Born: March 9, 1922, Asheville, NC

Education: Morehouse College, 1940–41, North Carolina College, A.B., 1947, LL.B., 1951, University of North Carolina Law School, 1951

Died: April 21, 1991, Durham, NC

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) national director and founder of Soul City, McKissick made critical contributions to desegregation, civil rights, and African American empowerment. His suit, argued in the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (1951), ended white-only admission to the School of Law at the University of North Carolina.

McKissick sought racial and social justice. He joined the NAACP while attending one of North Carolina's few black high schools; he attended Morehouse College but went to the army in 1942. He participated in CORE's 1947 journey testing integration on interstate buses. In the wake of Brown, he represented blacks arrested for trespassing at a white Durham ice cream parlor in 1957 and sued to transfer his children to white schools. Sponsoring many workshops on nonviolence, he helped mobilize statewide sit-ins at segregated public accommodations. Director of National CORE (1963–69), he also embraced Black Power, self-defense, and economic independence. To promote the last, he supported Republican presidential candidate Richard M. Nixon in 1968. Troubled by McKissick's rejection of nonviolence and integration, many members departed from CORE. He thus resigned to develop Soul City, a black industrial community in Warren County, North Carolina, financed via loan guarantees from the Nixon administration.