Nikki Haley’s tiny hometown – of Bamberg, South Carolina – performed a starring position within the launch of her presidential marketing campaign.

A video launched on-line on Tuesday asserting her run for President started with photos together with a set of railroad tracks.

“The railroad divided the town by race,” Haley narrated. “I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants – not Black, not white. I was different.”

Bamberg, S.C., the hometown of Nikki Haley, featured prominently in her presidential marketing campaign launch.

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Bamberg, S.C., the hometown of Nikki Haley, featured prominently in her presidential marketing campaign launch.

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The subsequent day, throughout a speech in Charleston kicking off her bid for the 2024 Republican nomination, the previous South Carolina governor and United Nations Ambassador beneath President Trump mentioned her dad and mom had taught Haley and her siblings that “even on our worst day, we are blessed to live in America.”

Haley paints an image of Bamberg – and the nation – as a spot the place race is a actuality, however not a limitation.

As the one Indian household, “Our little town came to love us, but it wasn’t always easy,” she mentioned. “Nobody knew who we were, what we were, or why we were there.”

Haley was born in 1972, just some years after her parents moved the household to Bamberg, a city with a present inhabitants round 3,000. Her father took a place as a biology professor at an area faculty and her mom taught faculty earlier than opening a profitable clothes retailer.

A go to to Bamberg

“No, nobody knew who they were,” mentioned Harriet Coker, a retired trainer, on a latest sunny afternoon in Bamberg.

Coker has recognized the household – the Randhawas – since earlier than Nikki was born. She had Nikki in her seventh-grade social research class and remembers her as quiet, however good.

There have been challenges. A spokeswoman for Haley’s marketing campaign says after they first moved to the world, her dad and mom struggled to seek out anybody who’d lease to them. Her modest childhood house which was featured prominently in Haley’s marketing campaign video.

But quickly, Coker says, they have been simply a part of the neighborhood.

“It didn’t take long for people to really get to know them and to realize what wonderful people they are,” she says.

Harriet Coker, 84, at her house in Bamberg, S.C. Coker taught Nikki Haley in her seventh-grade social research class.

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Harriet Coker, 84, at her house in Bamberg, S.C. Coker taught Nikki Haley in her seventh-grade social research class.

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As she launched her marketing campaign, Haley pointed to her political resume as a residing instance of the concept that America is – at its core – a land of alternative. She pushed again on what she described as a rising “self-loathing,” which she mentioned views America as “flawed, rotten, and full of hate” – significantly on the political left.

“Take it from me, the first minority female governor in history, America is not a racist country,” Haley mentioned, drawing strong applause from the largely white crowd.

It nonetheless exists

Tony Duncan, an area Black enterprise proprietor, is a couple of years older than Haley and remembers being in class together with her older siblings.

“She comes from good people, and she’s good people,” Duncan says.

But, rising up in South Carolina within the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, Duncan says race was all the time there.

“I think all of us know what this country was built on. And [racism] still exists,” he says. “It exists. As people here in America, we have to deal with these things.”

Lisa B. Stokes grew up in Bamberg and spent her profession as a trainer. She began elementary faculty proper across the time native colleges have been integrating and spent her first yr of grade faculty in an all-Black class. Stokes has combined emotions about Haley’s feedback.

Lisa B. Stokes, 60, is a retired schoolteacher from Bamberg.

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Lisa B. Stokes, 60, is a retired schoolteacher from Bamberg.

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“Yes, there are so many opportunities and we can all make it,” Stokes says. “It’s a lot easier for some than others.”

Slights, and racist insults

In her life and her political profession, Haley has at instances been focused for her race.

At age 5, Haley was requested, mid-competition, to bow out of the Little Miss Bamberg magnificence pageant – which had separate awards for Black kids and white kids – as a result of they’d no class for her, she advised the New York Times Magazine in a 2011 interview. After that, the city built-in its pageants and plenty of different social actions.

“I mean, that kind of thing would [make her] say, ‘Well, now it’s crystal clear. I’m different; I don’t fit in,” mentioned Sharon Carter, the Bamberg County Republican Party chairwoman.

Carter grew up in Bamberg across the identical time as Haley. She says Haley’s race was by no means a big concern, and the household was well-regarded: “You know, by the time you’re in school as elementary-age kids, everybody just all gets along.”

In 2010, when Haley was working for governor of South Carolina, a Republican state senator who was an ally of 1 her major opponents used a racist slur to discuss with Haley, alluding to her dad and mom’ Sikh religion.

Coker says regardless of that “really insulting” incident, Haley pressed ahead.

“I don’t write many letters to the editor but I had to respond to that, and I said, ‘Well you obviously don’t know them,'” she says. “She ended up winning, and she hasn’t slowed down.”

Both sides of the tracks

As Haley’s star has risen, her hometown – like many different rural small cities, has declined, dropping jobs and plenty of of its younger individuals. The interstate bypassed the neighborhood, and a textile manufacturing unit left city. Older residents can bear in mind when the city’s primary avenue was bustling and lined with visitors; at present, a lot of the outdated brick storefronts are empty or lined in plywood.

This modest house in Bamberg, S.C., is featured prominently in Nikki Haley’s presidential marketing campaign launch video.

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This modest house in Bamberg, S.C., is featured prominently in Nikki Haley’s presidential marketing campaign launch video.

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And there are nonetheless racial divisions.

Stokes, who lives a couple of blocks from the a lot bigger house that Haley’s dad and mom finally moved into, says when she moved into the overwhelmingly white neighborhood round 1990, most of the neighbors actively averted her.

“It was obvious some were not really pleased we’d moved here,” Stokes says. “And even to this day, you know, we’re the only African-American couple on the street.”

Despite extra modest beginnings in Bamberg, S.C., Nikki Haley’s dad and mom finally moved into this bigger house, which they bought in 2002, in keeping with native property data.

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Despite extra modest beginnings in Bamberg, S.C., Nikki Haley’s dad and mom finally moved into this bigger house, which they bought in 2002, in keeping with native property data.

Sarah McCammon/NPR

Stokes says she appreciated Haley’s work to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol after a white supremacist shot and killed nine people at a traditionally Black church in Charleston in 2015. But she was upset to see Haley – after first criticizing Trump – align herself with him just some years later.

“It’s like, ‘Who are you, Nikki Haley?'” she says. “Really and actually, who’re you?

Stokes says she additionally feels pleased with the popularity that Haley has delivered to their hometown. But she hopes that Haley will bear in mind the individuals again house – on either side of city.