NAACP and CORE, but he withdrew from the NAACP. After leaving the NAACP and showing loyalty to CORE, he was elected to the CORE national chairmanship at the 1963 Convention. When Floyd McKissick replaced James Farmer as head of CORE on January 3, 1966, the organization completed a 180-degree turn that saw it change from an interracial integrationist civil rights agency pledged to uphold nonviolence into a militant and uncompromising advocate of the ideology of black power. In 1966, James Meredith challenged America's social system of poverty, racial segregation, and white supremacy by vowing to walk alone from Memphis, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. McKissick who had recently been elected head of CORE, promised to support Meredith in his journey. Along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael, McKissick assisted in leading a group of demonstrators the remaining 194 miles to Jackson, Mississippi. McKissick states, "We issued the call to bring all the organizations together to continue the march at the spot where he fell." McKissick and Roy Innis, who at that time was the head of the Harlem chapter of CORE, appeared to be close allies, but there were underlying tensions. When McKissick left CORE in 1968, Innis took over. Soul City After leaving CORE, McKissick launched a plan to build a new community, Soul City, in Warren County, North Carolina, on 500 acres of farmland. McKissick stated," Soul City was an idea before the movement. Soul City actually started after World War II, in my mind. And it was first talked about when we saw the use of the Marshall Plan, and all like that. See, I've always been in real estate and I've always been a businessman." Soul City was supposed to reverse out-migration of minorities and the poor to urban areas. Soul City was a town intended for all, but placed emphasis on providing opportunities for minorities and the poor. The venture received a $14 million bond issue guarantee from the Department of Housing and Urban Development through the New Communities Act of 1970 and a loan of $500,000 form the First Pennsylvania Bank. The state of North Carolina also gave $1.7 million and private donors gave about $1 million. With this funding, McKissick built a state-of-the art water system, a health care clinic, and a massive steel-and-glass factory named Soultech I. Soul City was projected to have 24,000 jobs and 44,000 inhabitants by the year