PositiveThe New Republic... stirring ... Building on historian Robert O. Self’s work on postwar Oakland, Healy shows how economic empowerment and community building formed a key tenet of Black Power ideology ... Like many good authors, Healy sometimes overstates the pioneering nature of his work ... Like many good authors, Healy sometimes overstates the pioneering nature of his work ... nd Healy’s insistence on including detailed sketches of even minor figures can lead to unexpected shifts in tone, with languid biographical anecdotes unfolding mid-chapter. Yet McKissick’s efforts deserve to be recounted at length, and Healy’s passionate and humane account restores Soul City to its place in histories of civil rights and urban renewal alike ... Soul City makes a case for the importance of space to the project of Black emancipation—space to dream, space to grow. The book’s final chapters, which recount McKissick and his staff’s desperate attempts to save their city, are deeply moving. McKissick had imagined that Soul City’s streets would reflect the project’s visionary spirit, with roads named for Nat Turner and Dred Scott. Now Turner Circle and Scott Circle lead only to dead ends.
