When it comes to reclaiming and preserving Black traditions of rice cultivation in South Carolina

When it comes to reclaiming and preserving Black traditions of rice cultivation in South Carolina, few people go as far as Rollen Chalmers does. Drive south of Charleston, almost to the Georgia border, and you can visit a small, welcoming store in Hardeeville, Rollen’s Raw Grains, where he sells bags of Carolina Gold rice that he grows and harvests on nearby land. His connection to this land goes way back. His father, orphaned at 13, used to hunt alligators and plow fields with an ox; his mother farmed peas, watermelon, okra, sweet potatoes — and rice. Long before that, his ancestors were born into enslavement. Some of them are buried right up the road in Bluffton. They, too, grew rice.