The Sorghum Festival is returning to Sampson County on Oct. 3, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., on the Coharie Pow Wow grounds, located behind the Coharie Tribal Center. Parking and admission will be free.
This is the Coharie Tribe’s first year hosting the festival, a long-time staple in Sampson County.
“We decided to have a Sorghum Festival this year trying to revive it, and, hopefully, it will be a community event,” explained Chris Faircloth, who is organizing this year’s event.
Faircloth said that’s what the Sorghum Festivals were like when John Matthews held the festivals each year near McDaniel. Matthews has since died and the Sorghum Festival had been left without an organizer.
Faircloth said Tuesday that he put the word out last year that a Sorghum Festival should be revived.
“We’re trying to hold onto the tradition of sorghum because it’s such an intricate part of the heritage of rural North Carolina, from the coast to the mountains…Kentucky and Tennessee…all up the Mississippi to Louisiana,” Faircloth pointed out.
“The Sorghum Festival hopefully will revive that tradition,” he added.
The sorghum plant was first grown in Africa before coming to the south, Faircloth explained.
“The slavers over there (in Africa), they saw the natives cooking up this porridge…they found a cheap way to feed the slaves on the boats as they came across over to America. Eventually the slaves that were here (in America) had seeds, and they started cultivating small patches.”
Not only would the seeds be eaten, he said, “but they would crush (the seeds) and boil it down into a sweet liquid.”
Sorghum could not compete with sugar, he noted, “but then, when the Depression came and the stock market fell…everything was just so expensive, people couldn’t afford sugar, and so communities actually started planting plots of sorghum in their fields.”
During the fall season, Faircloth said a travelling mule would haul a wagon carrying a sorghum mill and cooking pans.
“Each community, as they would gather their sorghum up to harvest it, would bring it to one central location…everybody in the community would bring some … The one that ran the mill would set it up, he would cook it, press it…then they would divide whatever syrup was out.”
Faircloth added that no matter how much sorghum was gathered by people, everyone would receive “an equal share” of the sorghum syrup.
“It was a lifeline during that period of time so people didn’t starve to death,” Faircloth attested.
“They could use the seeds in place of grits, they could make mill, and other things out of it to bake with. It brought them through the Depression, and it continued on into the hills — into Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and here in North Carolina.”
The 2026 festival will feature a classic car show, tractor show, gospel singing, food and craft vendors, and a live demonstration of cooking sorghum.
The classic car and tractor shows will have on-site registration the day of the festival.
Talia Faircloth has been getting the vendors together for the festival, and said she is also excited about the prospect of breathing new life into the once popular event. She added that vendor spots are still available, and she offered a preview of the live demonstration, saying, “Spectators of the community will able to actually go and take some of the (sorghum) stalks and squeeze it to see how the process works.”
Sorghum was “kept alive” by individual communities coming together, Chris Faircloth surmised.
“Hopefully that’s what we’re going to do,” he stated. “It brings a community back together again, and whenever you can get people standing beside each other that haven’t spoke – might live beside each other and haven’t spoke in years – but when they’re standing beside that sorghum press and feeding those stalks in, all of the sudden a conversation strikes up.”
The sorghum festival “builds back relationships lost and it brings back neighbors to helping each other,” Faircloth attested, urging residents to come out to the upcoming event.