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Meet One of the Oldest Black Farmers in the American South
Dori Sanders’ 250 acres has been in the family for more than 100 years
Tucked away on a single-lane stretch of Filbert Highway in Filbert, South Carolina, lies one of the oldest Black-owned farms in the South. Almost every Friday and Saturday from Memorial Day to Labor Day, you’ll find Ms. Dori Sanders sitting out under the aging roadside peach stand at Sanders Farm.
When you see Sanders, who is 85, you’ll be instantly amazed to know that she is still physically able to farm land and actively engage in the selling of her produce. While she’s very lively, she’s a petite woman, mostly due to aging. She spends most of the day sitting in a chair under the shaded part of her stand.
The South Carolina farmer still cranks up her tractors each season to ride over the more than 250 acres of land she owns, along with her brother Orestus.
The farm has been in the family for more than a century. Dori’s father, Marion Sanders, set out to own his own land in 1915.
For years, Marion’s family sharecropped for a South Carolina landowner. According to an adaption of an address given by Dori Sanders at the 2004 Southern Foodways Alliance annual symposium, sharecropping was a harsh way of life for her father. Her…
