Feb. 20, 2026

Harvey Gantt looks back at the 1970s and wonders if, even if Floyd McKIssick today were to lay down his vision for a multiracial Soul City without poverty, with jobs, with opportunity for all, would he find today the support that he needed back then to make a new city a reality? Would investors join him? Would people white and Black see themselves in his vision?

“I am taking heart at the younger people that are coming along,” Gantt said. But elections have consequences, and progress is being stripped away by the Trump administration. Black people need to fight to maintain the progress that has been made, he said.

“You fight from a stronger place than my great-grandfather did, my grandfather did. You’re supposed to be smarter, more aware of what’s going on, you’ve got a little bit more money.

“What are you going to do with that? What are you going to do with it? What are you going to do in the situation that we find ourselves?”

The clip below is from the Feb. 17 Forum presentation made by McKissick’s youngest daughter, Dr. Charmaine McKissick-Melton, and Gantt, the senior architect and planner for Soul City in Warren County, principal in a Charlotte architectural firm and two-term Mayor of Charlotte.