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When Food and Community Come Together

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Nothing brings people together and says more about a culture than its food. Photographer Nick Burchell has made a career of shooting at the intersection of beautiful food and human interaction. But his recent project for Eating Well Magazine has an added layer: the personal history of a family and its struggle to save Soap Stone,  a Black Church built by a community of freed slaves called Liberia, in Pickens, South Carolina and its adjoining slave cemetery, that was once burned to the ground by the KKK. It has been part of Mable Clarke’s family for generations, and she is determined to protect it from developers who want to raze it and develop the land.  Mable has gone to work raising money doing what she does best: cooking. People come by bus from miles around to enjoy the food at her monthly fish frys, and so far she’s raised over $27,000 of the $45,000 she needs to pay off the mortgage and keep bankers at bay. But time is running out. If you can make it to one of her fish frys by the end of the year, you won’t be disappointed. But if not, you can donate to her GoFundMe page to help save this important part of Southern Black history.