocate

DURHAM, N.C. â€”  Floyd B. McKissick, a longtime civil rights lawyer and former director of the Congress of Racial Equality, whose dream of building a multiracial city in the red clay meadows of North Carolina foundered in debt, died Sunday.

He was 69 and died of lung cancer at his home here, family members said Monday.

In 1966, McKissick replaced James Farmer as head of CORE, a group that has been central to some of the biggest battles of the civil rights movement.

In the late 1960s, McKissick alienated some black leaders when he switched to the Republican Party and supported then-President Richard M. Nixon. McKissick said at the time that it was foolish for blacks to place all their faith in the Democrats.

He also conceded that the switch could help his Soul City project, a residential-industrial development that was envisioned as a home to more than 45,000 people by 2000.

By 1979, only 124 people were living in 33 houses and the government, spurred by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), cut off funds to the project. It was estimated then that it had lost about $28 million in its seven years of existence. Although parts of Soul City now resemble a ghost town, McKissick and his wife continued to live there.

McKissick was born in Asheville, N.C. His first involvement with the civil rights movement came when he was a teen-ager.

McKissick was arrested by a white police officer for directing traffic around an all-black roller-skating race. The local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People protested the arrest, starting McKissick’s lifelong affiliation with the group.

In 1951, he sued to gain admission to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Law School. A federal appeals court ordered him admitted.

McKissick, who had just graduated from North Carolina College at Durham, now North Carolina Central University, was represented in the case by Thurgood Marshall, then an NAACP attorney and now a U.S. Supreme Court justice.

McKissick also represented his daughter in her successful lawsuit to be admitted to an all-white school in Durham.

He was a member of the board of directors of the American Civil Liberties Union and last June was appointed a district judge by Gov. Jim Martin.