Harvesting Heritage: Black Appalachia

Born and raised in North Charleston, Amethyst Ganaway has been featured in the New York Times, Food & Wine, Garden & Gun and more. Specializing in Southern and African American foodways and the foodways of the African Disapora, Ganaway also recently headlined the Charleston Wine + Food Festival. She uses her position as a chef and food writer to tell the stories of the region’s history, culture, art, cuisine, and environment. 

Deacon Mable Owens Clarke is both Matriarch and Historian of Soapstone Baptist Church, as well as a founding member of the Soapstone Preservation Endowment (soapstonepe.org). Mable and her husband, Charles Davis, a Trustee of Soapstone Church, work together to maintain the church, school house, cemeteries, and the 6 acres of grounds upon which sits Soapstone Baptist Church. Mable was raised in the Jim Crow South, calling Liberia Valley home with Soapstone at the heart of the community. At 17, Mable left for Boston for a better edication and 23 years later, returned home to assist her aging parents and their church. A deathbed promise to “never to let the doors of Soapstone close” became Mable’s life’s work, and since, has spent every day doing just that.

Chris Aluka Berry grew up among the pine trees and cotton fields of rural South Carolina. This landscape informed his approach to photography, which he ventured into as a self-taught teenager, by encouraging him to notice the interesting, sometimes bizarre moments of daily life. Having worked as a documentary photographer for over twenty years now, Berry continues to seek moments that engage his imagination. What lies around the corner? What shines beneath the surface? Berry’s ability to look, wait, and wonder has yielded the kinds of provocative photographs that we see in his most recent, multi-year-long projects, Affrilachia: Testimonies (a forthcoming book with the University Press Kentucky, to be released Oct. 2024) and in his ongoing series, “Fear, Death, and the Other Side.”

Stephanie Y. Mitchem, Ph. D. (Northwestern University 1998) is Professor in the Department of Religious Studies. She began at the University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC) in 2005, after 10 years at University of Detroit Mercy. Mitchem utilizes an interdisciplinary lens (theology, history, womanist ethics, feminist studies, cultural studies, anthropology, ethnography) to engage complex and critical topics. Her scholarly explorations include but are not limited to the religious and social lives of African Americans and Africans in the Diaspora; women, gender, and justice; and issues of human rights. Mitchem’s books include Introducing Womanist Theology (Orbis Books 2002, 10th printing 2016), African American Folk Healing (New York University Press 2007) and Race, Religion and Politics: Towards Human Rights in the US (Rowman and Littlefield 2019). Additionally, she has authored numerous essays.